Surrender – No Leg to Stand On
No guarantees, No thoughts, No visions, No Blessedness
Beezone adapatation and edit of a talk by Adi Da Samraj
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Surrender is required. The Catholic Christian tradition makes reference to the “dark night of the soul”. It is the same kind of thing no control over it, no ability even to find a place of Grace in the moment of greatest purification.
It is purification, it is a great wash, it is a burning. It seems as if you have no advantages, but there is just that naked advantage that is your devotion to Me itself. Even that may seem to be in doubt somehow, but you persist.
DEVOTEE: This is very interesting because You are talking about rock-bottom self here!
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Rock-bottom self is what it is really all about. All the rest is superficial.
DEVOTEE: And where you have nothing, no reserve in yourself other than what you would have at death.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: And death is what is required ego-death. Just surrender to Me, allowing the One Who is Great to be the Governor of the process even though you do not know anything about it. All you have left is just that string of devotion to Me itself, no guarantees, no thoughts, no visions, no Blessedness. You suffer the purification. This is a characteristic of the daily life of all My devotees, frequently occurring, and that is what it takes a continuous submission to Me, no dramatization, no aberrated life. Endure it, persist, discipline yourself relative to the darkness of the necessary purification that is what is required. That is how the great transitions occur. That is how the real process develops. Not by your knowing this and that, your egoic self-possession and self-“giving” not that. Just by devotion given to Me, surrender to Me, trust in Me, even when you do not have a leg to stand on.
Everyone wants to have different life with Me not the real dose of surrender to Me, the strain of tapas, the difficulties to be overcome, but some sort of a glad, smiling, idealistic ride. But that is not the real process. The real process is a profound ordeal, and you are obliged, by your devotion to Me, to live sanely, remain as My devotee, go through the process, endure purification. That is it. Never cease to be My devotee simply because there are difficulties to be endured. Do not cop-out. Persist! That is the test, and that is what the Way of the Heart is really all about. And that is how the great purifications, the great transitions, occur.
All must be burned up Prapatti, just give it up. Have nothing but trust, nothing but devotion to Me. Everything must be done, given up, surrendered to Me, passed through. Such is the disposition of My devotee, just that. This is no cultic ride, no mere amusement. It is religious realism, the real process embraced, accepted, endured. And there are plenty of Blessed days, too. But it is not only those Blessed days that are the Way of the Heart. The Way of the Heart for the most part is a profound purification. Its transformations require utter surrender, without a leg to stand on black!
But you tend to seek again, to find some way to feel good, to console yourself a little sex, a little amusement, a little reading, a little conversation, a little socializing, and you let yourself off the hook. All your reactivity, all your nonsensical seeking, comes into play again, and that is how you bypass transformation and bypass the true purifying process of the Way of the Heart. The more the heart-motive comes to the front, the more willing you are to endure this life without a leg to stand on and go through real transformation. The rest is silliness. And, talk, as much as anything else, is how you avoid the ordeal.
I presume you have all felt such surrender, and I also presume that you have all felt some mechanism in yourself that seeks to avoid it. That strategy is what makes you mediocre. Whenever you choose not to avoid the ordeal and you endure it, a purification occurs. Some shit is released, and the purification does not have to be done again not in quite the same way anyway.
You must realize that real sadhana is done without a leg to stand on. This does not mean that you should dramatize. Dramatization is how you bypass it.
DEVOTEE: It seems that the typical form of surrender to You still stays within the ego’s frame of reference.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: The mediocre sign definitely does. That is what I mean. You introduce your reactivity, your desiring, your motives of consolation, your blab-blab, talkity-talkity-talkity, socializing, sexing, a little stuffing the bucket with food, whatever. You use all kinds of means to desensitize yourself to the darkness of the ordeal of real surrender. And this is how you prolong your beginner’s life. You always introduce a leg to stand on.
DEVOTEE: This is a silly statement, but I wonder how I could even function in that surrender.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: You are always capable of functioning, always. You do not have to become a stupid fool just because you are enduring a purifying process, not at all. You are fully capable of functioning, serving, being rational, and human with others. That is in fact your obligation. You must maintain the discipline. That is how you keep the purifying process in place, not by looking for a way out of it. “I am having a difficult day I may as well get laid”, that kind of thing. A difficult day is no time to get laid or indulge in any consolation. That is a time to endure it. When things brighten up, when some congeniality, some energy, is manifested, then you can do some more ordinary things maybe, but still Yogically, rightly.
