Cease exerting my will in the face of a Superior Force.

Surrender to temptation or selfishness in myself or others is not a spiritual act. The Force I surrender to must be spiritually superior for surrender to lead to a quality life.

Though I did not realize it at the time, surrender to a Superior Force, God, the Greater Good, the Power behind the Principles was the first step in my awakening. A heart felt ”I need help.” from the depths of the soul has been my key to open the door of Willingness.

For me, the real surrender involved realigning who I thought I was with a Greater Reality.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is the others.”. For me this implies that feeling of “otherness”; that I am separate.

I thought I was like the leopard who comes down out of the trees to grab his kill and drag it back. Today I realize that I am much more the ant or the bee – a small, small part of a much larger whole. There is nothing degrading about being bee-like. It is simply the nature of a social species. Nothing degrading about about being a small, small part. Infinity is rather large.

A well recognized method for knowing who I am is to find out who I am not. When I surrender the fight and let go of who I think I have been, I am free to examine who I am Now.

If I think I am a homeowner, then who am I if I lose my home? If I think I am a construction worker, who am I when there is no work? If I think I am the one who thinks, who am I between my thoughts? Many experience the joy of spiritual surrender when they experience a profound sense of loss.

Being detached from profit and loss leads to greater awareness of the timeless.

What is it about me that has never changed? For one thing, my awareness of the stuff in my life; my awareness of my actions; my awareness of my thoughts; my awareness of my feelings. This seems to be the one constant. Stuff and people, the “others”, come and go. The awareness has always been but the ego in me became a thick blanket of clouded thoughts. Thoughts of the past and fears of the future blocking the inner awareness.

If I am that awareness, then spiritually surrendering thoughts, actions, attitudes or feelings does not change who I truly am. I am not the circumstances of my existence – I am the awareness. Thus, I have nothing truly to lose by surrendering stuff. Surrendering my little plans and designs that I use in an attempt to alter the "others".

Every problem I had in life had to do with expectations. I had to surrender my expectations. I can and should have some but I cannot use them as a basis for judging the quality of my life or of those I encounter along the path.

I judged the world by how well it matched my expectations until I realized - reality is the unexpected. Reality is far to complex for my “expector” to anticipate. Reality was not broken – my expector was.

I now know what I needed was a kit of spiritual tools that could handle the unexpected consistently with favorable results. Resentments become unnecessary with these tools. Fear of an uncertain future melts away. Using relations with others as a means to an end becomes unnecessary. I surrendered to the Superior Force behind the principles on which these tools are based. As a result I am:

"Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I am free at last.”