Lately I've been exploring advaita vedanta teachings, specifically those of gangaji. In moments of deep surrender I've found a wonderful connection to and understanding of the Self, that I never felt when I was mainly practicing vipassana. This new trajectory on my path has in a lot of ways thrown me for a loop. Life used to be through the lens of no-self, and now the felt observation of Self feels even more true. Like it was always just hiding under the surface, and finally I'm now aware of it.
However, one aspect of advaita vedanta teachings that I really struggle with is their emphasis on surrender. Having practiced vipassana, mainly noting, for eight years or so, I've been accustomed to efforting. Almost everything I do on the cushion and in life seems to include some version of subtle or gross effort. Now I'm hearing these powerful teaching that say 'just stop'. It seems in that tradition they leave no space for effort in any way. I'm grateful for the exposure to these teachings around surrender, but at the moment it feels lacking without the counter-balance of effort.
In my limited experience, surrender feels like the final and ultimate step, but to ask everyone to start on that last step seems to ignore the fact that sometimes people just aren't there. I know I'm not always. I hold the potential at all moments to surrender to what is beneath and encompassed by sensations, but most of the time it doesn't feel accessible.
It feels like there are some really helpful effort-ful steps I can take when I'm not ready for instantaneous surrender. These include:
-reading spiritual texts or poetry
-sitting down and closing my eyes
-going for a bike ride
-taking a deep breathe
-setting the intention to relax
-noting
-looking for the self, and exploring the subsequent failure to find it
-commanding myself to surrender and being amused at how that doesn't work
-noting sensations, but instead of observing them, quickly pushing them aside as irrelevant
At the moment I'm finding the balance of effort and surrender to be really interesting, so I'm curious how other people have worked with these qualities.
It also seems that maybe gangaji, more than other non-dual teachers, takes this hardline opposition to effort. But as my interest in this is only about a month old I haven't explored many other teachers.
