The Importance of Faith and Surrender

When we begin to practice ishwara pranidhana and feel that we are like children held in the protective and loving hand of God, or lying in the lap of the Universal Mother, we can begin to let go, flow with the natural order of things, and put our trust in the care of the divine will which knows what we need better than we do ourselves. With this surrender we will no longer feel the need to struggle and strain to amass wealth we do not actually need, because we will have the faith that Ishwara will provide. Then, like the leaves of the tree in autumn, our old patterns of thinking and behaving, which depend on our insecurities, doubts and fears for their expression, will begin to fall away, allowing new positive shoots of hope and acceptance to emerge and bloom into beautiful flowers of love and compassion for our fellow travellers, and for the environment. – Swami Vibhooti Saraswati

The path of spiritual transformation cannot be purely intellectual.  Reasoning is important to a point, but to open to our true self-nature requires going beyond.  We have to be willing and able to go out our minds.  We have to accept that there is a higher power operating in and through this universe and us.  We might call it Higher Mind or Universal Intelligence.  Reason cannot tell us where we come from or why we are here.  Despite all of our scientific knowledge life is still a huge mystery.  It is a wonderful gift and blessing which we tend to take for granted.

The Yoga path is about accepting, appreciating and utilizing this gift to its maximum potential.  There is more to life than indulging our senses, worrying about finances, struggling to get ahead or even raising families.  There is a possibility inherent within us of unfolding our spiritual potential, rising above this world like lotus flowers above a muddy pond.  As Wayne Dyer says, “We are not our bodies, our possessions or our careers.  Who we are is Divine Love and that is infinite.”  The details of our lives are important.  They form a basis from which we can grow but we can’t regard them as ends in themselves.  They are temporary manifestations of an infinite and eternal creative process. 

Samadhi is the essence of Yoga.  It is a state of higher awareness in which all aspects of our beings are both completely integrated and transcended.  In Samadhi our ordinary consciousness is transformed into Unity consciousness, inner silent knowing beyond thought.  According to the Yoga Sutras it has its own developmental stages which are cultivated through consistent practice, abhyasa, and nonattachment, vairagya.  Through this process we go from identification with the mind and body to bliss and pure I-am-ness.  Eventually even the awareness of “I am” is transcended. 

In order to enter into these higher states Patanjali tells us that we need to develop a firm intention through faith, determination, commitment and intelligence.  “To one with keen intent it (Samadhi) comes quickly.  The time necessary to develop success depends on whether practice is mild, medium or intense.”  The less we allow ourselves to be distracted with extraneous concerns and the more willing we are to engage in practice the sooner we can enter into Oneness.  This can be daunting for those of us caught up in our worldly responsibilities, with our habituated to attending to other concerns.  Fortunately there is something else we can rely on to help out.  As Patanjali states, “Success can also be attained through surrender to the Supreme Consciousness, “Ishwara-pranidhana.” 

     Actually firm intent and surrender are not exclusive but mutual aspects of practice.  Without commitment there can be no progress and without surrender there is a danger of intellectualizing the whole process.  Our egos can step in and hijack our spiritual practice so that it simply becomes an exercise in “spiritual materialism.”  Surrender means recognizing that there is a greater power inside of us which flows through everything.  It is God’s presence in everything and everywhere.  We ourselves are contained within this infinite loving awareness.  It is always here nurturing us, guiding us and protecting us if we are willing to pay attention.  According to the Yoga tradition this presence is designated by and attuned to through the mantra “Om.”  (You can learn more about this mantra is a earlier post http://mindful-yoga.blogspot.com/2011/06/attuning-to-infinite.html)

The Self Behind the Curtain of the Mind: An Exploration of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (Pt. 1)

(Opening note:  We are currently exploring the Yoga Sutras in our Saturday afternoon meditation group.  For the next several weeks I will be posting on the Sutras as we go through them.

Also I would like to state that I noticed that my reference to “soul” in my last post brought forth an anti-Obama advertisement.  I just want to state that I support President Obama and do not support any advertisements attacking him.)

In the course of evolution the mind has manifested in the form of human life, but by no means is this mind perfect and infallible. Though it is a gift of nature, the mind also has its limitations. It has to depend on the sensory channels for information and stimulation. Therefore, the Raja Yoga Sutras contend that this imperfect mind can be made more perfect and efficient through the practice of sadhana.

-    Swami Satyananda Saraswati

In the early 1980s I had the experience of hearing Swami Satyananda expound on the Yoga Sutras in several lectures over the course of his tour of the U.S.  This was my fortunate introduction to this somewhat ancient text and tradition.  Needless to say, I was very intrigued and this fascination has continued to this day.  The Sutras outline both a philosophical and experiential way of connecting with our innermost being.  It is not an intellectual/informational text in the sense that reading it superficially gains one anything of value.  Instead one must combine study and “laboratory work” to truly understand its meaning.  The laboratory in this case is our own body-minds.  It is the laboratory of the soul.  The methodology is meditation.

