“IYLI” Chapter TWO: Transcending Apathy & Grief
The levels of grief and apathy are not to be played with, because within these two levels one comes face to face with the doorway to almost the point of no return. Grief and apathy as sidebars to regular life usually take on the characteristics of temporal feelings related to “I wish I had done more,” or “of course I messed up, I always do, why should I even try,” or “things never work out for me,” and my personal favorite, “the world is out to get me.”
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CHAPTER TWO:
Transcending the Forces of Apathy & Grief
Believing in a Power greater than myself was the key…
Dictionary.com defines apathy as “absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.” But with regards to apathy in the spiritual sense, it is much more insidious than that. Dictionary.com defines grief as “keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss, sharp sorrow; painful regret.” As with the case of apathy, grief from a spiritual sense has a darker connotation. As manifestations of the ego, both apathy and grief as current states of consciousness are far more detrimental and can be described as end-of-the road expressions of life for the individual. That’s so much more than mere absence of passion or keen mental suffering.
There were two times in my life when I had direct experience with prolonged visitation of these negative forces. One was as a child when my father passed away, and the second was as an adult when my alcoholism was in full swing. Both times, I was at low points characterized by what we’ll dive into deeper, but suffice it to say, not only were these energies present within me, but transcendence over them took place as well. No matter how low we feel, or how dejected we become, or how much we blame God for our current state of affairs, or how sad our life is, God is always present and waiting for us to cry out for help in a sincere way. God does not deny God when help is needed. God does not get angry with us for making less than stellar choices. God is not a human in the sense that anger and judgment are part of God’s make-up. Those are human foibles. There are many who would have us believe God takes joy in people’s misery and sadness and looks to judge us because of it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. God does not judge us; we judge ourselves. What we are is the only judgment necessary, and the only way to be lifted from deep seated judgments about ourselves and their corresponding prison walls created by such, is to humbly and sincerely ask God to help remove these walls and set us squarely back at even, so moving towards truth is a possibility in this lifetime.
The levels of grief and apathy are not to be played with, because within these two levels one comes face to face with the doorway to almost the point of no return. Grief and apathy as sidebars to regular life usually take on the characteristics of temporal feelings related to “I wish I had done more,” or “of course I messed up, I always do, why should I even try,” or “things never work out for me,” and my personal favorite, “the world is out to get me.”
I bring up these particular expressions of grief and mentation’s of apathy because I have also experienced the same sentimentalities at various points along life’s journey. Regardless of briefly experiencing such depressing states of awareness, or regularly finding yourself stuck in the muck of both expressions of the fear spectrum, these two illusions are levels of consciousness that are not to be taken lightly once they arise. The transcendent gift of surrender must be applied immediately to the moments when apathy and grief first become known and arise and when they present themselves. It doesn’t matter if they’re just visiting or starting to unpack their bags, these two forces always arrive heavy and daunting.
Grief and apathy have particular juices innate within them for the host ego which attract similar energies when these thoughts or feeling states are allowed to be indulged in, or allowed to fully transform into an emotional state of being. Recognizing our choice of indulgence and our intent to remain indulging are the keys to understanding their ability to rapidly build momentum into realities capable of what can feel like a never-ending loop of misery. The keyword “juice” in the sentence above, is an important one to understand and eventually know as part of your Spidey senses. I did not come up with this term “juiced.” I most commonly have heard David R. Hawkins refer to the word as a means of describing the payoff a person’s ego gets when they indulge in the particular style of self-pity that grief and apathy falsely present, as well as what other lower attracter fields certainly allow for. What I learned early on through Hawkins’s teaching is that the lower attracter fields in and of themselves do not have the power required to keep someone stuck in the muck, but the juice that they provide for self-ridicule and personal condemnation is the lynchpin in understanding their effectiveness when used by the ego to destroy an otherwise lovely day. The forces of apathy and grief are not what keep the individual stuck in agony, it’s the actual continuing to choose the juice they provide the person as what’s self-destructive, which almost forces the host to stay within a comfort zone not comfortable to most.
