Do u practice self-surrender? Have you feel sometimes that you could practice it lass or more?
How do u balance to exercise “your own” will power with balance? do u feel like sometimes the will power and action need to be dropped at all?
“Do u practice self-surrender?”
Surrender is not something that can be done as a conscious effort of the mind. And anything which arises as a conscious effort of the mind requires your re-enforcement of the ego. One can dissolve into surrender, become a receptive vessel for it - but it is not something that can be initiated as part of your will - it is something which is absolutely choiceless. It is a kind of death in which you are choiceless, and in its being choiceless there comes tremendous freedom. It is not that effort is not needed, effort is needed. If one does nothing - then if one has been suffering, ones sufferings are determined to continue. It is just that effort is needed not for surrender, but to prepare ones mind and body for the inevitable. When ones inner atmosphere is ready for it - like a lotus blossoming in its season, it arises spontaneously by itself.
well, you are right… there is no active way to practice ISvarapranidhana 
but to what extend do we want to surrender?
let’s say a complete surrender would be: sitting at home, doing absolutely nothing, food and other goodies would fall from the sky;) bills would magically get paid by some higher power…etc…
“but to what extend do we want to surrender?”
One need not drop out of the world and become a vegetable in order to surrender. That is what people ordinarily think - that by surrendering, you have to renounce the world. But the ordinary world in which we live is in itself a direct expression of the same divine nature, it is the same energy. If you cast aside the shell, in the same moment one will also cast aside the pearl - they are inseparable. That is why those who renounce the world never come to their enlightenment. Because outside of the ordinary, there is no beyond. Outside of the beyond, nothing ordinary.
It is not a surrender of the world, because you can become a drop out and remain just as egoistic and self-obsessed as ever. What is needed is a surrender of the ego, of mistaking the masks that one has created for one’s original face. Not that one has to deny the ego - the ego is just as much a part of one’s being as anything else. In fact - it is necessary, nature has put it into one’s system to fulfill a particular function. Without your ego - you would not even be able to tell the difference between yourself and what is not yourself, to live an ordinary life would be impossible. Nor would you have been able to survive on this planet without an ego, you would have died long ago. Even ego itself is not a problem - the problem lies elsewhere, in becoming identified with the ego. Once the ropes of this identification have been cut loose - then this event which we call “surrender” happens. And to surrender does not mean that one cannot become active in the world - it simply means that you can act, and yet without clinging to the outcome of the action. In yoga it has been called nishkam karma, actionless action - the Taoists have called it wu-wei, non-action. In Zen - it has been called no-mind. These are all different words for the same experience - of being able to act and yet without the clinging activity of the mind. And action which is of this kind is as spontaneous and natural as a flash of lightning. So a balance is needed between one’s inner silence and one’s action. That is what surrender is - entering deeper into silence. But we often do not realize that silence has little to do with what you are doing physically. You can physically remain still - but inwardly there is an enormous storm. And you can be involved in an enormous storm - and inwardly remain absolutely still. Silence and surrender is an inner quality. If you can live in the space, integrate it, then you become absolutely involved in life, enjoying everything that existence has to offer. One often thinks that through surrender, one will be unable to become involved in life. It is absolutely the opposite - it is only through surrender that you can become involved in life. The problem is that ordinarily, though one may be physically doing many things, one is not truly involved. Most of the time, one is just hypnotized by one’s imagination. That is not involvement in life, that is a distortion of life.
there are two types of surrender.
one is like a monkey child. cling to the mother and go where she goes.
or surrender like a kitten, picked up by the neck and be dropped where the mother likes you to be.
[QUOTE=prasad;62296]there are two types of surrender.
one is like a monkey child. cling to the mother and go where she goes.
or surrender like a kitten, picked up by the neck and be dropped where the mother likes you to be.[/QUOTE]
Are you a Srivaishnava?
no, i have not yet chosen any sect
just read some where.
i thought in the case of monkey baby, it has a choice to cling or not ot cling, but in other case there is no choice, just surrender to His will.
i may be wrong.
This is actually an argument between the tenkalai and the vadakalai srivaishnavas, whether prapatti is like a cat holding a kitten (marjara nyaya in tenkalai) or a monkey clinging on the mother (markata nyaya in vadakalai).
thanks sarva…
I didn’t know that.
Just remembered it having read somewhere.
thanks again.