Surrender to oneself is the only surrender
Alas, once wealth is achieved the ego-mind often turns its sights to Heaven.... 'I've achieved everything I set out to achieve here on earth - perhaps it's now time to conquer the afterlife.'
Mmmm - if it were only that simple. Surrender equals detachment. Detachment equals surrender.
The chauffeur was ordered to remain with the car for the hour.
W.B. Charles, one hears in various spiritual books and teachings the term "to surrender". Surrender to God - surrender to the guru - surrender the ego etc. All this talk of surrender is confusing and a little irritating. Does it mean we should give up ownership - give up notions - even give up our individuality? Are we to become spiritual zombies in a meaningless spiritual wilderness?
C.G. Why so much hostility? If the concept of surrender brings up so much anger why not deal first with the anger within you? Forced surrender is not surrender. You cannot create a "doctrine of surrender" in your mind and then attempt to adhere to it. The ego-mind proclaiming "I practice surrendering" is as foolish as the ego-mind proclaiming "I practice meditating", is it not?
W.B. But I am starting to practice meditation! What is foolish about that? I've been advised to meditate because it may help me relax from my stressed filled business and to relieve some of the pent up anger and frustration within me.
C.G. Mmmm. Meditation is a state of being beyond the mind. It is not to be confused with the techniques that are often used to bring one to such state. Breathing exercises, repeating of mantras, listening to classical or new age type music etc are but the techniques. The state of meditation may well be the outcome of such techniques but the mind cannot practice meditation - it can merely practice the techniques. Meditation is the state of total surrender beyond the mind.
W.B. Now I am even more confused and becoming more frustrated. What am I to do?
C.G. If I were your advisor - in your particular case - I would first advise a tantra technique or two. Rather than you attempting to meditate, you first need to expel all this pent up anger and frustration within you. It can be said of the two different types of techniques that Tantra is expression and the meditation techniques suppression. You need cathartic expression.
W.B. I agree - I am a doer rather than procrastinator - I believe in action rather than talk. So what would you have me do?
C.G. With respect Sir, your mind is a "controller - a manipulator" rather than a "let-goer" - you are so much into "control" that your ego-mind demands to even control "surrender" which of course is an impossibility. This sense of the need to control is based upon insecurity. The insecurity is based upon fear. Fear is always of the future and based upon ignorance (the unknown). Know that this control freak within you, will eventually destroy you if you do not come to see the superficiality of it all.
W.B. Do you know that in my business and personal life no one would dare tell me that to my face!
C.G. Yet you came here in the hope I would tell you, did you not? Even coming here was a form of subtle attempted manipulation. However, I will always say what you need to hear- not what you want to hear. When you know that I can see through your mask a measure of respect and trust arises. You are indeed very wealthy and have many powerful friends - yet to me you are the proverbial rich man trying to squeeze himself through the eye of the needle in an attempt to enter the kingdom.
W.B. (After some delay) Charles you are right of course. I am into control - yet I know of no other way. My world will literally collapse if I let go.
C.G. And you will collapse if you don't. A house of cards based on fear will ultimately fall.
W.B. Yes - I am constantly afraid of that. I keep pushing because I fear failure. My late father built the family business and he was a most controlling and dominant personality. If nothing else other than to impress him - I strive to remain at the top.
C.G. How did your father die?
W.B. That's the point. He dropped stone dead of a massive heart attack at the young age of sixty three after a life time of self induced pain and poor health.
C.G. Mmmm. True empowerment can only be experienced by knowing the real self beyond the mind- ego. As long as you consider yourself the mind, the senses, the ego - you will continue to have pain and suffering. From the pain and suffering , anguish and fear arise. Pain is obviously physical and the body giving you a warning signal (or the price of ignoring such signals).
Suffering is the mind (mental) resisting inevitable change - it is the mind desperately holding on to the conglomeration of past conditioning. The mind creates the never ending stream of unfulfilled desires and commits you to a life of bondage suffering and fear.
W.B. Surely you are not saying that if I realized this real self you talk of - I would no longer experience pain and suffering. That's not logical.
C.G. Pain and suffering is ultimately of the mind. It is reduced to memory and quickly becomes a past dream. Once you affirm 'I am not my body - I am not my mind' the sense of detachment comes into being. From this detached state, the body and its memory is observed as yet another cyclic dream. You observe it (the body) as the young child. It grows into a teen - then adult hood. It seeks relationships and has family. Eventually it must grow old and wither away. During that period there was much pain and suffering - yet 'you' the pure observer to this surreal drama remain unaffected.
W.B. If only I could achieve that level of detachment - that would be, as you said, 'true empowerment'.
C.G. It's a question of seeing the real as the real and the false as the false. It begins with the false belief system that you are this body that you see in the mirror each morning. You have never questioned this belief - yet this body is constantly changing before you and is obviously impermanent. When you look at old photos of 'your self' does not the image you see sometimes appear a stranger to you?