The personal ego thrives when it finds a comfort zone for the host in a place of discomfort. It then builds its foundation there with a repetitive cycle of the host believing they are the feelings, thoughts and emotions that come from such a detrimental foundation of this “uncomfortable comfort zone.” There’s a lie we tell ourselves consistently. When I was drinking I would be filled with grief over making poor choices. I would then drink to subdue the grief. And then would find myself back again at a state of apathy because I got drunk to hide the grief. I was then incapable of doing anything. So I would repeat the process.
These negative states result in a repetition but it’s the repetition of choosing to continually indulge in this that keeps the cycle going. And the secret to breaking the cycle is not choosing to indulge in it. But when in it, we don’t have the willpower to not choose the belief system that we are anything but this cycle. This is why the moment we sense the presence of apathy and grief we have to surrender them over immediately. We don’t want to get into that cycle. No one finds God in that cycle. As a sidebar, this is how people stay stuck in hell. When we believe we are the cycle, when we believe we are grief and apathy, we are unable to see ourselves as anything else. When we allow the cycle to cement itself as reality, then God becomes judgment and condemnation. As stated, in reality, God does not judge us. We judge ourselves. And the “we” that judges ourselves is the ego, the god we believe ourselves to be.
We hold onto outdated stories about who and what we are. We like how it makes us feel to hold onto these things, regardless of their destruction while we are indulging ourselves in the memory or the wake those memories leave behind once gone. We’re addicted to the juice of being angry. We’re addicted to the juice of being sad. We’re addicted to the juice of being the victim. We get to feel justified in our resentment of life if we have the continual juice needed to remain resentful. The reason people allow themselves to find comfort in what many would describe as uncomfortable, is because as long as they’re the victim, they’re somebody, and for the personal ego, being somebody is always better than being nobody.
Even being the king of sadness allows the ego to be king of something. The personal ego fears being seen as less than what’s present, so it allows for states of depression and agony all in the name of survival. We feed off of the juice of things and the stories we tell ourselves about particular moments in time, not the actual moments in time. Moments are just moments, nothing more, nothing less. But stories can last forever.
The good news is that for the most part, those of you reading this are not or will not remain in the states of grief and apathy for serious lengths of time, unless otherwise prompted by the onset of serious depression or the sudden loss of someone dear to you. For the purpose of these two lower levels of consciousness, we will talk more about how to use them as motivators as opposed to that which brings continual stress.
The juice we get when we inhabit a particularly negative thought pattern, as with grief and apathy, can give someone an immediate sense of righteousness and moral superiority. This can be seen in the rebuttal by many afflicted with grief and apathy: “you just don’t understand, bad stuff always happens to me and there is nothing I can do about it.” Or any other version of this sentiment that fits your fancy. One of the favorite distractions the ego likes to use when keeping us separate from that which we really are, is keeping us separate from those around us who can help our situation through empathy of shared experiences. The personal ego not only wants us separate from higher and higher truths, but apart from love in any form when still playing victim.
When I was in the darkest of my drinking days I withdrew from society, and not because I chose to do so in a willing fashion, but because my ego told me time and time again that I wasn’t good for anyone, I wasn’t worth anything, and that all I could do to someone else was cause pain and misery. At first, when the ego tried this trick, I laughed it off as goofy thinking, but as the disease of alcoholism went into full swing, I began believing the thoughts, and then the belief became compounded by the juice I got from being right about no one wanting to hang around even though I was the one choosing to be around fewer and fewer people. The personal ego sets up isolation and manipulates truth through self-fulfilling prophesies. My reasoning for being alone turned inward and became solidified against reproach, and all because I started to get a rush at inhabiting the victim mentality. And always soon to follow in short order was a reaffirmation from my ego that I indeed had nothing to offer anyone, for there was no one in my life to offer it to.
