Sometimes, it feels like we’re fighting for control in our lives.
Maybe we’re afraid to surrender. Caroline Myss, PhD thinks it’s time to be brave.
In this video, Caroline reveals the miraculous power of surrender. You might find yourself changing your approach to some of the most important things in your life.
It’s only 3 minutes long – this is a lesson I don’t want you to miss.
Have you found grace through surrender? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
The ‘Serenity Prayer’ (as an atheist, for me, it’s a poem), is my foundation, and I spend quite a bit of time with clients clarifying what we can and can’t control, and how whether we respond or react to the situation makes a difference. As others have mentioned, we have to differentiate between passivity and acceptance. In one of my own struggles, I found the key in reframing what I needed to do as ‘letting go rather than giving up’, and I think it would be a useful construct for a wshop. Different issues in our lives require different narrative and skill sets. I’m allergic to ‘all or nothing’ concepts and immediately create continua out of categories. I don’t like the word ‘surrender’ and much prefer acceptance. I find Carolyn’s language confusing rather than clarifying – and particularly dangerous for women.
Marty and the others have wisely looked at mindfulness as one of the bridges to letting go. As we disconnect our ego from our thoughts, we can look at them as so much waffle and then identify where they are coming from. And then we can use frameworks such as ‘Stages of Change’, to help the person go through the painful process of getting to know themselves, their crazy brains and their own forms of illusion. I also laugh and teach my clients to laugh at their ‘crazy’ minds. I’ve also sourced those great philosophers, ‘The Rolling Stones’ in one of their anthems, ‘Ya Can’t Always Git, What Ya Want’.
I don’t believe in a spiritual world, however I believe in luck and management. The luckiest thing that happened to me is to be born in a Western country (especially as a female). I believe that many of the excellent things that have happened to me are because I was an education junkie and created a fulfilling life.
My spiritual understanding is our inner beliefs are made visible by our external experiences. This mirror is the highest divination tool we have. This approach has proven very beneficial in my own life as well as practice. We become empowered authorities when we ferret out those faulty beliefs that are creating repeated disappointments. These beliefs were learned from caregivers, systems and religions. The science of Epigenetics bears this out.
Many feel they are not in control of their lives…they are not…their beliefs are driving them.
Bruce Lipton’s 30 years of research contained in his book Biology of Belief shows that we are only 5-10% conscious if we have not done the inner work. Fear and love cannot co-exist – so fear based beliefs do cause damage daily to self and others.
In his view and mine, until these beliefs are released we can predict our own future: more disappointment in love money health, etc. To steer one’s own wheel of fortune to make conscious choices and have then manifest one has to be in control: Self control….90% of lotto winners have gone bankrupt shortly after cashing that big check. Their self image would not let them capitalize on a chance event…and their self created luck snapped back to their belief system of not deserving etc.
That is why Emotional Freedom technique is so important now. As Carol Look an EFT practitioner says”if you want to edit a document you have to go into to it and literally change it.” Saying I forgive the mistakes I made or using an affirmation does not work long term.
Therefore, in my view we have to release the feelings and thoughts and emotions that our beliefs are based upon. The mirror and EFT are great tools to take back control of life experiences or allowing more respect to manifest some call Peace.
Surrender then becomes confidence: What I want to create in my life of more happiness however defined will manifest in the proper timing. I have the maturity of patience and therefore I can thank in advance as I am free of many of the limiters of the past that caused so much pain.
I live in confidence as any issue that arises in my mirror in any relationship (client!) or locally nationally or internationally that I am not at Peace with I can find the why of it and release it. As a result there is more Peace in me and in therefore in the world. Namaste.
I started with acceptance, that is accepting thoughts and not engaging. After much practice, surrender was even harder. It takes courage, a sense of risking all to be able to surrender.
My experience came while meditating, that I imagined opening my arms out as wide as possible exposing my heart, unguarded. My chest was open and exposed surrendering even tensing up. All resistance was dropped as my heart was used as a butterfly net.
It is counterintuitive, we gain power by surrendering to our fears, not judging. In this space I am calm, parasympathetic nervous system activated with all my emotions at the ready to serve. I am free and present, aware of life, the small things we always miss.
Please can you traslaet in spanish please.
I like what Danny said as well.
We do not have control over what happens to us, but we do have choice over how we respond to it. We can be victims or victors, we can go kicking and screaming and blaming and denying from cradle to grave, or we can find the blessings, gifts and lessons in even the most challenging and painful events and circumstances.
