Surrender And Acceptance

By: Nikhil Gangoli

One of the most useful concepts to grow spiritually and becoming happier is the method of acceptance or surrender.

I have personally found this method to be perhaps the most workable and useful in retaining my poise and staying happier as I go through life. Partly because of my upbringing no doubt, I have had a life–long habit of being very self critical and judgmental. I have the habit of criticizing and feeling bad about myself for every little thing that happened to me – internally or externally. I tried to reason my way out of this habit but it did not work – the habit is still with me. I also feel guilty many times during the day when I am caught up with my memories of times when I behaved badly.

For anybody in this situation, or anybody who feel negatively about himself or the situation in which he finds himself the proper attitude is that of acceptance and surrender. Surrender to the thoughts and feelings which arise in you. If you are feeling bad about yourself, or your relationships, or your work or anything about your life–situation welcome and accept that feeling. Surrender to it, perhaps it was what was meant to happen at this time. Watch the feeling with as much detachment as you can. It will pass as it must; all things in this world are impermanent.

In the classic spiritual bestseller – The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle advises us to treat whatever negative feeling that arises in your mind as a message saying, “Attention – Here and Now. Wake up – Get out of your mind – be present”.

Surrender does not mean resignation to your life situation. If you are stuck in the mud you don’t say “I resign myself to being stuck in the mud” and do nothing about it. If you have lost your job, if you find yourself trapped in a bad relationship or in any situation that you find intolerable then obviously you must do something about it. We all need to plan and work to change certain aspects of our lives. I am not telling you to blame your fate or destiny for everything that happens and do nothing about it.

What I am asking you to do is to surrender to everything, which is happening to you – internally and externally at this instant in your life. If you are trapped in the morning rush during your daily long commute to work, then accept whatever is happening – inside and outside – at that instant. Surrender to your feelings of freedom, irritation and frustration. Don’t repress those feelings – accept them, surrender to them.

Surrender to the long life of cars or the crowd in the bus or local train. Accept your present situation – at that instant – fully and without reservation. This should not prevent you from changing what can and needs to be changed. Perhaps you can get another job, or shift to another branch of your company closer to your home. Perhaps you can take the bus to your office instead of driving yourself. You can make use or your daily commute by reading a newspaper or a book or doing some work. Change what can be changed, surrender to what is happening at this instant – the one thing that you cannot change.

About the Author: Transform yourself through Eastern Philosophy. For a completely new way of looking at life please visit the Eastern Philosophy website at http://www.eastern-philosophy-and-meditation.com/index.html and sign up for the Free newsletter (Source: www.isnare.com )

How to overcome loneliness

Do you often feel lonely? If you do, you may spend a lot of time wondering what’s wrong with you.

It may seem as if everyone else but you has lots of friends. It may seem like everyone else is always getting invited to go to exciting parties. And it may seem like you’re the only one who is left at home, waiting for the phone to ring, wondering why no one ever calls you to invite you out.

Actually, loneliness is much more common than you might think. There is actually an epidemic of loneliness in many societies today.

This may surprise you.

After all, so many millions of us in the modern world are jammed close together in large teeming cities, and we have at hand all the technological conveniences that are supposed to bring people closer together, such as e-mail, telephones, faxes, and the Internet.

Why are so many of us more lonely than ever?

The reason is that society has changed very rapidly in the past two or three hundred years. Many of the social factors that used to make it easy to make and keep friends for a lifetime have disappeared.

Families have changed a lot in recent decades. A hundred years ago, most families were very large, with many children, aunts and uncles and cousins living close by. Family members often worked together on the farm or in a family business all day long.

Today, families have shrunk in size, and family members are now so busy with their own separate projects, they rarely see each other. Families break up more often than they used to, and it is now much more common for family members to move thousands of miles away, to new jobs, new wives, or new husbands.

People used to live in the same small community for their entire lives. They stayed in the same job for decades.

These factors made it easy to make friends and keep friends.

Today, many people change jobs every few years, and they move to new cities, and leave behind family members and friends.

And many people today are very, very busy. In many ways, modern technology has not freed us from having to work harder. It has actually had the opposite effect of making us work harder and faster just to stay in the same place.

Another factor that contributes to increased loneliness is modern entertainment and communication technology.

Before the advent of television and the Internet, people had ways of having fun together every day. Many of these primitive methods of having fun have almost disappeared in the modern world.

In the old days, people used to actually talk to each other! They would play games together. They would make music.

Now this sort of primitive entertainment only occurs during a power outage. Most people now feel lost without a TV set and computer. Even in the same family, people barely know each other.

The increase in these modern forms of communication have actually decreased other forms of human interaction.

As people spend more time on the Internet, or with their text messaging, or playing games on computers, they are spending far less time actually interacting with the people around them. It has become a lot easier for people to cocoon themselves in their homes, and never see anyone.