My logic was skewed, and based out of a defeated sense of self-worth, brought on by years of allowing my ego to run wild. What was hard to see amongst the sea of fallen tears that covered my apartment far and wide, is that beneath it all, beneath the grief and apathy, beneath the juice I got from proving my isolationist theory correct time and time again, was the desire to approach life once more from a different angle. And thus, the cycle of grief over past mistakes and apathy over current circumstances would play out in fine fashion once more because at the time I was not powerful enough to overcome the repetition of negativity or humble enough to ask for help.
The cycle of being juiced by lower attracter fields and the cycle of maintaining lower levels of consciousness is nauseating at best, but it becomes the best you’re familiar with. The ego wins a mighty battle when it becomes better for the human to isolate than to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine breaking its way through shut blinds.
The juice of the lower consciousness levels is what in part keeps people addicted to them, and while there is an active addiction, whether it be to drugs or alcohol, or to the ego’s portrayal of life, it remains difficult to see the sunshine for what it is, without first asking God for help with opening those blinds. Apathy and grief are the gateway drugs to death, and they are the last two emotional sets which lead the individual into the lowest depths of hell while still in this body. The only cure for transcending the ego when these two forces of hell come calling is to see each illusion for what it is, an illusion, and surrender over the feelings and the juice associated with said feelings as soon as you possibly can. The only salvation possible to transcend prolonged visits to these desperate ways of living is through a higher power reaching down upon sincere request and removing someone from their current life predicament. When all else fails, God is the answer. Likewise, when all else works, God was the answer. And that is true whether the question was pondered on or not.
Another point worth discussing is willpower. I thought for the longest time willpower would deliver me from the bondage of self. But what I never knew because it is not common knowledge, and certainly was not brought to my attention at the time, willpower is only as strong as the level of consciousness you currently calibrate at. The world sees an addict or an alcoholic and says they just need more willpower. But what I know as truth now is that someone who is a slave to their ego and addictions, in no way shape or form has the willpower needed to overcome anything. The interesting thing is addictions and their corresponding levels of consciousness calibrate very low on Hawkins’s Map of Consciousness. To illustrate, self-loathing, unlovable, riddled with fear, desperate for relief me calibrated extremely low. But one drink in after work – a drink that began with the equivalent of six shots of vodka before I added a splash of cranberry – and I became freed from the bondage of those feelings to experience temporary love and relief and a level of comfort vastly superior to where I was when I first started to pour that drink. I was subduing the fears associated with life in favor of something temporarily far greater, and that’s why the alcoholic repeats the cycle. You go from hell to heaven in – what? – six minutes. Only to experience the grief once again. And the cycle starts all over. What you’re searching for isn’t to get drunk or to get high, but how you feel when you’re drunk or high. The problem is you only get to visit those states when you are drunk or high. You don’t actually live there.
It’s important to know that while one person can help another person, no one person has the power to save another. It takes a power of something much greater than yourself or of anyone else you come in contact with to relieve your sufferings at times when they appear their darkest. Only God, and the power of love at an immense level can do the trick. God, however, sends people to help people. If you asked Mother Teresa how is it that you can help thousands of lepers, she would say, “I’m not doing anything.” The love that someone is brings relief, not the physical person. Truth, which I use as synonymous with love throughout, is what brings lasting relief. Believing in your grief or apathy is far from knowing the truth. The direct image of someone’s joy and happiness brings relief. As a quick aside, a person doesn’t heal another person by their actions or beliefs, and a person does not perform miracles along the same vein. Healing and miracles arise from within the field which that person inhabits or calls upon to be present. If you see another seemingly healed from the presence of another person, it has nothing to do with the personage of the person who you think healed the individual, it has everything to do with what was allowed to come through that person to perform the miracle of healing without medicine.
So, on the day when I cried out to God for help with my alcoholism, which I now know was merely my ego run wild manifesting itself in the form of addiction, it was God’s power and love that saved me from the hell I was living in, and not my mother’s worry, or my friend’s advice, or my willpower that had anything to do with it.
