JANMARIE CONNOR discovers how childhood tales taught her the art of surrender, which would later guide her spiritual practice.
Long before I had language for an inner life, I was being trained in it. Not intentionally or formally, but through stories that carried a hidden intelligence of their own. Two women in my childhood left distinct impressions. My Great Aunt Peg, from the rugged coast of Donegal, spoke easily of fairies and angels—beings we were taught to watch for in the garden and beneath the bed at night. She read my sister and me countless fairy tales and adventure stories, with a particular fascination for King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.
My Peruvian mother, born high in the Andes, was grounded in history, mystical Christianity, and the classics. She was especially fond of the book Kon-Tiki, named for Viracocha—the ancient Incan creator god associated with the sun, wind, and the dawn of civilization. The Norwegian explorer and author, Thor Heyerdahl, gave his balsa raft this name to honor the idea that early South American peoples, guided by natural ocean currents and cosmology, may have sailed westward to Polynesia.
Their worlds were different, yet what reached me was not belief, but orientation—toward imagination, wonder, and discovery of the unknown.
As children, we fixated on the outer adventures. We reenacted them endlessly: drawing invisible swords from stone or sailing the seas on improvised rafts, certain we would crash and yet courageously unafraid. What I didn’t yet know was that discovery had begun its inward turn, with imagination quietly training me to move forward without certainty, but with trust.
Kon-Tiki eventually emerged as the clearest teacher. Thor Heyerdahl’s journey was never about domination of nature but surrender to it. The raft could not be forced toward a destination; it had to yield to ocean currents, trusting that movement itself carried intelligence. Polynesia was not reached by conquest or modern navigation, but by alignment—by allowing the sea to do what it knew how to do.
Only much later did I understand how deeply this story mirrors the inner life. In Heartfulness practice, the same movement occurs, though invisibly. The effort to steer subsides; attention shifts from the restless surface current of thought to a deeper inner flow. Surrender is not collapse, but humility—a willingness to stop interfering with what already knows the way. The heart becomes the raft; consciousness, the ocean.
The effort to steer subsides;
attention shifts from the restless
surface current of thought to a deeper inner flow.
Surrender is not collapse, but humility—
a willingness to stop interfering with what already knows the way.
The heart becomes the raft; consciousness, the ocean.
Daaji describes this inner process with striking simplicity: meditation begins by gently turning attention inward, allowing the outward momentum of thinking to soften into feeling. Feeling, when held without effort, naturally dissolves into silence. And beyond that silence lies something more subtle still—an expansive presence that cannot be grasped but only allowed. Meditation, understood this way, is not a technique of control but a movement of trust. Just as the Kon-Tiki followed currents older than maps, the heart follows an inner current wiser than the mind once we stop demanding direction and simply remain present.
Over time, I came to see that this was never about becoming something new, but about remembering something essential. Just as the Kon-Tiki crew trusted ancient currents long before modern certainty, Heartfulness invites trust in an ancient inner movement—one that predates striving, identity, and control. The discovery is not dramatic. It is silent and often unremarkable, yet unmistakably authentic.
The inner voyage, like the ocean crossing, does not promise comfort or clarity at every moment. There are long stretches of not knowing. But there is also a growing confidence that life carries us when we stop demanding proof. Innocence returns—not as naïveté, but as deep listening.
What once felt like simple imitation—absorbing the worlds offered to me and stepping into them through play—now reveals itself as preparation. Discovery was never about swords or shores. It was about learning how to surrender well—how to float, how to trust the current, and how to remember that beneath the surface restlessness, consciousness is always already moving us home.
Discovery was never about swords or shores.
It was about learning how to surrender well—
how to float, how to trust the current, and
how to remember that beneath the surface restlessness,
consciousness is always already moving us home.
JANMARIE CONNOR
