Surrender to What Is

There once was a son and his father living in a small village in Japan. They had a horse that helped them plow the field and bring food to the table. One day, the horse was gone. A villager came and asked, “How will you live without the horse?” The father replied without emotion, “What-it-is is what it is.” A few days later, the horse came back along with two more wild horses. The villager came and said, “You are so lucky!

You have three horses now and you will have a prosperous life ahead of you.” The father replied indifferently, “What-it-is is what it is.” The very next day, the son got onto a wild horse but, unable to contain her, he fell and broke his arm. The villager came and said “Poor you! Your family suffers SO much. What are you going to do with the wild horses and your life?” The father replied with a smile, “What-it-is is what it is.”

Teaching

To some, surrender may have a negative connotation, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. Surrender, however, is entirely the opposite. It does not mean to passively do nothing about arising life situations nor does it mean to cease making plans or to initiate plans of action.

Surrender is the simple yet profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. Inner resistance is to say “no” to what is, through judgment and conditioned mind. The resistance is the mind. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with being.

It is extraordinarily difficult and arduous to be aware of what is because our every thought is conditioned and is the projection of the self. It becomes a distraction. We do not under- stand what is. We look at what is through the spectacles of prejudice, condemnation, or identification. Surely ‘what is’ is a fact, the truth, and anything else is an escape and not the truth. To understand what is, the conflict of duality must cease, because the negative response of becoming something other than ‘what is’ is the denial of the understanding of what is. The understanding of what is, being aware of what is, reveals extraordinary depth in which is the reality, happiness, and joy.

Patanjali is persistent in this theme of surrender. We see that this is the direct path to the highest state of Yoga. What does this mean, exactly, to surrender? What do we do, and what state is this? Simply stated, it means for the ego to get out of the way of the silent witness—the conscious in-dweller. When we look out on the world it is the Self that is seeing and knowing. The ego, with its neediness and fear, has subsided. This is the state of samadhi; the culmination of the eight limbs of Yoga.

Practice

• Practice “Surrendering to ‘what is’” in your daily life when life situations arise.
• Practice the concepts “now, being, what is” without any mind identification, judgment, or prejudice.
• Experience just being in everyday life.
• Practice “Letting Go” of all expectations from within and from without.

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What is Spiritual Healing?

Spiritual healing is not about dogmatic rituals that we have to perform or the specific ways that we have to live. It is about the connection to our inner teacher, a teacher who speaks the truth to us when our mind is quiet, and there is no interference of learned knowledge or philosophy. It is about our connection to the essences of our universe, water, air, fire, earth, and ether. These elements are who we are, where we came from not long ago, and where we will return in the very near future.

Spiritual healing is about our connection to our spiritual beings, beyond our physical temporary existence in this universe. It is about the connection to the cycle of the universe and the cycle of our human race. Those cycles are the same; the difference in time and space are only created in the human mind.