When one reaches the bottom of whatever floorless foundation they call the absolute depths of depravity, only a power far greater than yourself can help you find your way out of the darkness. Knowing that now as an absolute is freeing to say the least, and it also happens to be where some of this 12–step magic starts to present itself. If you reread the sentence above again from a slightly different perspective, you might also catch that having God be the only source of one’s deliverance from the dark into the light is what it takes to effortlessly let go of one’s attachment to the juices of grief and apathy, because you were never in control of the energy of despair to begin with. They were just unruly visitors who outwore their welcome but continued to strongarm you for prolonged inhabitance.
The mere act of asking for help with an earnest desire to be better, along with doing the work you’ll find within this book or among any 12-step group, is all it takes to be better and receive that help. It really is that simple. So do me, and yourself, a favor and don’t try to overcomplicate it. The ego is the base root of overcomplicating things, and by now we should all agree that the ego is not our friend who helps us out in times of anguish, but the friend we all have that talks about us behind our back and who starts drama for the sake of feeling better about themselves.
As a last bit of information before moving onto hearing from the spiritual masters of ages past, we will look a little closer at what characteristics grief and apathy have as their basis for consciousness calibration through information provided by Dr. Hawkins. Not only for the person inhabiting the lower consciousness levels of apathy and grief, but also the average man or woman who finds themselves visiting the land of apathy and grief. Each will find these characteristics particularly familiar: their basic view of God fluctuates between disdainful at best and condemning at worst, which means the ego has the opportunity at these lower levels to do serious damage to an otherwise already compromised state of being in the world. The life-view of someone within these levels of consciousness is slightly better than someone operating from a place of shame and guilt, but only because evil has not yet completely overtaken their psyche; tragic and hopeless are the main ways someone sees their life when coming from apathy or grief, to the degree that any attempt at making life better is defeated before ever trying. The emotions most commonly associated with these levels of the ego’s dominance are based in regret and despair, and without the help of a higher power to rescue someone from these depths of self-loathing, time is running out for hope to ever be present again. The last aspects of grief and despair worth noting are the processes with which someone coming from these attracter fields manages to work throughout their daily lives, with despondency and abdication being the dominant overarching catalysts for progress.
Being able to see these levels from an objective standpoint brings about the understanding needed to embrace the knowledge that the ego does not have our best interests at heart. At one point the ego may seem like a well-rounded travel companion, but it is at the levels of grief and apathy that the human being is at the cliffs of almost total destruction. Despondency means to lose all hope or courage, and the byproduct of losing all hope or courage is a very low sense of self-worth, and an almost nonexistent sense of worthiness in general. Abdication is a step further down the rung of fortune, and basically means that the person coming from a state of apathy, or even just visiting it for a short while, is likely to not only have no self-worth left, but begins bartering with the devil as it were, for the chance of even a morsel of serenity. The ego would rather sell your soul and allow you to give up all your rights as a child of God, than see you succeed past its grasp in any way. At the level of grief, the ego still holds on to hope that its best days are ahead, but once someone reaches the doorway of apathy and decides to walk willingly into its clutches, even the ego starts to jump ship and leave you almost altogether, and subsequently relinquishes its vessel to the lowest levels of luciferic manipulation. The reason demonic possession can start occurring at this level is because not even the mind and logic is left to reason against it.
Now is a good time to talk a little bit about luciferic energy, how it uses temptation, and how the luciferic manifests itself no matter how close to God one grows. Have no fear though, for the luciferic does not actually represent an entity in and of itself worthy of fear, but more or less represents the energy of that which is almost completely cut off from the sunlight of redemption. I would be hiding the truth from you if I didn’t let you know that there is in fact an entity named lucifer, and that the energy this entity represents has byproducts that can manifest as demonic and satanic. The reality of this entity, however, is not that it is an equal field general to Jesus, or able to bring about the end times, but that it is a pesky sideshow not worth entertaining. I have come into contact with this entity several times since surrendering my life over to God, and in each encounter the result has been the same: awareness of the presence and then casting the presence out with either a command to leave in the name of Jesus, or by invoking the power and love of God the creator. Lucifer is not worth your time, energy, or any amount of worry, for even the smallest amount of love is volumes greater than the best attempt that this luciferic energy represents.
