Ishvara pranidhana: Surrender to God/Light/Energy of the Universe

Practice: faith, dedication, sincerity, and patience to transcend the ego, which is so resistant to surrender.

Ishvara pranidhana, the fifth and final Niyama, is about your relationship to the divine energy of the universe. 

Offer the fruit of yourself, your work, and your devotion to Divinity.  Keep self-actualization as your goal in your life, adjusting all your actions to serve this goal in some way.  Spirituality embraces the light and the dark, so don’t judge the elements of your spirit. Spirituality is in many things – it is in our hearts. Your expression may be to read poetry, listen to music, to dance, to walk your dog. Find your expression of your surrender to Spirit and celebration of this energy.

The observance can be taken as advice to let go, to stop clinging to the ego (source of frustration, dissatisfaction, and tension) and to trust in the Self that is at the centre of wholeness of being.  The ego thinks it is in charge and has an inflated concept of its own importance.    

The ego is melted by the fire of devotion (Bhakti Yoga), just as in Jnana Yoga it is whittled away by the well-honed intellect and in Raja Yoga dissolved by stilling the mind’s agitation and modifications. In Christian language Isvara Pranidhana is ‘Not my will but Thy Will be done’, “Love God and do what you like ”, and losing your soul to find it.  In Taoist language it is floating with the flow of life and Nature, the Tao.

Ishvara pranidhana/best actions are surrendered

The essence of Isvara Pranidhana is acting as best we can, and then relinquishing and surrendering all attachment to the outcome of our actions. Only by releasing our fears and hopes for the future can we really be in union with the present moment.

Isvhara pranidhana/paradoxically, this surrender requires tremendous strength.

To surrender the fruits of our actions to God requires that we give up our egotistical illusion that we know best, and instead accept that the way life unfolds may be part of a pattern too complex to understand.

This surrender, however, is anything but passive inactivity. Isvara pranidhana requires not just that we surrender, but also that we act.

Love (absolute presence) supports and sustains all that IS…  May you be blessed by these words and may this blessing extend out to all you pass and meet on the sacred journey of your life…