“The moment of truth is the willingness to open so deeply that all hope and all searching for escape are completely abandoned.”
People engaged in the spiritual search often proclaim that they want to open, they want to surrender, they want to let go, and yet true inner surrender remains rare. Why is this? Because there is something else going on. The truth is, if you really want to open, you will recognize that the core of your being is already inherently open. Openness is your true nature. And in this recognition, letting go is effortless.
I have found in speaking with people from every walk of life, that the biggest obstacle to opening is fear. As you start to open, you might also notice that excuses immediately arise—why you can’t open just yet, not right now, or some other strategy of blaming your circumstances or someone else for keeping you closed.
It is the fear of death that drives all human conditioning and gives rise to the mind’s attempt to control all situations. The fear of the unknown. The fear of not being who you “think” you should be. Even if you think you are a horrible person, at least there is some security in the hope that this could one day change and there will be release. But your hope is invested in the thought of you changing. This “you” that you think you are is an illusion. It is not real. It only arises in your mind to cement the survival imperative of your body, your DNA.
The truth is that all our mental strategies to avoid the fear of death are what keep us from the experience of eternal life. All spiritual teachings that point to the eternal also point to meeting the fear of death.
You might hear in certain spiritual circles that liberation is the result of the death of the ego. Yet who is it that wants to kill the ego? It is only the ego that wants to kill the ego. The ego splits and says, “Okay, I get it, what I want is for my ego to be killed so that I will survive forever.”
The moment of truth is in the willingness to open so deeply that all hope and all searching for escape are completely abandoned. This includes the search for knowledge and understanding. It is the willingness to simply open to that which has been avoided. In this moment you stop running from death. Then there is no longer a discussion about surrender—when, how, and why you can’t—or whether it's a question of personal responsibility, free will, predestination, or God’s grace.
In an instant the discussion is over. All discussion is only a continuation of the belief that you as an entity must at all costs avoid the experience of non-existence. And what a cost it is! It is the possibility of a conscious life, free from the fear of death, that is being paid.
As a boy of sixteen, my teacher’s teacher, Ramana Maharshi, found himself suddenly overtaken by a fear of death. The shock of the fear of death drove his mind inward and he inquired within: “What is death? Who is it that dies?” He lay on the floor and dramatized his death. He stretched his arms and legs out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in, imitating a corpse so as to give greater reality to the inquiry. He held his breath and kept his lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, no word could be uttered. He questioned inwardly, “With the death of this body, am I dead?”
As he inquired within, he experienced the inner “I,” or consciousness, quite apart from his inert form, and it flashed through him vividly as living truth that the body dies, but pure consciousness itself is not touched by the death of any form.
The radical invitation of this lineage is to experience death before the body dies. To let go completely, right now, in this moment, no excuses, no postponement. You can open your mind and your heart to receive the nectar of what is and has always been here, needing nothing for its existence—eternal life—the truth of who you are.