In the lowest levels of consciousness, as found in apathy, guilt, and then shame, the demonic energies begin to not only create a life very few would wish on their most despised of enemies, but the energy itself creates a gateway for lower astral entities having the opportunity to inhabit the human being. These entities are comprised of lower astral beings and what the world would call demons, who either have not crossed into the next phase, or they represent energies that manifest from parallel lives within parallel dimensions. Once someone calibrates at levels above these forces, they no longer have the threat of these entities becoming pronounced within them. And once a calibrated level of courage or higher is reached, this energy comes only in the forms of temptations and ego-driven thought patterns.
What I just said may sound like hocus pocus, but trust me, it’s not energy you want to play with or have the unfortunate opportunity to come in contact with while calibrating at these lower levels yourself. For the time being, the only advice worth giving is that when you find yourself flirting with prolonged experiences of grief and apathy, your only hope for being saved is to cry out to the Creator for rescue. And mean it with every fiber of your being.
Many of you reading this book will have either heard about or taken part in astral projection for yourself, or you will become interested in it as a past-time at some point in your life. Or perhaps many of you will not, but nevertheless, the realms filled with these lower astral energies will present themselves to you as a possible location for your wandering spirit to travel to at one point or another in your evolution of consciousness. I would advise not vacationing there or booking any travel to these realms, no matter how curious you are to see what this kind of life is all about.
This next part of the chapter is my favorite aspect of this book. It is because we get to here from four teachers of the highest ilk who walked the earth before us. As I have stated earlier, but will rephrase slightly here, whether you consider yourself a Christian, a Buddhist, Hindu or Daoist, your religious figurehead often holds more wisdom in an attributed sentence than all of the new age gurus combined, and it is because of this that I am glad God chose their words to be included in this book.
TRUTHS
(The Dhammapada) Seeking within, you will find stillness. Here there is no more fear or attachment - only joy.
(The Bhagavad Gita) Those who find the Way are those who have love and forgiveness in their hearts.
(The Tao Te Ching) The Way is mighty, yet people prefer smaller paths.
(The Gospel of John) I am a beacon of light to those who see me. I am a mirror to those who look for me. I am a door to those who knock on me. I am a Way for you, the traveler.
CONTEMPLATING ON TRUTH
No matter what I searched for out in the world I was perpetually left wanting more and feeling increasingly inadequate at what I found, leaving me always only wanting more. The problem with looking outside of one’s self with the hope of “getting fixed,” is that it brings about further attachments to the impermanence of life, and those attachments bring with them the fears that one is not enough currently (grief), nor will one be enough in the future (apathy). Looking within, past what I thought myself to be, past the confines of the personal ego, and past the landscape of the mind, all for answers and for fulfillment did just the opposite to searching in the world. It gave real hope and lasting momentum free of fear or attachment to what I found. Whether I thought a nicer car would make me feel more accomplished, or a bigger house would create more security, or physical intimacy from a stranger would make me feel more loved, or the flashy sparkle of jewelry would make me feel above someone else, or a deep-dive into the false teachings of our modern day, social media, snake oil salesmen, aka “guru-based-influencers,” would make me feel momentarily enlightened by their reused wisdom – none of it lasted or created a connection with the divine worth repeating.
The outside world has a way of making people think what we’re searching for can be found somewhere outside of us, but in all reality, what we’re searching for is found within and beneath the stillness of our being. We don’t experience Love through the content of life, but it’s the context from which that content arises where Love is found. If one spends their life looking for more and more things to make them happy, they’ll spend their entire life disappointed and angry. Attachments and expectations are the root of suffering. When one expects to find lasting happiness in a new relationship, or in a new car, or new promotion, or new whatever, attachment to this expectation and its results soon follow. “I thought this or that was supposed to make me happy!” But after getting this or that, wanting soon starts up again. Lasting happiness and joy are found within – they are not found out there amongst the billboards promoting more “wantingness” and further attachments.