“Meditation” is actually not a very accurate term for what in the yoga tradition is referred to as “dhyana.”  The English word implies a process of deep thinking, dhyana implies going beyond thought.  It means being open to immediate experience unmediated by thought.  Thus the second sutra of the Yoga Sutras defines Yoga as “Chitta vritti nirodha,” or “the complete cessation of mental activity.”  Our problem in this regard is that we cannot even conceive of ourselves beyond our cognitive formulations.  Because we have been induced into a bio-memetic trance we have forgotten who we truly are.  Yoga teaches that we are not our body-mind vehicles but consciousness itself.  We are what Patanjali refers to as the “drashta’” or “seer.”  Beneath and beyond the appearances of sensation and mentation, we are beings of pure awareness.

The chitta vrittis, or patterns of mind, are five-fold: valid cognition, mistaken cognition, imagination, deep sleep and memory.  Everything within our experience is comprised of these five-fold mental patterns.  Yoga points to and guides us into the experience of what is real beyond the five-fold modifications.  Even what we accurately perceive as real is only relative.  It is true for this moment.  On the other hand we are subject to false beliefs and false information.  We internalize beliefs at times which have no evidential support.  Imagination, dreams and fantasy are also part of our mind’s activities.  We should not overlook the importance of imagination, however.  It is the faculty within us which creates the world of our experience.  As Albert Einsten said, “Imagination is a preview of life’s coming attractions.” 

In deep sleep consciousness is present without any external or internal object.  It is a state of emptiness.  The fifth pattern of mind is memory, in which we are aware of the thought remnants of past experiences.  These five-fold modifications comprise the mental filters through which we experience.  In order to have the unmediated experience of pure being we must get beyond them.  According to Patanjali, this is done by bringing these patterns into a state of stillness.  This state is known as Samadhi.  In this state of consciousness we are completely at peace, attuned to higher awareness, fully awake and free from all vestiges of suffering.

Our suffering is based on a paradoxical problem.  On one hand, all we need to be completely happy is to relax and be who we are.  On the other hand, we have been so thoroughly programmed and conditioned that we have completely forgotten who we really are.  We are invested in an elaborate fabrication.  If we could awaken suddenly from this dream we would discover that we are already liberated.  Unfortunately most of us need to work on the process of awakening.  This work is referred to as “sadhana.”  According to Patanjali there are two primary aspects of sadhana that will help us to awaken: abhyasa – consistent practice, and vairagya – nonattachment. 

 Abhyasa is not so hard to understand.  However, it is difficult to put into practice.  It is not enough to meditate a little now and then.  We must be consistent, persistent, insistent.  We must fall in love with our spiritual practice.  We must be mindful not just in meditation but in all activities.  We must fight against our tendency to fall into non-consciousness. 

    Vairagya, nonattachment, is also fairly easy to understand.  Basically it means to be free from desire.  Desire and aversion are the two primary conditioning factors within our minds.  Desire tells us that in order to be happy we need something outside of ourselves.  It is the constant impulse of desire which keeps us from realizing that we are already complete, whole and perfect.  Nonattachment is not the same as renunciation.  It is an inner transformation rather than an outer behavior.  It becomes stronger with practice.  The more that we are able to rest in the bliss of our own being the less desire we feel for the objects of the world.  It doesn’t mean we completely withdraw from the world, instead we can approach others with true love and compassion (no personal agenda.)  

Operating from a Soul Perspective

A human life is a series of experiences. When we have little awareness of our predicament, experiences feed our attachments and condition our desire for more experiences. Our perspective changes when we begin to sense, even momentarily, the unity of all things and our identity with the Self.

-    Ram Dass (Be Love Now)

The word and concept “soul” has so many meanings and variations that things can go the wrong way quickly when we mention it.  Do we “have” a soul?  When we ask this way then “soul” might seem to be some kind o abstract metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.  Certainly this was the way I tried to understand it as a kid growing up in the Catholic Church.  What is this “soul” that I am presumed to “have” and can lose?  I was worried more about losing my toys.  Such was my Catholic “education.”  Still the patter of the priests made me uneasy.  It wasn’t until my teens when I began to deviate into the “Hindu” scriptures that I got a clue as to what my “soul” might really be.

And actually the Church had it kind of right but was teaching it very badly.  “Soul” is not something that we have but the deepest essence of who we are.  Many, many years later this was pointed out by Chagdud Rinpoche on a retreat.  Someone asked about “soul” and he replied that the Buddhist perspective does have a concept of soul but that it is not something that can ever be lost or gained.  On our most immediate level we are soul-beings.  We are, in Yogic language, purushas – the Divine Indwellers.  Pure awareness is our home and our essence.  Everything else is just phenomenal appearance. 

Don’t get upset.  Don’t think that you have to remove yourself from everything and everybody.  Instead we can appreciate the unfolding reality as it is – with love and understanding.  We are souls who are beyond the conditions of time and space.  At the same time we seem to love to play in this theatre.  And why not?  Compassion is the central resonating, identifying and stabilizing aspect of our soul-beings.  “Love is all and love is Everything,” thus spake the Beatles.