Archive for the ‘Surrender’ Category
The Relief of Surrender
Posted by learning | Filed under Emotional Healing, Empowerment, Physical Healing, Spiritual Evolution, Spiritual Growth, Surrender
Greetings from Learning To Flow!
I learned of a concept early on in the Self-Mastery process called, “Surrendering to my Higher Powers in Prayer.” Early on, I considered the prayer to be the most important aspect of this, but now I know that the act of surrender is actually what is important.
I learned in “Conversations with God – Book I” that words are simply expressions of the energy of my emotions. Just feeling the emotions themselves simplifies this process. When I stop and realize that who I truly am…my soul…is a form of energy and God is the Divine source from which I am formed, then I can more easily attain my desires by focusing on the energetic connection between God and I through my feelings than I can through words alone.
When I focus on what my ego wants out of a situation, I am typically not purely focused on the feeling of having what I desire. I am typically resisting that feeling and more focused on the feeling of not having it. I am unconsciously focused on the feeling of fear, embarrassment, shame, hurt or disappointment of not having what I want.
I have found that when I get to the point of being so tired of the fight and the struggle, that I reach the point where I am willing to just let it go and let God take care of it.
For some of us, it takes a lot for us to get to that point. Because it typically takes SO much, this point is often called, “the dark night of the soul.”
And yet, it is always darkest right before the dawn.
Explore the concept of surrender this week and in doing so, find the light within you yearning to be let out.
Namaste
Jeff Scholl
Quote of the Week:
“Do you want to be right…or do you want to be happy?” – A Course in Miracles
The Relief of Surrender
When I was introduced to the concept of surrender, I was taught several affirmations to remind me of the benefits of letting go. Some of my favorites are as follows.
Surrendering in prayer:
- Allows me to detach from my EGO-mind when it says, “I don’t need help. I can do it alone.”
- Frees me to leave the details to God as to how and when what I desire will manifest
- Helps me to detach from the models of how life “should be”
- Allows God to chauffeur around instead of trying to carry the world on my shoulders
- Helps me to understand that “I can’t steer the river.”
- Helps me to detach from my friends and family in order to allow them to learn from the natural consequences of their actoins
When I read these and the others in the Self-Mastery book, I am reminded that quite often I am making my life more difficult than it has to be by trying to live my life by DOING rather than allowing God to take care of the “heavy lifting.”
As I have grown, I have gradually turned over more and more of my life to God through the process of surrender. In doing so, my life has become much easier. I no longer worry about how everything is going to turn out. I do occasionally have something come up that concerns me and it may take me awhile to surrender it, but once I do any actions I take are guided by peace, love, compassion and understanding…rather than by fear.
The act of surrender is primarily a vibrational one. When I finally stop and just feel how I feel about a situation that has been causing me some amount of frustration, I realize how stressed I feel about it. I realize that this feeling I am feeling is manifesting more of what I don’t want and that if I want the situation to change, I have to change that vibration.
My ego mind tells me that I need to have someone else change in order for me to feel different, but my soul which is the primary guiding force in my life these days reminds me that the peace I seek will never be found by “thinking more.” It will always be found through seeking the tranquil peace that can only be found within.
Namaste
Jeff
Spiritual / Emotional Application
Praying to God has value because it gets me to start tapping into the very emotions that I need to release. I tell God what I am feeling and why and once I finish that, quite often I realize that I am ready to release it and let God handle it.
All too often, I am amazed how long I have held onto a fear or a hurt that I could have easily given to God to work out. At some point though, the need to feel relieved of this problem won out over the need to feel right.
These days, I rarely keep a problem for very long because I feel good most of the time and I know quickly when I have something that brings up worry or fear. I have no need to feel embarrassed because I have found that it feels better to let go of any need to be “perfect” and by openly surrendering this with others. I just tell people what I am afraid of instead of repressing my fear and thinking that I shouldn’t feel it.
I say to God, “I surrender and I now allow you to take this from me. I allow you to show me a solution. If I need to DO something, I ask that you make that obvious to me. I am going to assume that if it isn’t obvious that you are taking care of all of it and my job is just to be happy.”
Use this process, play with it and change it to whatever feels right to you. Simply saying over and over, “I surrender, I surrender, I surrender this to you” is sometimes all I need to let go.
Physical Application
To focus on surrender this week, allow your body to sleep as much as it needs to. Quite often, we feel the need to push ourselves. We think that we have all of these other people that we are responsible to serve and we forget about what WE need.
This week, take some time for yourself. Ask your body what it needs from you. If you need to sleep, don’t wait until your immune system becomes so weak that it becomes susceptible to illness. Take that time now!
- Sleep in until you can’t sleep any more.
- Sit in a hot bubble bath and relax.
- Get a relaxing massage and allow there to be complete silence between you and the therapist…even if you normally talk in the session.
- Spend some time in nature just being silent.
Be willing to surrender your normal stream of consciousness and allow the peacefulness of Spirit to fill your life!
© Jeffrey L. Scholl 2009. All rights reserved.
www.learningtoflow.com
LTF Weekly Newsletter – July 18th, 2009
Posted by learning | Filed under Emotional Healing, Spiritual Growth, Surrender
Greetings from Learning To Flow!
All of us face daily challenges and if we don’t learn to surrender the energy from these challenges, we carry all of that within us until we get to the point where we break down in some way. I always used to hear adults talking in hushed voices about the woman who had the emotional breakdown. Now I would likely applaud such a person for finally letting go of her emotions.
