Question: How can we transform surrender from a theoretical notion into a practical one?

Sri Chinmoy: We have to know one thing. Theory does not give us abiding satisfaction, whereas through practice we do get abiding satisfaction. If surrender is forced, then always it will be in the world of theory. But if it is spontaneous and unconditional, if it is coming cheerfully from the depths of our heart, then automatically it becomes practical. Just because someone else has surrendered to God, if you feel that you are also supposed to surrender to God, then you are mistaken. You have to wait for your hour. Today the hour has struck in his life; tomorrow your hour will strike. You have to wait cheerfully, devotedly and unconditionally.

How do we make our surrender practical? There is a simple and, at the same time, effective way. Before we pray and meditate, if we offer our soulful gratitude to the Almighty Father, the Inner Pilot, then our surrender becomes practical. Why does it become practical? It becomes practical because inside our gratitude-light we see the Supreme's infinite Compassion. We are grateful to Him because out of millions of people He has chosen us to pray to Him, to meditate on Him, to invoke His Light, to invoke His Presence. When we develop gratitude, we expand our reality. And when we expand our reality, love blossoms petal by petal inside us and we become inseparably one with God's Will. When we are inseparably one with God's Will, our surrender becomes cheerful.

Forced surrender the slave will make to the master. But in spiritual surrender we have to feel that we are surrendering to our own highest Reality. It is not to somebody else, a third person, but to our own highest Reality. Right now we feel that our self is a tiny drop. Why? Because we have separated our existence from the mighty ocean. As long as we maintain our sense of separativity, we will not dare to enter into the ocean. If we take the theoretical approach and feel that the ocean in front of us will always remain vast, then we will always remain the drop. But when we are very practical, we just dive and throw our existence into the ocean and become one with it. Then, on the strength of our feeling of oneness, we enter into the ocean and lose our little, limited individuality and personality and become the infinite ocean itself.