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

Gangaji (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1887984011 | ISBN-13: 978-1887984010 | Publication Date: October 1999

Following a deep experience of awakening comes the challenge of being true to that experience in everyday life. This distinctive little book cuts to the heart of the ego’s most subtle strategies for control. Through the gift of self-inquiry and your own deepest desire to live a true and authentic life, Gangaji invites you to discover the effortless simplicity of a resolve so total, every aspect of daily life is used naturally for deepening surrender.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Gangaji is an American-born teacher and author. She travels the world, speaking to people from all walks of life, responding to the deepest spiritual questions of our time. Gangaji’s books and tapes celebrate the end of the search. They are a joyous welcoming home that lend support for living one’s life as a clear and conscious reflection of the truth of one’s being.

About the Author

Born in Texas in 1942, Gangaji grew up in Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1964, she married and had a daughter. In 1972, she moved to San Francisco where she began exploring deeper levels of her being.

In her personal search for truth, Gangaji pursued a spiritual path. She took Bodhisattva vows, practiced Zen and Vipassana meditation, helped run a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center, and had a career as an acupuncturist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Despite her successes, Gangaji continued to experience a deep and persistent longing for fulfillment. She prayed for a final, true teacher. This prayer was answered in 1990 when she met Sri Poonjaji, a disciple of Sri Ramana Maharshi, on the banks of the holy river Ganga in India. In this meeting with her teacher, whom she lovingly calls Papaji, the true fulfillment she had sought throughout her life was revealed.

Today, Gangaji offers Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Poonjaji’s radical invitation to stop the search for fulfillment and enlightenment and to fully recognize the truth of one’s being, which is already completely whole, totally free, and permanently at peace.

Each year Gangaji travels the world, speaking to thousands of people from all walks of life. A teacher, mother, and grandmother, she is the author of, You Are THAT! Satsang with Gangaji, Volumes I & II; Who Are You? The Path of Self-Inquiry; and Freedom & Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender

Product Details

• Paperback: 73 pages
• Publisher: Gangaji Foundation (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887984011
• ISBN-13: 978-1887984010
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Book, May 14, 2005

By 

Toby Lopresti (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 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.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem of wisdom, March 14, 2002

By 

Xan (Colorado USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freedom & Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender (Paperback)

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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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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love the truth, July 30, 2008

By 

Jayne Mason "Honor the Power of Your Heart" (Henley Beach, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freedom & Resolve: The Living Edge of Surrender (Paperback)

This book oooozes truth,and draws truth out of every place one could have tried to hide it.

I love this book

Jayne