Take Action or Surrender (Which is it?)

I have this mild debate with my friend Bonnie from time to time. The conversation is so respectful that if you weren’t really paying attention, you probably would never notice it was a debate. I was thinking about it right before I received and read a quote from Abraham Hicks. “Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration. Of course your belief is part of your vibration. So if you believe that action is part of what brings your abundance, then you’ve got to unravel that”. Abraham is not available to me right now to discuss this with so it is Bonnie that I easily engage during one of our weekly sunrise hikes in  Alpine, NJ on the Hudson River. When I share my belief that our course is pre-chartered, Bonnie offers her insight that “we make our world whatever we want it to be”.  We are not really in disagreement about that, Bonnie and I.  My words sometimes take on the illusion that we should not take action. I am forever trying to find just the right verbiage to communicate that this is not what “letting go” is intended to mean.

When I first started 12-stepping, I had a hard time with admitting I was powerless. That almost gave the impression that I was giving up. There comes a time when surrendering might be the healthiest option. Surrendering often disguises itself as giving up. With practice, I have come to believe that surrendering is quite the opposite of giving up. Surrendering is acceptance. It is by no means a free pass to relinquish responsibility and stop taking action. It simply means that I stop trying to dictate the things that are beyond my control that I keeping trying to convince myself are in my control. It means that I cannot dominate my mother’s cancer diagnosis or her choice about which protocol to take. It means I can take measures toward accepting the circumstances, supporting her choices, spending more time with her, and practicing unconditional love. It means that when someone that I was once so invested in attacks me emotionally or physically, that I employ boundary setting instead of trying to “correct” their behavior.(Changing someone else’s behavior is never in my control). I understand now that expecting someone to behave in ways that they won’t, only heightens my resentment. The more focus I apply toward changing my own behavior the more positive the outcome and the less disappointment. Acting upon what I can change is letting go of the addiction to make the outcome be what I think it should be. Forcing friction causes an imbalance in my vibrational alignment and that only hinders the results. The energy is always present, you see. Where it is applied determines the outcome. It is never sitting and doing nothing and waiting for God to send the boat to rescue me. It is doing the work in a more connected way. A way that is gentle and in its’ right time illuminates the pre-paved journey that the universe has so powerfully orchestrated. And while I used to believe that it was ME who determined my future, it is only me who can adjust the way I tackle the course toward what my future already has in store. The work is to embrace, accept, trust and align. Certainly not in that order. Perhaps this does have something to do with taking responsibility for how we want it, as Bonnie would suggest. Surrendering includes embracing, allowing and trusting the course that already has our best interest in mind. Letting go means rerouting my actions and doing my best. There are going to be roadblocks that enter in my path.  My work is to seek out ways to embrace the lesson that they offer to the best of my ability and navigate my way to the other side as I dust the remnants from my sleeve.