Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
I am the servant
Loosen the grip of self-importance by honestly owning one’s smallness and faults before God and taking the place of the servant — letting go into trust rather than self-effort.
In 5 lines: Sit honestly before God, dropping the self-presentation. Own your smallness and faults plainly — without self-attack. Lay them down and leave them there. Take the servant’s place; let go of being in charge. Hand over the outcome and rest in trust: “no longer now is ‘me’ or ‘my’.”
What it is
Running through Tukaram’s abhangas is a movement of self-emptying surrender: he stops defending the self, owns his smallness and faults plainly, and takes the place of the servant before God.
He calls himself nothing apart from God — “no deeds I’ve done nor thoughts I’ve thought; save as thy servant, I am nought” — and confesses without flinching: “I am a mass of sin; thou art all purity.” This is not grovelling for its own sake; it is the release of the controlling, self-important “I” so that trust can take its place — “no longer now is ‘me’ or ‘my’.” For Tukaram the bhakta’s strength is precisely his admitted weakness: stripped of self-reliance, he throws himself wholly on God.
The practice is to stop managing and surrender — to occupy, honestly and even gladly, “a servant’s place.”
The Method
Drawn from the surrender and confession that run through Tukaram’s verses:
- Sit honestly before God. Drop the self-presentation. Bring yourself as you are, not as you wish to seem.
- Own your smallness plainly. Acknowledge your limits and faults without dressing them up — Tukaram named himself “smaller than the smallest atom.” This is honesty, not theatre.
- Confess, without self-attack. Lay the failing before God and leave it there — “I am a mass of sin; thou art all purity.” The aim is release, not a fresh round of self-punishment.
- Take the servant’s place. Let go of being the one in charge; offer yourself as God’s servant — “I, worthy only of a servant’s place.”
- Hand over the outcome. Release the need to control and steer; let “me” and “my” loosen — “no longer now is ‘me’ or ‘my’” — and rest in trust rather than effort.
- Return here whenever self-importance or anxious control rises. The disposition ripens by repetition, not by a single act. (Sourcing note: quoted lines are from published English translations of Tukaram’s abhangas — “I Am Poor And Needy,” “The Only Refuge,” “Man’s Extremity,” “Self-Surrender.” The steps render the surrender his verses convey, not a numbered method he prescribed. Each of his abhangas closes “Tuka mhane,” “says Tuka.”)
Source & Lineage
Tukaram (c. 1608–1649), the Marathi poet-saint of the Varkari sampradaya, was unsparingly honest in his abhangas about doubt, poverty and failing — turning raw self-examination into the very material of the path.
His surrender to Vithoba at Pandharpur is the devotional ground beneath his Name-practice and his kirtan. This entry’s flavour is Varkari, confessional and theistic: surrender is offered to a personal God, the beloved Vitthal, and voiced as the servant’s plain honesty.
It contrasts with non-theistic letting-go methods —, — which release feeling and control without a divine recipient, and with (repentance-and-cleaning) by being self-surrender into trust rather than a clearing formula.
Common refinements
Confusing surrender with self-attack. Tukaram’s honesty ends in release and trust, not in a spiral of shame. If owning faults feeds self-loathing, stop and reframe toward letting go.
- Performing humility. Display (“look how humble I am”) rebuilds the very self being released; keep it private and plain.
- Surrendering effort that is yours to make. Letting go of anxious control is not abandoning responsibility; hand over the outcome, still do the next right thing.
- Treating it as a transaction. Surrender is not a lever to force a result; the moment it becomes a bargaining tool the grasping returns.