Fluid

 

 

According to the yoga sutras, yoga practice is to be applied with abhyasa (devoted effort) and vairagya (surrender/non-attachment), the two wings of practice.  Effort makes sense but how does surrender fit into practice? What is it we are to surrender and how?

 

Nichala Joy Devi translates vairagya as “remembering the Self” where the Self is defined as the deepest innermost part, the soul.  This is the part our ourselves that remains untouched by the outer world, by whatever life has done to us.  It is the part that has been accompanying us on this journey.  It comes through us but it is not of us. It is the part of consciousness that comes through a divine source.  This capacity for self-reflection makes us uniquely human.  In some contemplative traditions this depth of consciousness, presence is named God pouring through us.  It is God coming into being through this flow of consciousness.  Some call it the right brain. When we are in touch with this inner depth, we feel a connection to all others as this source of life flows through all living things and beings. 

 

What we are surrendering is the ego part of consciousness, the part that cannot conceive of anything beyond the material part of life (prakriti), the part that in fact is defined by what has happened to us in life.  We all need a strong and healthy ego to survive.  It is the ego which helps us to establish firm boundaries between ourselves and the rest of the world.  It is the part which gives us the will to stand up for ourselves, to fight against injustice, to work towards difficult physical and mental challenges for reward.  With egoic strength we can get things done in the world.  Strength of ego is cultivated through the nervous system which asana and pranayama practice helps us to build-up.  A strong and flexible nervous system, like a strong electrical system, can bear a heavier load.  When we are faced with unexpected difficulties that gives us a jolt, a strong nervous system helps to ground that jolt so that we can pause and consider before making a live wire knee jerk reaction that could just makes things more difficult.  

But egoic strength will only get us so far in life.  Around mid-life especially we may begin to realize that all the outer goals we have achieved only give us so much happiness and contentment, that even though we might work hard that things don’t always turn out as we had hoped, that self-will fails us if we are not restored from a deeper sources than the ego.  There can arise a longing to live a more meaningful and purposeful life than one focused solely on accumulating more things, money, relationships, successes.  We long to be part of something greater than ourselves. 

By surrendering the ego to the deeper Self we can find a richer source from which to manifest our lives. The ego sees only gain and loss but the deeper Self finds a way to integrate loss and gain into a more unified whole.  We can find a way to navigate the many paradoxes and mysteries of life from that intuitive, right brain part where the edges between sorrow, pain, aliveness, and tenderness are blurred.  Loss and gain appear with less of a sharp edge between them, more like watercolors than an oil.  We find fluidity and possibility where before there were obstacles and fear.