Posts Tagged ‘Surrender’
We’ve all heard the famous instruction to “look within.” it comes in many forms.
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
“All Truth is within.”
What on earth does that mean? Where is in? How do we look at it? How do we find it? Our eyes can only look outside of us. How are we supposed to look within?
Awareness Watching Awareness
When one begins to ask themselves, “What am I?’ the question will ultimately lead to the dissolution of the very person asking the question. The “I” that I’m seeking does not exist. The only aspect of “you” that is always there no matter what is the non-personal awareness. You are awareness.
Now awareness can be focused on what’s part of the illusion including thoughts, ideas, other people, my own body, the world, and so on. When we watch our thoughts, we can use our awareness (what’s real) to simply watch the thoughts (what’s unreal) pass by without identifying with them.
Alternatively, we can point the awareness (what’s real) directly at itself. Let’s try this now.
Notice the aspect of you that is aware of these words, the location you’re in, that’s aware of what’s being seen, heard, and felt. Notice that there is something that is aware of these sensations.
Next, actually become aware of the fact that you are aware.
By doing this, by being awareness watching awareness, you are now TRULY looking at your Self. By doing this, you are not going through the mind or engaging in any ego illusion. The illusion is being pierced straight through. When one loses focus on the awareness itself, the awareness is now focused back on the illusion and has lost touch with Reality.
Spirituality and Self-Realization Is That Simple
There’s so many distractions along the path of Self-realization. All enlightenment comes down to is realization your true nature. Things like crystals, manifestation, chanting, brain wave altering, channeling, and all other sorts of practices may certainly help you experience phenomena, but they will not give you the realization of the Self.
Realizing your true nature involves seeing through the illusions and keeping your attention focused solely and squarely on the Self, the awareness.
By doing this, the mind will begin to grow quieter and quieter as it progressively unravels. It will still kick and scream from time to time and continue to flare up occasionally, but when it does, simply surrender away the juice the mind gets from those experiences and it will lose its grip over you. By seeing yourself as awareness, this will progressively weaken and ultimately dissolve all identification with thoughts and with the mind.
You will then start to have “spiritual experiences” whereby you have glimpses of your true nature, and these experiences will be more real than anything of this world. These experiences will increase in frequency and duration until they become your permanent state.
There ya go. Self-realization.
It’s Awareness Watching Awareness.
All else is to be surrendered to God.
A quiet mind is something so many people want to experience, if even for a short period of time. An uncontrolled mind is like a living hell and so there’s many different methods people talk about to “control the mind” or to “master the mind” including affirmations, meditations, and more.
So how do you quiet the mind once and for all?
…
You don’t.
Wait, what?
See, quieting the mind is not something “you” can do. The “you” that you think you are IS the mind and the mind is unwilling to commit suicide and kill itself. In fact, the mind would rather throw you (the body) off a cliff to prove a point rather than give up its own positions and desire to be right. The mind does NOT have your own best interests at heart! The ego/mind is something that works on its own and it is not you. By pushing against it and trying to shut it up, you’re creating even more struggle which will never lead to the mind going totally quiet for good.
So what can we do?
Surrender Ego Juice
If you look at the thoughts, you’ll see that it’s not actually the thoughts themselves that give us pleasure, but rather the “juice” the ego gets out of thinking the thoughts. Some examples of this ego juice include the feeling of I (as an individual self) exist, I am better than, I am right, I am in control, I am no good, I can do it, I can never do it, and so on.
Look closely and you’ll find that there’s an emotional payoff the ego gets to thinking. It’s the payoffs that need to be surrendered to God, not the actual thoughts themselves. Take away the ego’s motivation and benefits to thinking and the thinking will naturally subside on its own little by little until there’s a permanent stillness in the mind.
Silence.
How To Do It
Any time you notice a compulsive “pull” within you that says you need to do something, a sense of mental agitation, notice the compulsion and the feeling of “ugh, I GOTTA do this.”
Next look at the payoffs that you’d get by doing the thing. Perhaps it’s a sense of relief, accomplishment, approval, control, security, separation, oneness, or something else that you will obtain by thinking the thoughts or performing the action. There’s some sort of emotional benefit to what the thought is trying to get you to do.
Finally, adopt a Yin position towards these feelings and towards Life, a feeling of ALLOWING thoughts to be and allowing them to be let go of on their own. Simply let go of any emotional payoffs and the thoughts themselves will automatically be released. Do not force them to leave. Allow them to be let go of by simply offering them no resistance. You may need to repeat this process over and over to fully surrender away the attachments to a particular thought or emotion.
Let Go Of Any Personalization
A random pair of shoes you see aren’t deemed important by the mind and thus aren’t spun around in the thoughts and inserted into our conscious memory banks. However, an identical pair of shoes that become ‘my’ pair of shoes are suddenly given a sense of importance and are thus remembered.
The same is true with ‘my’ thoughts, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ body, ‘my’ opinions, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ people, ‘my’ land, ‘my’ girlfriend, and so on. The ego loooves to claim ownership of and possessiveness to things because it believes there is some sort of magical benefit to owning things. This is simply not true. Owning more and more “things” does not make one happy.