Many people are actually spending less time developing their social skills while they may be vastly improving their computer skills.

In the modern world it seems almost everyone is pressed for time. We are often far too busy at work to develop friendships, and when we come home exhausted at the end of the day, we are too tired to make plans to socialize.

Loneliness is a bigger problem for more people today than at any previous time in history. The truly ironic fact about loneliness is that if you are lonely, you are not alone!

Still, even if you have been lonely in the past, and even if you feel lonely today, it is possible to make new friends in this modern world.

If you have been suffering from loneliness, it’s time to stop blaming yourself, and it’s time to stop blaming the rest of the world. It’s time to do something to solve the problem of loneliness.

You can make new friends and have the social life you dream of. To have more friends you will have to learn new techniques of socializing and making conversation. You will have to make the effort to meet many more new people.

If you learn the secrets of those people who make friends easily, and implement these techniques into your life, you too can have a happy social life.

Your loneliness will be a thing of the past!

About the Author: This article is written by Royane Real, author of the new downloadable book "How You Can Have All the Friends You Want – Your Complete Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends, and Keeping Friends" If you want to have more friends in your life, get it today at http://www.royanereal.com (Source: www.isnare.com)

Are You Controlling Or Loving Yourself?

By: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

How often do you hear a parental voice in your head that says things like, “You’ve got to lose weight,” or “You should get up earlier every morning and exercise,” or “Today I should get caught up on the bills,” or “I’ve got to get rid of this clutter.” Let’s explore what happens in response to this voice.

We have a very good reason for judging ourselves: the judgmental part of us believes that by judging, criticizing, “shoulding” ourselves, we will motivate ourselves to take action and therefore protect against failure or rejection. We may have been judging ourselves to get ourselves to do things “right” since we were kids, hoping to keep ourselves in line. And we keep on doing it because we believe it works.

Let’s take the example of Karl, who is a high-powered executive in a large accounting firm. Karl has had a heart attack and is supposed to watch his diet. Right after his heart attack, he did well avoiding sugar, fats, and overeating, but after six months or so, he found himself struggling with his food plan. In our counseling session, Karl told me he was upset with himself for having a big desert as well as a big meal the night before. I asked Karl to put himself back into the situation and recreate what he had been feeling.

“Well, I was out to dinner with one of our biggest clients. He asked me a question and I didn’t remember the facts, so I couldn’t answer him. As soon as this happened, that voice came into my head telling me that I’m stupid, that I should have remembered it and ‘What’s the matter with me anyway?’”

“What did you feel as soon as you judged yourself?” I asked.

“Well, looking back, I think I felt that sad, sort of dark empty hollow feeling I often get inside. And you know what - that’s when I started to eat a lot of bread with tons of butter and ordered the desert! I didn’t realize it was in response to that empty feeling that I hate!”

“So the sad empty feeling is what you feel when you judge yourself. Judging yourself is an inner abandonment, so your Inner Child then feels alone, sad and empty. You are telling your Child that he is not good enough. I know that you don’t do this with your actual children, but you do it a lot with yourself, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I think it do it all the time. After I judged myself for not knowing the answer, then I judged myself for eating too much and having desert. And then I felt even worse.”

“So what did you hope for by judging yourself?

“I guess I hoped that I could control my eating and also get myself to work harder so I wouldn’t forget things.”

“It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“No, it just makes me feel terrible. In fact, I can see that judging myself for not knowing the answer made me feel so badly that then I wanted to eat more. Instead of giving me more control, it gave me less!”

“So you are trying to have control over yourself through your self-judgments, but what actually happens is that you feel awful and behave in addictive ways to avoid the pain. I think what also happens is that some part of you goes into resistance to being judged and told what to do, so you end up doing the opposite of what you tell yourself you should do.”

“Right. As soon as I tell myself not to eat so much and judge myself for eating, that’s when I really want to eat. So I’m eating to not be controlled and also because in judging myself I’m abandoning myself, which makes me feel sad and empty, and I’ve always used food to fill up that emptiness. Whew! How do I stop this cycle?”

“You can’t stop it until you are conscious of it. As long as you are doing it unconsciously - on automatic pilot - you have no choice over it. So the first thing you can do is not try to change it but just notice it. As you become very aware of this pattern, you will have the choice to change it. You will have the choice to be loving and caring toward yourself instead of judgmental once you become aware of what you are doing. You can start by noticing every time you feel that empty sad feeling, and then exploring what you were telling yourself that led to the painful feeling.”

Karl did start to notice and over time was able to stop judging himself. Not only did the sad empty feeling that he had experienced so often in his life go away, but he was able to keep to his medical nutrition plan for his heart. When his Inner Child felt loved instead of judged, he didn’t need to eat to take away the pain.

About the Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D., best-selling author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You” and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone Sessions. (Source: www.isnare.com )