A Deeper Surrender: Notes on a Spiritual Life

The spiritual process is a day-by-day, step-by-step unfolding of consciousness, a process of breaking down stale and conditioned parts of ourselves to allow rebirth to take place We're our own worst enemies stuck in stagnant pools of self-righteousness. We're afraid to let go; we're afraid to step into the unknown; we're afraid to be touched by creative energy.

We live a death-in-life existence that clings to time-worn dogma, to anything familiar, to anything we think represents security on Earth. It's death-in-life waiting impatiently for the end to come, death furtively slipping into the minds and hearts of human beings. It's fear lurking in the human unconscious, fear that paralyzes the minds the hearts of people, that keeps them from tapping a hundred percent of their creative potential. It's an irrational fear linked to death and the unknown, a vise griping us without mercy, making us angry, sick, unhappy, and incapable of ever escaping psychological and emotional prisons.

Once we're free of ourselves, we really are free, but one has to pay a price for freedom of this kind. One has to free himself of preconception, of rightness, of opinion, of the mind trying to understand life's "Magical Mystery Tour." The spiritual process helps us attain freedom. It breaks down well-insulated realities into component parts. It allows us to rebuild our inner lives, to experience death and rebirth, and to see nature's innate ability to surrender. It's a slow process of evolution, a day-by-day unfolding of consciousness, a refinement of density, and a strong desire to get free. Nothing on Earth is in conflict with anything else, and nothing is an end in itself. All things are part of the evolutionary process getting us closer to God. Only the mind sees conflict; only the mind judges right from wrong.

Without training, spiritual evolution is impossible. One must have discipline, one-pointedness, and, above all, a strong chakra system that can be a vehicle for energy of a higher nature. Meditation teaches us to surrender opposites, to rejoice in the dialectic, to free ourselves of illusion, to no longer accept mirror images of ourselves as reality, and to recognize nothing is bad or good, that no one is better than anyone else. We learn to enjoy the comedy of errors played out before our eyes by bumbling and tumbling people always short of breath and time, always busy going nowhere fast, always frightened and childlike, people running headlong into a tenebrous [dark, gloomy] reflection of self.

A frightening thought occurs to me: We are not the center of all existence, but our egos hold on like crippled limpets to images of self. They interfere with God-consciousness and with living a spiritual life. They keep us from tapping sources of creative energy nonexistent in ordinary life. They keep us from tapping energy that awakens every muscle, cell, bone, and organ in our bodies. Our egos interfere with the whole process of spiritual evolution and attach our consciousness to worldly things. They choose power over gratitude, death over life, material over spiritual, and they wander like buffoons over desolate landscapes filled with reflections from our own minds.

The spiritual process cuts across racial, religious, sexual and nationalistic borders. It doesn't matter if one's male or female; vegetarian or carnivore; black or while or yellow; Democrat or Republican, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. It doesn't matter what country we inhabit, what city or town or village. All that matters is inner work, and inner work makes us all equal. The rest creates conflict. It separates people from each other, institutionalizes them, gives them a false sense of security and an uneasy peace. It gives them reasons to be angry, to fight, and to lose all sense of their humanity. The heart says, "I am not better than anyone else," but the mind says, "My religion, race, gender, country or economics makes me superior to other people." The mind turns a human being into a caricature of himself.

Is There an End to All This--A Final Goal?

Yes! Enlightenment. Oneness with God. Rudi compared the spiritual process to an elevator in a department store. He said, "You can get off on any floor and shop." The elevator goes endlessly into the cosmos, but people get distracted shopping for haberdashery, shoes, pots and pans, cosmetics, and thousands of other things more important, in their own minds, than embracing God. Spiritual enlightenment dims in the neon glow of life. It's put on the back burner. We forget God while shopping for bargains in a material world. Why bother with spiritual lives if the world offers a diversity of drama to fill inner voids?

"The whole idea's to have things and be free of them at the same time," Rudi said to me in his antique shop. You can't surrender what you haven't experienced. That includes money, relationships, success, power, and whatever else the world offers."

We don't have to live in caves, I thought while sitting with him. We don't have to eat roots, shrubs and grubs. We do have to embrace life in all its dimensions. At the same time, we have to detach ourselves from whatever life brings our way.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm hacking my way through a jungle with a machete," students tell me. Welcome to the club.

"I never know if I'm doing enough, or if I'm doing it right," they say. That's why we need spiritual teachers. How else do we find out if we're still on the path? If we don't ask, our questions go unanswered. I don't think anyone works hard enough. There's such a lack of clarity on Earth that most people are hacking their way through the bush. The best we can do is work as hard as we can on ourselves and have patience.

There's a famous Japanese Zen saying: "Climb Mt. Fuji, o snail, but slowly, slowly . . . ." It's a very wise metaphor for spiritual work. We mustn't forget it takes time to get to the top of Mt. Fuji. We mustn't rush but few of us do it a step at a time. Eventually, the snail gets to the top of the mountain, but slowly, step by step, it takes the agonizing journey to the pinnacle of the world. It plods along with timeworn patience; it plods and plods until it gets there.

We're all cutting through material and psychological brush; we're all intent on overcoming our limitations. One day, after hacking for what may seem a lifetime, we begin to see a little light.

The real test of spiritual work is to survive ourselves. It has been said, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Millions of people start out on the path, yet, in every generation, only a handful of persistent souls gets to its end, but I think anyone can get there. We all have chakra systems, minds, breath, energy and will. We have to work at meditation, have endurance, patience, the desire to succeed, and, above everything else, we have to stop taking ourselves for granted. The work should be done joyously and with love. It's better to hack your way through material and spiritual underbrush than to sit and wait for Armageddon to be unleashed by a mad god. At least you're going somewhere, at least you're making a conscious effort to grow spiritually. The alternative is to let time pass, to get old and die.

Stuart Perrin has trod the spiritual path since he was 16. When he was 25 he met his teacher, Albert Rudolph. Better known as Rudi or Swami Rudrananda, this iconoclastic spiritual teacher gave Eastern spirituality a new American slant, and Stuart Perrin has been carrying that slant forward ever since Rudi's death in 1973. The author of four previous books, Perrin ran a meditation center in Texas for eighteen years before moving to Woodstock, New York, where he continues to teach spiritual work in the tradition of Rudi.

Mr. Perrin will be talking and signing books at Transitions Bookplace (1000 W. Diversey, Chicago) on July 28 at 7pm.