Ishvara-Pranidhana : Surrender to God/Light/Energy of the Universe.

Practice:  A willful and active surrender to God – the reality (and the exquisite beauty) of your life exactly as it IS in each breath, embracing both the sunshine and the rain with equilibrium. 

Ishvara-Pranidhana, the fifth and final Niyama (spiritual observation) relates to our relationship to the divine energy of the universe, God. This relationship is one of active presence and total surrender.  These seemingly opposing forces work in unity to create an equilibrium that brings peace and balance to our lives.

One way to practice Isvara Pranidhana is to willingly and joyfully offer the fruit of self, work, and devotion to the Divinity at the core of all existence. Keep self-actualization as your goal in your life, adjusting all thoughts, intentions and actions to serve as a movement of the soul, while surrendering to life situations with an open heart. 

Another practice of Isvara Pranidhana is to completely surrender to the reality of your life exactly as it “IS” with an active presence.  Leave no small detail out.  Embrace the entirety of your life with gratefulness as you surrender willingly to every movement of life that brought you to this moment.

 Fall in love with your life. 

Just as the benevolent Sun finds its way to the darkest corners of the Earth without hesitation or judgment, embrace the light and the dark of self and others. Notice the shifting shapes and shadows on the wall of your existence, without judgment or categorization of good or bad. Instead with an open-heart of genuine goodness and acceptance embrace all that “IS” with kindness, compassion and the unwavering strength of unconditional love.   In other words, choose to see the good in all people, thing, conditions and circumstances, even those things that are challenging to accept as they are associated with pain and/or loss.  

As we ponder what it means to surrender to God, one way to think of it is to surrender to your spiritual truth.  As spirituality is ever evolving, along with our individual consciousness (within the mass consciousness), any rote way of defining spirituality is a stagnant definition.  Our individual expression of spirituality may be to read poetry, listen to music, paint, dance, meditate, pray, walk your dog, practice yoga or simply sit at the edge of the ocean and contemplate the meaning of existence. 

Our individual avenue to truth is not important, what is important is our continual, purposeful dedication to the practice of that spiritual expression.  

This 5th Niyama (observance) Isvara Pranidhana can be taken as the simple advice to simply “let go and to stop clinging to the ego” (source of frustration, dissatisfaction, and tension) and to trust in the higher knowing and innate goodness of the Self at the centre and core of All.

Patanjali defines “Isvara” as “Lord,” and the word “Pranidhana” conveys the sense of “throwing down” or “giving up.” Thus, Isvara Pranidhana can be literally translated as “giving up or surrendering the fruits of all our actions to God.”

In the practice of Isvara Pranidhana all actions are surrendered.

The essence of Isvara Pranidhana is to act with as much kindness, compassion and love, and then to relinquish and surrender all attachment to the outcome of our actions.   With this practice we trust that the highest good will always manifest, regardless of our ability to comprehend appearances.  Only by releasing our fears and our hopes for the future can we really be in union with the present moment.

Paradoxically, the surrender pointed to by Isvara Pranidhana requires tremendous courage and strength.

To surrender the fruits of our actions to God requires that we give up our illusion that we know best, and instead accept and trust that the way life unfolds may be part of a pattern too complex and beautiful to understand. Isvara Pranidhana requires a conscious choice of love and openness regardless of the gravity or ease of apparent circumstances.

This surrender, however, is anything but a passive inactivity. Isvara Pranidhana requires that we completely and whole-heartedly surrender to what “IS” while simultaneously acting with the strength and abundance of goodness and love.  

The practice of Isvara Pranidhana is simple. Let all movements of body, mind and spirit be rooted in the unconditional love of an open heart full of kindness and compassion while actively surrendering to reality of life, God, Existence, Love. 

As we surrender to what “IS”, while earnestly moving towards the highest expression of our spiritual self in each moment with no attachment to any attainment, a great freedom and peace arises within and is a healing light to all.

Isvara Pranidhana inherently requires a profound trust in the goodness of the universe and of all existence within and beyond our finite understanding and existence.  In other words, “one must be strong enough to be vulnerable and vulnerable enough to be strong.”

“Whatever the question, Love is the answer…” ~ Chrystal Rae