Today’s reading points out that there are two paths of awakening:

Surrender
Withdrawing from the world

The Teachings of Inner Ramana  teaches surrender as the primary path to awakening. This is also the path taught in The Bhagavad Gita. In Hindu tradition, it is called “karma yoga.” It is a path of living in the world and going about your usual daily tasks—work, family, etcetera—while disengaging from the ego through detachment. That is the purpose of surrender—to live an active life without being attached to mind.

As we learned through The Circus and the Meadow:

True stillness cannot be achieved by quieting the mind through meditative practices for part of the day and then being wrapped up in the stories of the mind the rest of the day. … You will never be free through partial abidance. Only total abidance can be totally freeing.

That means if surrender is our path of awakening, we want to learn to use surrender for all of our daily decisions. Learning surrender to this level will take time—it will take time for the surrender-program to fully develop in the brain—but we should continue to give it our best effort everyday, whatever our current best effort is, because total surrender is how we will awaken.

Remember, as you give surrender your best effort, awareness programs the surrender-program in the brain.

Withdrawing from the world is the path of awakening that Michael Langford recommends in The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss. That’s why he recommends meditating for 12 hours a day. Withdrawing from the world was also the path that Ramana Maharshi followed beginning shortly after his initial awakening to consciousness, which occurred when he was a teenager. However for most of us, surrender will work better than trying to fully withdraw from the world.

In The Teachings of Inner Ramana, “enlightened” is synonymous with Self-realized and true perception. “Awake” is a term reserved for the First Principle of God.

Today’s reading points out that the enlightened one doesn’t experience surrender like the deluded one does. The deluded one is attached to mental chatter as me, so to him, intuition feels like something other than me. The enlightened one doesn’t see mental chatter as me anymore, so intuition feels like the Self. Intuition is followed as easily by the enlightened one as mental chatter is followed by the deluded one.

However, the deluded one is still life-awareness, so the deluded one’s attention has the power of life-awareness in it. As she gives believing-attention to her thoughts, she unconsciously creates the world through consciousness.

That gives us an additional reason to live as if we are Self-realized.

On Day 297, you were asked to live as if you are Self-realized. That’s because living as if you are Self-realized leads to Self-realization.

Another reason to live as if you are Self-realized is because, when you do, you no longer participate in making illusion. That means that by living as if you are Self-realized, you stop contributing to the appearances that cause suffering in the world.

As Ramana Maharshi said:

Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.

If you don’t remember how to live as if you are Self-realized in a genuine and self-honest way, review the tip from Day 297.

Today, practice surrender, the mantra, and practice looking back at chatter after you say the mantra to see what it was saying and how you were listening as if it was you  thinking.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link