How to let go and surrender the past

 Question - Gurudev, why is it so difficult to let go and surrender the past? Can you please guide what I should do?

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar  ji - Don’t do anything. Just live in the past. It’s not easy to live in the past. Accept it. Encounter it. You are in the right place. Surrendering the past is not trying to run away from it. Alright, move on. Embrace the past with both arms. It is okay to have had the experiences. Don’t be afraid of it. You can handle it. It won’t go if you are trying to avoid it or being averse to it.

Surrender has been misused so many times by people in the past.

Let's understand what are the 4 different types of surrender.

1st type of surrender comes into play when there is failure. When you are defeated, or you are miserable, you let go. Letting go, when life is a burden or mainly associated with defeat, is one type of surrender.

2nd type of surrender, which happens out of love, like a mother’s love for a child. Nothing else is important to her. If it is a choice between her own pleasure and that of the child, she will choose the child’s pleasure. In a love relationship between husband and wife, they feel completely at ease, fearless, with no concerns. A mother is so attached to the child; She willingly gives up small inconveniences or pleasures because she loves the child so dearly.

3rd type of surrender mostly happens with knowledge. There is nothing anyways. It happens when you surrender to God.

4th type is knowing that it is an illusion. Thinking that you have to give up something which you do not have is an illusion. This is the surrender of wisdom, it is just a sense of ease, knowing it all belongs to the one. This very state of surrender leads to the same place - the small mind opening to the big Self.