Surrendering is a highly personal and spiritual experience.
Surrender is not something we can do in our heads. It is not something we can force or control by willpower. It is something we experience.
Acceptance, or surrender, is not a tidy package. Often, it is a package full of hard feelings - anger, rage, and sadness, followed by release and relief. As we surrender, we experience our frustration and anger at God, at other people, at ourselves, and at life. Then we come to the core of the pain and sadness, the heavy emotional burden inside that must come out before we can feel good. Often, these emotions are connected to healing and release at a deep level.
Surrender sets the wheels in motion. Our fear and anxiety about the future are released when we surrender.
We are protected. We are guided. Good things have been planned. The next step is now being taken. Surrender is the process that allows us to move forward. It is how our Higher Power moves us forward. Trust in the rightness of timing, and the freedom at the other end, as you struggle humanly through this spiritual experience.
I will be open to the process of surrender in my life. I will allow myself all the awkward and potent emotions that must be released.
From The Language of Letting Go
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
Well thanks for sharing on feelings and surrender. I am in my very early stage of sobriety and have already had three busts. My longest time of sobriety was 32 days. I have just realised why I keep busting.
You say that surrender and acceptance doesn't come from your head, I totally agree. I need to go back and do steps 1 and 2 again because everytime I think I'm doing well I stuff up at step three.
Turning my will and my life over to my HP, I guess what I've been doing is thinking with my head and not my heart when I am doing the first three steps.
When my head starts racing I let it rule me instead of listening with my heart and soul. After reading alot of the posts on other subjects and reading your post I realise where I'm goin about things in the roundabout way and now I feel that I can try again, this time with my heart and soul to accept and surrender not with my head. Wish me luck and thanks for listening and thanks for sharing.
Welcome to MIP. You could always start a new thread and introduce yourself. It would be great if we all got to know you a little better.
I know what you mean about thinking with your head and not your heart. When I came back to AA, I thought that I could work the steps by simply writing them out and meaning what I said. But, I missed the fact that I truly had to feel them. For me, acceptance over my alcoholism was the key to my recovery.
I was at a meeting yesterday and someone said that he had a problem accepting that he was powerless over alcohol. So, for him, he thought of the powerlessness mentioned in step one as the alcohol being more powerful than he was and that it helped him a lot.
Please keep posting and letting us know how things are going for you, won't you?
Take care,
Carol
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