I like to think more in terms of being open to life than surrendering to it. It takes great courage to be open and not run away – to both our external experiences as well as looking into the mirror at ourselves. In doing this we can find acceptance, compassion, empathy and graceful self-ownership. With patience, kindness, and a sense of humor we can embrace our imperfect human-ness, as well as that of others. We can then mindfully, heart-fully and honestly choose to own the impact we have upon everyone our lives come into contact with, including ourselves.
Three wonderful quotes:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” – Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning
“When we argue with reality we lose, but only 100% of the time.” – Byron Katie
“There may be a thousand little choices in a day. All of them count.” – Shad Helmstetter
Peace.
i agree with both Marty and Danny. You must practise mindfulness – ideally meditate for at least 1 hour/day; learning how to let go of your own stuff will enable you to be a wayshower, even a greater ‘magnetic force’ for others to be motivated to cleanse themselves.
Giving up power is paradoxically the first step in regaining health. And knowing when to re-coup & start gaining ground again is key to health and success. Letting go and forgiving allows you to go beyond all competition & see the greater wholistic view. Really forgiving may take up alot of time in the beginning, because nobody that is born strong & healthy becomes unwell without others’ stealing energies & thence it goes …. back and forth throughout a lifetime. Love is giving before it is ‘accessing’ the gain of loving energy. This is one area where you need to silence the mind: and let the heart speak — so therein comes the importance of a serious meditative practise.
God Bless,
/M.
Surrender isn’t perhaps the word I would choose to use to point to this quality of experience as it seems to connote passivity. What fits for me is more the experience of seeing the relational nature of all experience and seeing how everything is interdependent and co-created. In this way, we can be very engaged with our world and our experience without falling into beliefs that we don’t have an impact in the world and that life just happens to us. We are neither in control, nor passive recipients of the world. Rather, we are always in relationship with our world and all aspects of our experience.
Very insightful comments, Danny. Thanks for taking the time to share.
Danny, we are splitting hairs but my surrender is not passivity it is using mindfulness/meditation as our power to direct our attention.
Rick Hanson states that what fires together wires together. Me surrendering means letting go of my ego my judgment of a situation or person.
Sometimes mindfulness means letting go of the bias of the ego and telling someone to get out of our space. Letting go does not denote any passivity.
Surrender is the ultimate journey to power.
My impact on the world is best seen in how I do not judge things which frees me from approval or disapproval and let’s me move when doubt, worry and fear are present.
it is surrendering letting go of the egos bias. many therapist have not even considered going past healing and letting emotions and thoughts be appendages at the end of our hands. Now when an emotion or thought arrives in my consciousness I focus on a few breaths and they disappear. Emotions or thoughts do not rule my direction. That is far from passive.
Happiness happens in the small moments without much ego.
We are at our most perfect with the conscious dormant.
Hi Marty, my comment was my response to what Caroline was discussing in the video and not to your comment. I would have included your name if responding to you. Sorry for any confusion. I agree with you absolutely that letting go is not passive. Surrender seems to work for you as a word to point to your experience and I think that’s great. We each have to look into our own experience and find our own words to describe it.
Namaste
Danny
Thanks Danny,
I am glad mindfulness is grasped and used by you forward thinking healers. Please pass it on and make it accepted.
This site lets us clients who have read and experienced access to you pros. We have some good feedback and ideas that could be incorporated and help. this is a journey for all of us, we never reach the end.
Each day is totally new and to be lived whether we experience fear, anger, joy of depression. Action and mindfulness overcome all of that.
Marty
Thanks for the platform and respect in responding to my opinions.
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healing from trauma is counterintuitive. We do not fight, resist, manipulate, wonder what if we accept and then surrender.
That means staying present without thought to experience our fears and triggers. Support a client on this journey and healing will follow.
Thoughts are air without action.
Mental and aerobic action raise the moral of the mind and support a positive self image.
Surrender can only happen with daily practice or more likely and quicker. Work to let go of the egos judgments and fear.
fear is only a body mechanism and fear is not contained in the emotion itself. ear is a warning signal and does no damage.
if you want to reach a client spiritually, maybe stop looking through a therapist lenses and drop the bias of your ego. See from the clients eyes, empathetically, to reach them spiritually.
Practice mindfulness on your own and learn how to go below the ego and intuitively connect with your clients. practice and apply everyday if you want to know how to use it in therapy.
Marty