I’ve made a commitment to live big this year, take bold choices, explore big bold issues, expand my boundaries, respond to my heart and trust the process. And sometimes, quite honestly, I find myself precariously perched on the slippery slope of trying to control the outcome and manipulate results of any encounter to suit my will, my needs, my timetable. How crazy is that? As my friend from Unity of Naples, Reverend Richard Rodgers says, “You don’t plant a seed and then 10 minutes  later dig it up to see how it’s growing.” I have to wait with trust and faith and know I am going to be o.k. So much more energy flows through me when I relax and let go and let the flow of the universe literally enter into me.

And it is joyful when I surrender, and free and expansive and uplifting. I open up to grace and feel my ego wanting to take a back seat. I know that when I let go, all things are possible, my greatest delights can be manifested and a lot of negative ugly chatter and residual inflexible energy can be released and discarded. So on my best days during the challenge I’ve had glorious moments of ease and serenity as if no effort on my part was required. I showed up, experienced, remained open, felt grateful, and the surrender was as simple as being strapped into a roller coaster car, raising my arms at the the top of the ride and feeling the giddy swoosh down.

Sometimes I refuse to let go and I know, from painful past experience,  that the opportunity will show up, usually more acutely, again. It’s as if I like, for whatever reasons, (fear of happiness might be one of them), the place I’m in, even though I know intellectually and spiritually, that surrendering to the process and letting go would make my life even bigger and better. I’m like a dog with an old gnarly bone that won’t give it up because he is convinced that there is no better treat out there.  On those days, I make an inventory, usually a list of three or four emotions, that I think might be holding me back. I write them down in a journal and date them. And then I begin the process of letting them go. I’m aware, working on acceptance, and hoping that the possibility of release will soon be revealed. The surrender does ultimately manifest for me when I practice this process every single time.

This journey is teaching me that what I hold onto is only keeping me from experiencing and living in a fashion that is way more abundant and expansive than anything I have ever known. I believe even more strongly in the infinite and  transcendent possibilities that exist out there for me because they are already manifesting in Big and small (thank you for that reminder Jamie) ways: I no longer, after 37 days operate ever from a feeling of lack. And believe me, that is really Big!

I know it’s ok to surrender, because I’m clear on my desire to Live Big, and I know that the graceful, joyful, peaceful heart-led engagements that swirl out from this surrender offer huge purpose and infinite possibilities to serve others. It’s already happening, I just need to continue to trust the flow of the universe, relax in the upstream of the good graces of a power greater than myself, and energetically and immutably transform.