SURRENDER - A PERSONAL JOURNEY

Every thing I need, comes to me.

Everything I need to know is revealed to me.

All is well in my life, and so it is.

What needs to be given up, or sacrificed (in the process of surrender) in order to grow spiritually? For me, it was everything that was standing in the way of becoming my true, authentic self.

1. Fear

 

2.  The need to control
 

3.  The need for other’s approval
 

4.  Resentments and anger
 

5.  Guilt
 

6.  Shame
 

7.  Judgments
 

8.  Perfectionism
 

9.  The need to know ‘why’
 

10. The need to ‘fix’ everything

This sacrificial process is a painful one. We need to give up everything that stands in our way of wholeness and inner peace. Sacrifice and the emptying process are not easy. It hurts, hurts like hell, because it’s a kind of death, which is apparently necessary for our ‘re-birthing’ process.

Knowing this intellectually is one thing, going through the process, is quite another. This dying (to the old self) is a fearsome adventure into the unknown. For me it was the most painful thing that I have ever experienced - A Dark Night of the Soul.

Somewhere (off in a far distance of my awareness) maybe I sensed that I would survive, but this was over-shadowed by intense, painful feelings of despair, aloneness and fear, which never really left me until the end, some months later.

I knew that part of me was dying and I was terrified.  Day after day I lived with terror- so consuming that it had no name. I could find no answers. My concentration was gone. Nothing made sense. I felt disconnected from everything and everybody, even from myself and from God . I remember thinking, “This must be what Hell feels like.” I was lucky to have one good friend with whom I could open up to. I opened up, I sobbed, I shared. I remember saying (between sobs), “It feels like my soul is being born!”

Finally, there came the day when I could stand it no longer. The despair was more than I could take. I was forced to surrender. There in the dark aloneness, I surrendered to a Power greater than myself whom I choose to call God. I  surrendered all, but mostly the past pain- guilt, anger and fear and shame- the big 4.

This surrender process did not appear to produce any immediate effects, except that I prayed every time I felt that seething pain in my solar plexus. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed, mostly the Serenity Prayer - 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change -

The courage to change the things I can-

And the wisdom to know the difference.

It kept me going as best I could. Then, slowly - very slowly things began to unfold. I had to surrender all. And in the surrendering, came the truth - I know nothing. I need no-thing. I am complete. All is unfolding exactly as it should. All is well. And so it is.

This entire process lasted approximately nine months and I find that to be very interesting.

Granny Earth, N.D.