To live rightly is an art, and it requires true seriousness. This is just how it is. I cannot relieve you of this obligation. That is the practice of the Way of the Heart. Everything passing that is the place you are in here. It is all just that. If you are sensitive at all, that is how it is everything passing, all wounds, everything ending. Surrender to Me is your obligation. That is the place you are in here. But you are indulging yourself here in this place to console yourself and to de-sensitize yourself to your real situation and the work you have to do. That is the game My devotees are playing one by one, and that is what they must overcome.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, last year You spoke of the “free fall” in You. In these moments of most tapas where we do not have a leg to stand on and we are free falling ..
ADI DA SAMRAJ: And looking in all directions for a leg some distraction, some consolation, some dimension of your search to desensitize you to this free fall. That is what you all do. It is a tendency even in the advanced and the ultimate stages of life. It is dealt with at a more profound level in those stages, but it persists. The self-contraction is at the root of it always.
The real process is an in-depth process of surrender without a leg to stand on. It is real tapas. And the right practice when tapas is closing in on you is not to react and seek and console yourself but to endure it, to maintain a discipline, to practice devotion to Me, to be straight in daily life. Do not dramatize. If you rightly do it, apart from your confession in your intimate groups with your friends nobody will even notice that you are going through such difficulty.
But you think that as soon as it is difficult, it is time to dramatize, time to lay it onto your friends, time to console yourself, time to indulge yourself, time to desensitize yourself. That is the technique you use as an ego-based worldling, and that has no relevance to the process you must endure. It just puts it off. That is how you prolong the beginnings, and that is what you must outgrow. It is a sign of maturing in the Way of the Heart that you do not indulge in such consoling efforts and do not dramatize. That is maturity.
By such maturity, you keep straight in the midst of the tapas. You are having a bad day, feeling rather fragile, so you want to take a vacation? No! Maintain the discipline of surrender to Me, maintain the discipline of service to Me, do not change a jot of your behavior, do not dramatize with others, do not seek to indulge yourself. Be without a leg to stand on. Endure it. That is how you will grow. Abandoning that position, bypassing it through consolation and all the rest of it, you desensitize yourself and fail to grow, and you prolong the beginning.
There is nothing I can do about it. I cannot lay down some absolute law to prevent all dramatization. I can just tell you how it is and what is really required. You will take as long to grow as you are pleased to do. It is your business. Bypass the transforming purifying event and you are building time into your beginning practice, building time into your practice altogether. It is entirely up to you.
It is not about trusting Me to let you off the hook! It is trusting Me in the midst of enduring the real process, with no gestures to let yourself off the hook. Such sadhana goes deep. It makes profound purification, and that is what is necessary, instead of your abiding in this superficial orientation, dramatizing, seeking, consoling yourself. That is not it. That is being mediocre, insensitive, and a beginner forever.
The Way of the Heart is one crisis after the next. If you abandon the practice, what you will get is one crisis after the next! but there will be no fruitfulness to such crisis. Suffering is inevitable in any case, difficulty is inevitable in any case, so why abandon the arms and the context of practice? Suffering is not a loophole. You only get the suffering without the advantage.
People everywhere in the world are merely suffering. My devotees are still suffering but with great Advantage, and making conditional existence a real process that serves. That is the only difference. It is not that people in the world are suffering and My devotees are not. If you think you are not suffering, you are a cultist in My Company. If you do not want to suffer, if you do not want to endure the ordeal, then you are being a superficial fool, and you are still a worldling. To avoid suffering is the technique of the world.
Therefore, do not play it fast and loose with your personal practice of the Way of the Heart, and do not play it fast and loose with the institution, the culture, the community, and the mission of My devotees. See your dramatization, and see that it just bothers everyone and undermines the work you must do and forestalls the day of your significant maturity.
Full Talk
more:
Ego Death and the Chaos of Experience
Self Observation, Vital Shock and Crisis