Freedom & Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender [Paperback]

I love this book. Both challenging and supporting me, it cuts through the stammering of my mind. I return to it again and again.

When I first heard of Gangaji, an American born teacher and author, I was a seasoned performance artist and psychotherapist. I was not interested in gurus, teachers, and "enlightenment", quite the opposite. So I came to her initially with skepticism and a bit of cynicism. I actually resisted for a decade. Only when I began to seriously confront my own mortality did the desire to know the truth of who I am became urgent. It was then, while channel surfing late at night, she appeared in what seemed the most unlikely place, local access TV. This time, through some wonderful mystery, I was willing to listen and experience for myself

Freedom and Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender is a rich, deceptively small volume. Gangaji has an extraordinary gift for speaking in a way that resonates with the hearts and minds of westerners living in this particular age. She writes in clear, contemporary, conversational prose, conveying the radical invitation of her teacher, Papaji (H.W.L. Poonja) and his teacher, Ramana Maharshi to "Stop". To choose to wake up from the trance of who we think we are and experience the choiceless truth of who we really are. The invitation is to self-inquiry, the willingness to ask the questions: Who am I? What is here? To directly experience what follows these and similar questions. The resolve is to not go back into the trance by turning away from that essential experience, but to freshly inquire anew as thoughts or feelings of separation arise. We are encouraged not to judge them, rather to use them as pointers toward experiencing fully the emotions they lead to, divorced from the circumstances and thoughts which gave rise to them.

The invitation is to experience what keeps us from realizing our true nature, going deeper in uncovering the most primal emotions such as terror, despair or rage, unconsciously functioning below the surface. The ones which are actually running the trance. Gangaji invites us to face the terrors we've spent eons running from and meet them fully, neither denying them or indulging them, and discover what else is always here regardless of emotions, circumstances, and feelings which by their nature come and go.

This may sound like I am describing a technique, yet there is no technique, no particular doing. There is Freedom. There is Willingness. The rest? Gangaji speaks of her teacher often saying, "Wait and see." At first this seemed an oddly passive statement to me, but I have come to experience it as alive, a profound resting in the silence of my own heart.

Gangaji's invitation is radical in part because it is not based upon a particular philosophy or religion. There are no prescribed practices or rituals, unless one considers inquiry a practice, nor the prohibition of them. Most radically, it calls into question the very structure of who we've believed ourselves to be. Who you are is not separate from God or Love or Truth or Freedom or Peace or Silence, whatever one chooses to call it. Therefore, there is nothing you have to do to "get there". No merit to be earned. Who you are is already here, has always been and will always be. The invitation in this book is to wake up to Yourself.

The temptation arises to quote lavishly from Freedom and Resolve. Instead I will only give a flavor of its contents: The Story of Me.. Survival, Sex and Personal Power. The Most Ruthless Act of a Lifetime. The Weather Theory of Emotions. The Skillful Use of Emotions. You Are Already Whole. Effortless Realization. It's Time to Tell The Truth. How Will Your Life Be Used?

Freedom and Resolve is short, only 72 pages, yet covers so much ground in its short, concise chapters. I find it beautiful as well as practical. If anything said here tugs at you, or speaks to you in any way, I encourage you to read this exquisite book and investigate Gangaji's invitation for yourself.

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Gangaji is a modern, Western teacher of spiritual awakening. This little book is both inspiring and practical, and helps to reveal to us our ways of holding on to the beliefs, fears and even spiritual traps that keep us from discovering the simple truth within us.
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This book oooozes truth,and draws truth out of every place one could have tried to hide it.

I love this book

Jayne

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