But we can learn to let go…to surrender without an emotional breakdown or even a physical breakdown…since if we do not allow this energy to be released, it will attack our bodies and have results that tradtionally minded doctors have no idea how to heal. Healing comes from within and it starts with our willingness to surrender our burdens to God. We cannot carry them and yet through the power of the Light that comes from within us, those same destructive energies can simply be dissolved into the nothingness from which it came.
Quote of the Week:
“You are here now not to struggle or defend yourselves or convince anyone. You are here to release yourself and surrender to the birth of You, your grander Self who has been waiting for this to happen.”- Pamela Kribbe “The Jeshua Channelings: Christ Consciousness in a New Era”
Surrender
I have heard for most of my life that I needed to “surrender” my life to God. In the religion I was raised in, this appeared to mean that I had to give up many of the things I enjoyed. I was taught that leading a spiritual life meant that I had to walk a very narrow path to make sure that I stayed within the boundaries of “sin.”
These teachings created a very difficult life for me and saddled me with shame, disappointment and embarrassment because I felt I simply could not be what “God” was demanding that I had to be. I was taught that from birth, I simply wasn’t good enough and only by the grace of God could I attain entrance to heaven.
Looking back, I can easily understand now how I was programmed to think and believe. It is not difficult to see how my thoughts of “not being good enough” manifested in my life. Because if I was not good enough for God…how would I ever be good enough in the eyes of other humans?
Some people I encountered clearly felt that they were good enough because they projected their self-confidence out into the world. But in seeing that in others, it further cemented the belief in my mind that I was not good enough. I have found that this is the most common core belief with most of humanity.
As my perceptions changed, I looked at not only my childhood, but across different cultures and this perception has been unconsciously passed down from generation to generation. My parents inherently believed that they were not good enough and because of that, they projected that out onto me. They spent far more time pointing out what I didn’t do right than they ever did on my successes. If I achieved something, I got a pat on the back and then was asked, “okay what are you going do to next?” If I came home with a B, the comment was “Ok, let’s work on bringing that up to an A.” If I came home with straight A’s, the comment was “Ok, let’s see if we can make those A+’s!”
As a child, I sought acceptance, approval and love from my parents…and the only way they knew to give it to me…even in small pieces was based on achievement. This was true of what I was taught in church as well. I was taught that God would bless me based on what I did right, or didn’t do wrong. This created the foundation of what my teacher called my “neurotic overachiever” identity. I always felt like I needed to be “on guard.” Because I didn’t feel safe, I felt that I always needed to be in control…which meant that I couldn’t allow others to help me. This created somewhat of a lonely existence, but it also created a barrier between me and others. Because if I didn’t feel safe, I had to keep others at just enough of a distance to maintain that sense of security.
It meant that I always had my mask on and that I changed my behaviors to match whatever situation I was in. I became a chameleon with whoever I found myself with because I did not want to risk rejection by just being myself. In doing all of that, I lost myself. Because I frequently lost the sense of who I really was, it became very important for me to spend a lot of time alone…just to recapture that for a little while. If I went too long without doing that, my body developed some sort of illness to force me to take time for myself.
Losing myself for the sake of others left me feeling ungrounded and heightened the anxiety I already carried. Also since I believed I could not turn to God because I had been taught that I was not good enough, left me feeling very alone and scattered for much of my life.
All of this fueled my now twenty year passionate plunge into spirituality and self-help. Finding out that God loves me unconditionally and then being able to experience how that feels has grounded me. Finding that love within me, finding out that heaven isn’t some “place” that I was go…that the experience of heaven was within me all along has given me a great sense of peace.
And now I am starting to truly understand “surrender.” A definition of surrender means “to give up oneself to another’s influence.”
Because I felt afraid and unworthy for much of my life, I could not surrender. I lived by Winston Churchill’s famous quote, “Never give up…never, never, NEVER give up.”
But it is really only in surrender that I have found peace. I had to give up the idea that I could not allow others to help me, that I could not surrender my life to the Universe, that I HAD to be in control of all that happened to me.
The idea that I could control any of it was an illusion…and it made my life MUCH harder than it had to be.
I am learning to surrender. I am learning to allow others to help me. I am learning that in order to share my gifts on this planet, I cannot achieve success in a way in which I am in control. I have to go within, find my peace and surrender to it. I have to surrender to it so completely that I trust that the Universe will create ways in which all that I need and desire will come to me easily and effortlessly.
In just doing that for a little while last week, I have seen things start to flow for me. I am seeing people step up and offer assistance. I am seeing opportunities come to me for me to publish my book, to become the teacher I feel I am meant to be and for all of that to happen without me MAKING it happen. For I now realize I cannot make it happen. I have to surrender and let it happen.
So this week, my goal is to practice just BEING in that place of peace as much as possible. This week, I am practicing surrender.
What do you need to let go of before you can start to surrender?
Exercise
Find some time where you can be alone and meditate. Close your eyes and focus your attention on your heart area. Take a deep breath and intend to find peace there.
If you encounter feelings of tension or tightness, just breathe into them, feel them, breathe into them again to release them and then move through them. Realize that you DO have this peace within you and to find it, you must seek it!
Keep moving through any layers of fear, frustration or pain you have until you find a feeling of peace. When you find it, it will feel like a feeling of relief.
Breathe into that. Take a deep, deep breath into that…and then just allow your feelings to explore it. Do not explore this area with your mind. It will get distracted. Explore it with your feelings. Focus on the sensations and stay in this place as long as you want.
For now instead of using this field for creation, just focus on finding and experiencing the peace and joy that is waiting for you. The more time you spend here, the easier it is to get to the next time and the more peace you bring back with you and that flows out into your life.
Journal about what you experience