Category: Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins

Question: You mentioned that surrender is a natural psychological mechanism of the mind. If that is so, how come we have to learn how to do it?

Answer: Although it is true that surrender or letting go is a natural mechanism of the mind, it must be remembered that the mind has multiple conflicting motivations. Whereas one part of your mind would like to be free of the tension from a feeling, another part of your mind is programmed to believe that hanging on to the feeling will somehow magically bring about some desired end. Unless one is conscious and aware and has mastered the technique, the conflicts of the mind will overrule and dominate. Basically, the technique of letting go gives you the power of choice over the tendencies of mind. Instead of being at its effect, the mind is now under your mastery. It opens up freedom and the capacity for free choice.

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender: Ch. 21, pg. 330

Q: What is your advice to a spiritual aspirant who is serious about realizing the state of enlightenment?

A: Spiritual commitment simply means to recontextualize the goal and meaning of one’s life. This needs to be done totally, all inclusively, so that life does not become segmented into spiritual work versus ordinary life. All life now becomes spiritual practice because context becomes the priority
that encompasses every act, thought, or moment. This poised point of view already results in a degree of nonattachment.  From this viewpoint, the emphasis in practice is to observe all the content of evolving life without
making any comment, criticism, or judgment. The prevailing attitude can be stated as,“That is how it seems to be.” The observer/witness becomes
detached from commentary about life and is then capable of transcending opinionation, likes, dislikes, aversions, attractions, arguments, or objections. Life unfolds of its own and does not need commentary. The habit of editorializing about what is witnessed needs to be voluntarily surrendered to God.
Although nonattachment may seem like a point of view, it is really not a positionality but a nonpositionality. We see from the chart of the stratified
levels of awareness that the observer/witness is already a step beyond the confines of the ordinary ego. This practice quiets the mind and also results
in the progressive withdrawal of the ego’s habit of projecting the ‘me’ into everything that happens. When this is accomplished, life then reveals that it
is impersonal rather than personal.
This practice results in a progressive withdrawal of ego involvement in the details of life into which ordinary mind gets trapped and entangled.

Peacefulness results from being aware yet uninvolved, and the sense of ‘I’ moves from identification with content to the experiencer, and then to
the observer/witness.

I: Reality and Subjectivity, Ch. 17, The Inner Path, pg. 299-300

To transcend the linear to the nonlinear is the way of the Mystic – the pathway of nonduality – to realize the inner light of consciousness itself, the True Immortal Self.  Everyone trusts the inner sense of reality or capacity to “know” that underlies all experiencing and witnessing, no matter what the content.  The content of mind thinks, but only the nonlinear field “knows,” or how else would it be possible to know what is being thought?

Because everyone actually lives in the experiential at every moment, the Source of the capacity to know or experience is close at hand and is itself pristine.  All human beings experience that they are continuously “experiencing,” no matter what the ever-changing content might be.

The Ego is Not the Real You, pg. 111

Q: How should one handle the seeming conflict between the illusion called “ego,” the world, and spiritual work?

The source of joy of spiritual endeavor stems from the work itself and is not dependent on outcomes or the achievement of goals.  Each movement forward has an inner delight.  There is, for instance, an inner pleasure that accompanies progress.  The replacement of resentment with peaceful acceptance is its own reward.  There is a progressive alteration in one’s view of self and others.  When this happens, one’s own life story can then be recontexualized from a more compassionate understanding.

I: Reality and Subjectivity, Ch. 4, pg. 53 (Veritas edition)

It is interesting that the theories of advanced theoretical physics, which are the product of so-called left-brain activities, now require a new context in order to be comprehended. The context that is evolving from these left-brain scientific researchers matches Reality as witnessed by the mystic, who represents right-brain function. Thus, whichever side of the mountain we choose to climb, we end up at the same point: the peak.

A third way up the mountain is through the mechanism of surrender, and each of us, therefore, has the opportunity to verify for ourselves the ultimate nature of Reality itself, which is the same as that revealed to the mystic or the physicist. We can envision that with each and every surrender, we take another step up the side of the mountain. Some of us will ascend until the view gets better and choose to stop there. Others will go still higher. And, then, there will be those of us who will not be satisfied until we have reached the very Peak and verified It for ourselves, although, at that point, there is no longer an individual person to verify anything, for it has been surrendered completely.

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, Ch. 13, Peace, pg. 195-196