Move Out and Let God Move In

The Masters tell us that, of the five passions, ego is the last to go. Letting go of the ego means surrendering to the Lord, submitting completely to his will and accepting whatever he sends us with gratitude and with complete trust in him. It means not having even the smallest desire to have anything different. This is actually something immense that is required of us, and there is only one way to achieve it. Maharaj Charan Singh tells us:

You can’t surrender without going in. You can’t surrender your ego without meditation. These are all intellectual surrenderings: “I have given my ego to you; I have surrendered my mind to you; I live in the Will of the Father; I don’t do anything without Master’s permission”– and the next moment you will dance to the tune of the mind. This is no surrender. It may be good to think like that, but real surrender comes only by meditation.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live}

As satsangis we believe what our Master tells us and we trust him implicitly. It is our love for him and our trust in him that inspires us to obey him, to do what he asks and to completely surrender to his will. In the popular book called Mister God, This Is Anna, we find this description of trust:

The price of not being frightened is trust. And what a word that is! Define it how you like, and I’ll bet you’ll miss the main point! It’s more than confidence, more than security; it doesn’t belong to ignorance or, for that matter, to knowledge either. It is simply the ability to move out of the ‘I-am-the-centre-of-all-things’ and to let something or someone take over. And as for Anna, she had simply moved out and let Mister God move in.

Moving out of the “I-am-the-centre-of-all-things” means letting go of the “I am, I have and I know” part of our thinking. When we think of ourselves, it is from our human perspective – our ego likes to think that our individual qualities make us unique or important. Yet, everything in ourselves that we are so proud of is merely part of the illusion in which we are living. It does not make us superior to anyone at all. It is the fate karma that we have been allocated in this life, as a result of our actions and desires in previous lives. Even if we are world-famous, even if we are rich in material wealth, even if we have some enormous talent, our soul is no better or no worse than that of the next person. All souls are the same beautiful drops of Shabd, but with different mind-coverings, accumulated through the ages. Let us then put aside the ‘I’ and concentrate on the soul. This sounds so simple, but it is probably the hardest thing we will ever attempt to do.

We must not become disheartened in our efforts to fully surrender. With our Master’s help we will grow stronger, but it is up to us to make the effort. Although we as yet have no real concept of what true surrender means, we sincerely want to get there and experience the full meaning of it for ourselves.

Our surrender takes the form of obedience to our Master. We should confront the mind and force it as much as we possibly can to obey the Master’s instructions and requests. The road to surrender starts with trusting and obeying the Master, by being the best disciples we can manage to be, by attending to our simran and our bhajan, repeating the names and listening to the Shabd, the sound current emanating from God.

Let us picture the path of surrender as slowly plodding up the slope that leads to the eye centre, where the Radiant Form of our Master awaits us. At times we may stumble or even slide back, but our determined effort will undoubtedly result in progress. Each time after getting up, dusting ourselves off, perhaps even sniffing a little, wiping away a tear or two and applying all our determination, we will have reached a little further along this slope. We will be encouraged by the small but significant victories we achieve along the way. Once we reach the eye centre, the most difficult part of the journey will be over, and in our Master’s company we will progress further. Success has been promised to us, so let us persevere on our journey.

We have surely read enough books and heard enough satsangs to realize that meditation is the only method of making progress. Our simran and bhajan are the walking sticks, the crutches we use to climb the slope. Simran and bhajan, our meditation, is the answer to everything. That is what will get us there and that is what the path of the Masters is all about.

As long as the mind is dominant there’s no surrender, there’s no living in the Will of the Father, there’s no elimination of the ego. You can achieve real surrender only when all coverings are removed from the soul. Then the soul shines, it becomes perfect, and then it is capable of merging into the Perfect Being. That is real surrender, that is real love, that is real devotion.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live}