Surrender - Its Mystery & Magnificence

By surrender, what is achieved?

Is it strength, poise, confidence, reconciliation, readiness, and all together the great sublimity and wholesomeness? Or, is it on the other hand something like meekness and diffidence? The difference is very significant.

                      I surrender before the Supreme, and hence my onward journey on the spiritual path will be safe; if not smooth, yet bearable. If I am wrong, the wrong will be set right; if I am proud, I will be humbled; if I am unduly humble, then that note will also be treated; I shall gain whatever the Supreme would like me to. Thus, it is to give and to take alike, to succeed and to fail, to be and not to be – that is how surrender graces.

Even with surrender, the surrendering mind has to take its position – “to do” or “not to do”. Hanuman with his surrender thundered getting on top of Mahendrachala: “Here now I leap to reach Lanka – not alone the one you have in mind, but many more if necessary.” Was it his ego or his surrender?

                                 

Again after reaching Lanka, Hanuman, on several occasions, erred and got corrected. He took Mandodari to be Sita and then realized his mistake – bit his tail, in joy and in shame. His discovery of Sita was a course through hope and disappointment, doubts and illumination, slips and assurance. Were not all these inevitable parts of the wholesome pursuit?

Spirituality is life wholesome – with ego and without it, with humility and with prestige. Live life in its wholesomeness. As a child with eyes closed and then with eyes open, crying and laughing, mischievous for a time, and then in the youth growing to the full. Thereafter in declining age, skin wrinkled, teeth fallen, lying immobile in the bed, helpless to the core, waiting to die. Where was youth to help all and where is old age to be helped by all? Life is all together in respective places.

In spiritual life also, such a wholesomeness is the content. To assimilate this wholesomeness and sublimation with all the creativity it brings, if the so called surrender helps, it is alright. Not otherwise.

.... to be continued.

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha