Surrender the Body

Transcript

I’d like to talk to you about surrendering the body. That might sound a little dark but I was thinking about this once again I was reading Play of Consciousness by Baba Muktananda.

And he talks about this meditation where you go through the body starting with toes, feet, ankles, calves and so on. Every part of your body, going to it and saying this part of my body, these toes belong to the guru.

These belong to the guru, or they’re god’s toes. These parts of my body belong to the divine. And then as you continue each part you say the mantra guru om, certainly releasing the concept you have of bodily identification or bodily pride.

Letting go of the idea that the body is you because in fact you are something much greater.

As we look into other traditions, in Islam, means surrender to god or submission to god. I remember my friend Josh, a muslim. He said to me one time one thing we have to keep in mind is how little control we have over this world. So many things can happen, it’s not really up to us to question exactly or complain but we just continue or we accept what happens and we continue. In fact this applies to everything, every aspect of our life.

If something happens to us there is no complaints department. These things good or bad we accept these things. Of course muslims say so often “inshallah” which means if god wills it, so shall it be.

And this applies, I know some people will think I am an atheist I don’t believe in god. This still applies just the same. So many things are outside of our control. So many things are in the hands of the universe whether they be partial forces or intelligently controlled by divine nature, however we look at it many things are outside of our control.

I also think of the stoic tradition which I have mentioned before. These people have these exercises where they will go to bed at night and they will think “everything is burned, everything is gone.”

There is no way I can guarantee my wealth in the morning, my bed, the roof over my head. I may loose everything by the time I wake up.

If we go one step further we say “even my body, even my body doesn’t exactly belong to me”

In another section of Play on Consciousness Baba Muktananda quotes from some holy texts and he is telling these stories about great saints who reach the end of their lives and they say a little prayer to their body.

They say “Thank you wonderful vessel. You have transported me, kept me nourished, enabled me to see so many things in this wonderful world. Thank you for being with me.”

This is an interesting perspective because of course thanking something does apply. Perhaps there’s this interesting connection.

Perhaps the body isn’t you, perhaps its something external to you in some sense. Or another way to look at it is perhaps when we say thank you we are really saying thank you in aspect of ourselves.

In another tradition, there is this beautiful song. I can’t remember the title but the second verse goes like this:

No más vengo, no más vengo
Gran espíritu sabrás a lo que vengo
A entregar mi corazón, mi corazón
Corazón que es lo único que tengo

It goes something like this:

I coming, Im arriving. Great spirit, great mystery, you know exactly why I am arriving. I have come to deliver my heart, my heart. The only thing I have.

And this is the only thing the persona has in the song and he delivers it to the great spirit, giving up all of himself. What will happen to us when we let go of that bodily identification, when we see that perhaps looking through our pasts previously we had identified so much with our memories.

We felt delight when we reflected upon them and we cringed when we noticed we did something embarrassing.

Now these things fade into insignificance. Now we see that these things aren’t so important as we once thought. The passing, the occurrences, all of these things throughout our lives continue without struggle just like a stream doesn’t struggle to flow, just as the Lillies do not struggle to grow.

We allow everything to pass when we surrender our bodies.