W.B. In a way yes - yet I see the 'me' merely getting old.
C.G. The real self - the real you - that observes this photo is permanent and unchangeable. You are beyond time and space. You simply cannot 'get old'.
W.B. But I will die! What happens then?
C.G. Nothing happens. Your dream of this body drops away and the dream of the more subtle etheric body stays. In the new dream you will not be able to immediately communicate to your loved ones you left behind but others will be there to guide you.
W.B. You call that nothing?
C.G. Let me try to explain the 'real self' as it was explained to me by an enlightened being. If the whole infinite physical universe was reduced into one grain of sand, your real self would be far greater than every grain of sand on every beach in the world. Thus I can assure you - these varying sequential dreams of body identity you sojourn through, are but mere illusions.
W.B. That is impossible to believe. It is mind blowing stuff.
C.G. Of course it is. The mind (beliefs and memory) cannot possibly comprehend such enormity - yet it is so.
W.B. I know this is off the subject but I had a headache when I arrived and it is now gone.
C.G. No - it is not off the subject. The statement 'I have a headache' - can't you see that the ego-mind even wants to possess a headache. Your body had a headache not you! If the real you had the head ache you would still have it - if so where did it go?
W.B. Surely it is but terminology - I know I didn't have a headache. My head did.
C.G. Who is this 'my' that has a head that can have a disappearing headache and now claims it knows it didn't have a headache?
W.B. (After perplexed thought) Charles I don't know.
C.G. And that Sir is the beginning of wisdom. The mind cannot know the truth. All you can affirm initially is that 'this is not the truth' or this 'I do not know'. Only by subtracting the false can the truth which is the true self, manifest through the suffocating delusion of the mind.
W.B. I sense we are getting closer to the definition of surrender.
C.G. The ego-mind thought it possessed a headache. The headache disappeared. This mind also thinks it possesses a large business, factories, real estate stocks and bonds. These too will eventually disappear. It is just a play. You cannot own a dream. Simply play the role as the good steward. You have the right of stewardship over the dream - because it is your dream.
W.B. So surrender is not giving up material goods.
C.G. Whether you give them up or not is immaterial. The notion of ownership and possession simply dissolves once the illusion is seen as an illusion. Once detachment from the mind and body is achieved - detachment from everything the ego-mind creates follows automatically. A room can be dark for a decade yet once the light is switched on the darkness is no more. If the mind alone decides to give up - it will only lead to suppression and more suffering. Eventually, either in this dream sojourn or some future dream sojourn, such suppression will come to the surface and again will have to be worked through. Wealth is never the problem - it's the ego-minds attachment to the illusion of wealth - that weighs you down.
W.B. I am beginning to see the light also.
C.G. Mmmm. Surrender is more than merely relinquishing possession - it is a state of being. It is the state of pure detachment from the unreal - from the illusion. If the mind is involved at any stage of the surrender, it is not surrender but yet another play of the possessive mind.
W.B. Thus the notion 'I believe in God and I need to surrender to him' is a mind creation and not real?
C.G. Absolutely - the ego-mind creates a concept of its preferred version of God from its past storehouse of conditioning and then desires to surrender to this newly created concept or belief system.
W.B. Charles you mentioned some Tantric exercises that I may do. What do you recommend?
C.G. You live near the coast don't you?
W.B. Yes I am a short walk from the beach.
C.G. Go to the edge of the surf and yell to the wind and the sea.
W.B. Yell!
C.G. Yes at the top of your voice and with total presence and passion yell Ahhhh! or Aum! Yell from your very soul.
W.B. For how long?
C.G. You will know when to stop. You will break down and cry or you may laugh uncontrollably or you may even fall into meditation or surrender. But do it often. Release all the pent up anger and frustration - it is a very quick way to accomplish this.
W.B. Fall into surrender or meditation. That's interesting. Why the use of the word fall?
C.G. Because a fall must take place. You 'fall' in love. From the mind to the heart or real self there is a gap. A natural fall into the state of grace occurs. Like a trapdoor opening underneath you - you fall into the light. A leap or jump requires a measure of control via the ego-mind making such a process a mind game of illusion.
W.B. O.K. I'll try it diligently - and the other technique you recommend?
C.G. Each morning first thing - go into the bathroom look into the mirror and force yourself to laugh with equal gusto as with the yelling. Do not be surprised that you start coughing violently or vomiting. These are simple techniques but very powerful. The process of your body wanting to cleanse itself of all impurities will begin.
W.B. People will think I am mad - yet you seem to be showing me the path to true freedom. Can I dare to ignore your advise?
C.G. You cannot ignore truth. The mere words that I utter which find fertile ground in your consciousness is the indwelling truth which you already know. You cannot ignore it - you may suppress truth for a while but as I stated, suppression will eventually work its way to the surface - if not in this dream, a future dream. Once the ego-mind hears the notion of enlightenment it links to the very soul and begins the process or journey of discovery that only the state of enlightenment will end.
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