As one lets go of all beliefs as to personalization, ownership, or value judgments, all is seen to be equally beautiful and valuable. A rose is recognized to be as beautiful as a common weed. Objects and concepts are all seen to have equal importance not because they are mine, but because they are. Everyone and everything is of equal value to the Self.
Collapsing The Mind
The mind focuses on thoughts that it believes are true. For example, you only worry about things that might conceivably happen. If the mind didn’t believe the thought, it wouldn’t focus on it. When one starts investigating, they’ll find that the mind actually has no capacity to discern what’s true.
If you look closely, you’ll find that you can take any belief you believe to be true and find evidence to support why the opposite belief is also true.
Explore some more and you’ll find that every belief is ultimately supported by nothing. There is no belief built upon a solid foundation of truth. Every thought, belief, or opinion that we hold so strongly to be true, we find that deep down we actually don’t know if it’s actually true! Dig deep and you’ll find that every belief and its opposite is false.
Once you realize that every belief and its opposite is both true AND false, you’ll find you don’t really believe anything, nor do you disbelieve anything. Rather, you come to rest right in the middle as the mind begins to collapse on itself.
What remains is your natural state beyond thought. Some call this enlightenment or being your true self.
What Benefit Is There To Doing This?
Peace, Joy, Bliss, Unconditional Love, Stillness, and an Infinite Softness.
The mind is still available as a tool when one awakens, but it no longer runs amok like an undisciplined child. One can simply tell the mind to be quiet and believe it or not, it actually will! The mind will only be used when needed and what one begins to realize is that the mind is needed far less often than originally thought.
When one stops judging and personalizing and mentally farting around, the mind subsides and the ‘veil’ of the mind lifts. Only then does one find the true beauty of God/Nature/All That Is.
When the veil lifts, it’s like suddenly having the experience of a TV show we used to watch on a small black and white TV suddenly appearing on a huge, colorful HDTV.
Colors are richer and juicier, tastes are more delightful, sounds are exquisite, sensations are glorious, and the whole world feels radiantly alive and beautiful. It’s like someone cranked the “juiciness” knob WAYYY up on life.
All that used to be a struggle has been changed into a conscious observation, an all-pervading softness, and effortless power to accomplish anything necessary.
Life becomes a magnificent journey for no one, an exquisitely beautiful moment perpetually unfolding from perfection to perfection all on its own. What an incredible ride…
For further reading on this topic, continue on to read about accepting things totally the way they are, without resistance.
Chinese finger traps. How do they work and what’s the catch?
You put a finger in each end. Once you start pulling, the toy clasps onto your finger. The harder you pull, the tighter it grips your fingers, and the more you get ensnared.
What’s the trick? What’s the secret to escaping what seems to be an impossible struggle?
Stop resisting it. Stop fighting. Accept the situation and look at it while you’re not struggling. Don’t even try to look for a solution. Just look at it.
It’s the very attempt to escape that ironically locks you in place. It’s the struggle that creates the struggle.
By looking at the experience when you’re not caught in the struggle, possibilities arise and show you that it’s possible to release the situation without having to struggling with it.
It seems that people think they struggle because something is wrong, yet the reality is that something is wrong because they’re struggling.
Your inner world creates your outer world.
Many people spend much of their lives trying to escape or run away from their issues, to somehow distract themselves with food, alcohol, drugs, music, sex, running, sleeping, clubbing, traveling, meditating, attending seminars, and so on.
These are all used as distractions in the hope that if one can just distract themselves enough, the problem will resolve itself.
See, that which you resist persists.
What you look at disappears.
When you’re willing to sit in the same place as a fear or worry and look at it, just simply allow it to be just as it is, very often you may find that the problem you thought you had simply dissolves all on its own.
Fascinating…
When it comes to trusting the universe to guide your life and provide your abundance and prosperity, we could say there are 3 different models.
Let’s pretend you’re a ship in the middle of this river. Man, what a view!
Photo by Kajo Merkert
Let’s examine different ways you could deal with the swift current in this area.
Remain Stationary
- You don’t like the fact that your view keeps changing and you’re continually traveling into unknown territory. The unknown is scary. It makes you incredibly uncomfortable and you’re comfortable being where you are. So you drop anchor and sit still in the middle of the river and watch the sunset.
It takes a lot of energy to hold on tight in this current, but you do it anyways because at least now you have some semblance of “control.” You feel comfortable because you know what to expect. Nothing has to change. You can be right where you are without having to be taken by this river, be taken by a power seemingly beyond your control.
This is commonly expressed as depression, as debilitating fear. Instead of taking a risk and jumping forward, people hold on tight to exactly where they are.
The founder of McDonalds, Ray Croc, had a famous saying:
“When you’re green you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.”
If you’re not continually growing and expanding, you’re rotting.
The movie The Shawshank Redemption put it well.
“Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”
People will generally clutch onto their anchor until it gets to painful and takes too much energy to keep holding on. The built-in human desire for variety kicks in and they want to experience something new so they’ll raise anchor up and start moving again. Read More …
The famous enlightened master Ramana Maharshi teaches the pathway to enlightenment through self-inquiry and constantly asking the question, “Who am I?” Just ask yourself, “Who am I? Who sees when I see? Who hears when I hear? Who knows that I am aware? Who am I?”
