Surrender must come from the Heart

From our e-book “We are Here to Celebrate”

17112012269When I volunteered to organised the Kriya Yoga initiation seminars in Malaysia, I was worried. I was particularly concerned about incurring losses on the seminars resulting in financial pressure on the teacher.

The cost of the air ticket for the master, Rudra Shivananda, to fly from USA to Singapore and Malaysia is substantial. When I went around looking for an appropriate venue, I was further discouraged by the costs quoted. These costs will increase the proposed contribution for the seminar and give the impression that the seminar is a commercial undertaking rather than a sincere effort to spread the teachings.

At that point, a thought came to me to surrender to Babaji. Intuitively, I had (and still have) the assurance that Babaji will take care of everything and instantly, my worries went away. The ideas just came naturally and everything fell into place easily. The number of participants in the past seminars was just right for the size of the hall. I did not have to turn anybody away. You see, when we carry out our responsibilities with the attitude of surrender, the Divine can help us more easily because the interference from our ego (our selfish thoughts) are removed. The Divine will always help us, if we allow it.

When I pray to the Divine, I do so with thoughts of surrender. I believed that my attitude of surrender was genuine until certain events occurred that made me realise that it was superficial. The first event was in November 2007 when I attended the Level 2 initiation seminar conducted by Rudra Shivananda. During the seminar, he shared with us the objectives of various mantras which we could choose for him to transmit to us. One of the mantra was the mantra of total surrender to Babaji. He mentioned that by chanting the mantra, Babaji will take over control of our day to day lives. Forgive me if I misinterpreted him but basically, that was the impression I had. I was stunned while. I am happy with the way things are. I do not want to change it. Of course, that was my ego talking. After the seminar, I thought long and hard about the event and contemplated the meaning of surrender. At that point, I truly decided to submit fully to the Divine’s will, whatever it may be. However, my ego was still expecting good things from the Divine, that is, those that the ego accepts as good.

One day, on discussing a certain topic with Rudra, he asked me, “What do you expect from a Guru?”. The question triggered a very important question; What do you expect from Babaji (or from the Divine)? All this while, I was expecting worldly things such as the perfect job, protection from harm and so on. I realised that these are merely things which points to what I truly want; inner-peace, bliss and happiness. I want that from Babaji. But this is a paradox because the ‘I’ is the obstacle to the goal sought after. I want to stop identifying with the ‘I”.

All of us have the same goal. We just need to realise what is false to see the truth. To do that, we need to understand ourselves and to understand ourselves; we need to have awareness in our daily lives. The path to self-realisation need not be made more complicated that this.