Surrendering to Love: The Swiftest Path to Peace
Beyond striving, beyond stillness, beyond knowledge—there is a Love that asks only for your heart.
Step outside the noise for a moment. Outside the checkboxes, the obligations, the late-night worries about rent, bills, or expectations unmet. In that pause, a deeper question arises—what is all of this really for?
Some will answer, “I just want to be happy,” or “I need to feel secure,” or “I want to succeed.” If we dig into those answers, we often find layers of longing: for intimacy, for belonging, for safety, for worth. These are not trivial desires—they arise from the very human experience of impermanence.
But the spiritual path, while not dismissing these needs, beckons us deeper still. It calls us into a relationship with something beyond the grasp of material striving. Something eternal. Something we might simply call Love.
Love as the Spiritual Aim
Every great tradition points to this Deeper Love. Not the fleeting emotional highs, but the Love that animates creation itself. The Love that seeks no reward. The Love that does not fear poverty or insignificance.
The Yoga Sutras lay out a step-by-step path toward peace, discipline, and stillness. But even they hint at a quicker, more radical route: Ishvara Pranidhana—the surrender to the Divine.
And the Bhagavad Gita says it plainly. When Arjuna, the warrior of conscience, asks Krishna whether love or knowledge is the higher path, Krishna answers: Love. Not intellectual mastery, not ritual perfection—but devotion.
When the Mind Won’t Be Still
Maybe you’ve tried meditation and felt like a failure. Maybe your thoughts race, your body fidgets, your heart just isn’t ready to sit in silence. That’s okay.
Stillness of mind is not the goal in itself. It is only the doorway. And there are other doorways.
Krishna, ever wise and compassionate, offers a path for every temperament:
If you can’t meditate, serve.
If you can’t serve with joy, study.
If study leaves you cold, then surrender your heart.
Even if you have nothing else—no money, no time, no strength—your longing is enough. The pure desire to love God, to live in Love, is enough.
Beyond the Yoga of Poses
In the West, yoga is often reduced to postures and performance. But as Krishna reminds us, mechanical practice isn’t enough. Even sacred ritual can become hollow if Love is absent.
He says:
Better than mechanical practice is knowledge.
Better than knowledge is meditation.
And better still is surrender through love1
That kind of surrender brings immediate peace. It cuts through the noise of striving. It lifts us beyond pleasure and pain, beyond competition, beyond the need to prove ourselves.
Agitation Culture vs. Love in Action
We live in a culture that rewards outrage. Online spaces teem with voices that agitate for attention, not for transformation. It’s tempting to get pulled into the emotional churn. To react. To prove. To win.
But that isn’t love.
That isn’t peace.
That isn’t God.
God’s love is not loud or attention-seeking. It is efficient, humble, detached from reward or validation. It moves through those who serve without seeking praise. It flows through those who—like the saints—release self-will, ambition, and grasping.
These are the ones most dear to God.
The Cost of Eternal Love
And yet, this love costs us something.
It costs our ego.
It costs our craving.
It costs the dopamine hits of comparison, conquest, and control.
But in surrender, we gain everything. A peace not dependent on circumstances. A joy not born from success. A Love that never runs dry.
So whether you are meditating in silence, wiping down countertops in exhaustion, praying for relief, or simply longing to feel connected again—offer your heart.
That is enough.
Let yourself be filled.
You will thirst no more.
You will hunger no more.
You will be home.
Eknath Easwaran has the most accessible translation of the Bhagavad Gita. His work has been transformational for my life. You can find his translation of this passage at Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.