Is your name, its letters and sounds, you?
Or is it just a label? It’s not you. If you changed your name, would you still be you?
Are you your body?
If your body changes, if you lose a limb, you would still be you.
Is your mind you?
If yours thoughts change or your beliefs alter or the mind you have goes quiet in meditation, you’d still be here. The thought processes are not you. Who is it that’s noticing the thoughts?
The “I am” that I am is the same beingness that existed when you were five years old. Various qualities and characteristics about you may have changed since, certainly, but the very core of the fact that you exist hasn’t changed. Read More …
Question:
What is the fastest way to kill the ego?
The meditation is working well, and things are moving forward.
I want it dead by my birthday february 25.
JB.
My response:
There are many paths you can take, all of which will guide you into letting go of all sense of separation resulting in ego transcendence and enlightenment. Let’s look through a number of options and see if we can find something that resonates with you. Mix and match based on your own intuition and experiences.
First and foremost, the ego is not something to push against, struggle with, or overcome. The ego is not something to be killed. That mindset will only set you up for more struggle with the ego sneaking in the back door. Struggle, resistance, fighting, and killing will not work. You don’t defeat darkness with darkness. You transcend darkness by bringing in the light. This is a critical point.
Who is it that wants to kill the ego? Why, the ego, of course!
The ever present awareness has no problem with the ego being there. It is as it is.
So, how do we transcend the ego? Read More …
I’m currently sitting here feeling the inside of this body I have radiate with blissful tingling energy. It’s not the same sensation when your feet fall asleep. It’s more similar to the tingling sensation you feel when you’re very present.
For me, this sensation is typically activated when I’m in a state of deep surrender and allowing. It feels like my legs are orgasming as well as the top of my head. As I close my eyes and relax, as I allow the Now moment to be just as it is, the sensation spreads across the face, down the arms, up the spine, and all over the entire body.
It’s an inner feeling of “Yes.”
This is a physical manifestation of surrender. The more I can let go of resistance, the more the energy of Peace automatically fills my body. As I keep allowing it to be just as it is (as opposed to trying to increase it), the more I allow the personal “me” to step out of the way, the more intense the feeling becomes. It’s truly a state of allowing.
Mental chatter such as “Cool! This is awesome! How do I make it stronger?” or “How long with this last?” or “Let me see if I can verbalize a description of this feeling.” actually suppresses the feelings. The quieter the mind becomes, the more intense the feelings of bliss.
Interestingly though, mental chatter seems to suppress this feeling less and less. A few months ago when I first started feeling these feelings, the moment the mind started talking, the blissful sensations ceased.
Now it feels like there’s an undercurrent of peace and freedom on top of which is the occasional verbal thought. The key difference is that there’s full identification with Oneness and no identification with the thoughts in the mind. The silent awareness within is not affected by thought. Since my essence is that which is non-physical, the feelings that arise from essence are also not affected. Read More …
The mind makes all sorts of silly commentary. Let’s say you’re walking outside and it’s cold. The mind goes, “It’s cold out here!” Now what good does that do you? You already know it’s cold! 
From there, the mind can go, “Well, I’ll be back home where it’s nice and warm in just a few minutes.”
What it’s doing is finding a way to give you some semblance of control. It can’t control external factors such as the weather, so it’ll attempt to control your inner world and say that things will be better in the future so that it feels okay. It’s a defense mechanism, really.
You can’t control what’s outside of you including other people, lottery numbers, whether you get the promotion or not, etc.
This creates a sort of insecurity because of the uncertainty. Fear arises from insecurity and not being in control. This inner mental narration gives you an illusion of control, much like a backseat driver. You take something which really doesn’t have anything to do with you, a tree perhaps, and start labeling and judging it to fit your model of the world and thus you create a relationship with it based on your values and beliefs. You’ve taken something out of your control and brought it into a reality which is more in your control. You’re no longer dealing with the object itself, but your perspective of the object.
So we could say that the mind is our tool to attempt to control reality. (We’re not able to control reality itself, but merely our perspective of it. Note how the tool fits in with the Law of Attraction…)
However, we actually give our minds an impossible task. It’s like this:
“I want everything to go my way. I want everyone to like me and approve of me. I want all my jokes to be well received. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I don’t want anything I don’t like to happen to me. I don’t want anything to hurt me. I want everything I like to happen.”
Then you tell the mind to make all this happen, even if it has to work on it continuously. Just make it happen!
The mind, being an obedient little servant, goes, “You got it, boss! I’m on the job.”
Can you imagine any person actually trying to accomplish this? It’s impossible! It’s the equivalent of trying to jump from the earth to the moon. It’s just not a practical task.
Most minds are neurotic because they’re trying to do the impossible. If a human body kept trying to jump to the moon, we’d call the person crazy. Now the mind, too, is trying to do something crazy, but since everyone’s trying to do the mental equivalent of jumping to the moon, we call that normal. 
That’s not natural. That’s insane! Read More …