More so today than in years past, personally, the words “love” and “forgiveness” appear as actions as opposed to pretty thoughts. Consequently, when I currently meditate on what “heart” means, it no longer solely means my predisposition towards others and myself based on how I feel about them or me, but how I choose to act towards the collective “we” in word and deed. So in actuality, in this context, the word “heart” can be seen as an action word as well. We have all heard the term “they’re all heart," and if someone you know is “all heart” it is because that person displays acts of love and forgiveness in their daily life. We are defined by others mostly based upon our actions, and if I desire to be defined not by past decisions but by future acts, what better way to start redefining myself than with the actions of love and forgiveness, as opposed to ones inspired by grief and apathy? The purification of my heart starts with love and forgiveness for myself, followed by love and forgiveness for the world around me. Then loving and forgiving acts towards others on a moment-to-moment basis.
Love and forgiveness are the action steps of the heart, and they are also the steps necessary to find the Way, in solitude or out amongst the wolves. Heart, as it’s described in spiritual literature, is not an organ found within the body, but more akin to decision making, namely, putting someone else’s needs above your own, or at least on an even playing field. “Coming from the heart,” is another way of saying, “I recognize you as equal to me, and because of this fact, I have gratitude for you and your story.” Coming from the heart by practicing love and forgiveness is one way to God, and it’s a viable understanding of the tenets of Christianity. Jesus came forth from the heart of God, as Love manifested, for the hearts of man, to be a guidepost for all who seek to know what love and forgiveness look like lived out. Krishna, as expounded on within the Bhagavad Gita, is quoted above as giving one all the information they need to find God, or as he describes it, “The Way,” through the quote above: “Those who find the Way are those who have love and forgiveness in their hearts.” Love and forgiveness are not always easy to practice, mostly because people often feel unloved and not forgiven in their own life. However, the trick to finding God in one’s daily life is to first start by forgiving yourself and forgiving God. Then love has a chance to start growing in pastures ready for an eventual harvest capable of feeding many.
Throughout life, I can mark the years and days gone-by with preferences for choosing smaller paths than what I do now.
Through loveless sex and revolving partners, I chose a smaller path.
Through self-imposed misery and inevitable self-defeat, I chose a smaller path.
Through uninvestigated anger directed outwards at others and the world around me, I chose a smaller path.
Through complaining about life and distancing myself from the Way, I chose a smaller path.
Through embracing pride as a viable means of self-expression, and through choosing both envy and jealousy as important means to an end, I chose a smaller path.
Through holding onto grief and apathy as unshakable comforts, I chose a smaller path.
Through abusing drugs and alcohol as an escape from life, I chose a smaller path.
Through limiting God in my everyday life, I chose a smaller path.
Through fear of the future, I chose a smaller path.
Through regret of the past, I chose a smaller path.
Through worry about how people thought of me, I chose a smaller path.
Through selfishness and dishonesty, I chose a smaller path.
Today, however, I mark my days and moments not by choosing smaller paths, but by conscious decisions directed towards experiencing the Mighty Way. Today, my head holds high and my shoulders rear back as I fearlessly move from perfect moment to perfect moment – for today, I choose not the smaller path but the road less traveled, the road of union with the divine – the life of a humbled servant and not and emboldened slave. People choose smaller paths for various reasons: either they haven’t heard about another way of going about life, or they don’t know how to go about living life another way. Or they’re scared to pursue another way of life due to current comforts or laziness in their present routine for sameness with the masses. When one chooses the Mighty Way, they’re choosing uncertainty and faith in something unseen and unknown yet. But for those who have made the choice to chase after God, and found God, all report back that the Way is Mighty indeed. So, as you look around your life, as you sit back and ponder on the greatest adventure a person could embark upon in this lifetime, what’s more intriguing than finding out if God is real or not? And simultaneously finding out what happens once you have had a direct experience with such immense truth?
If one seeks to know God in this life and not just understand what other people proclaim about divinity, it helps to meet godly men and women along the way, in order to help keep one focused on the end goal of reaching max potential as a spiritual being. In our darkest hours we all need someone or something to guide us towards the light. We all need a mirror to show us what we are and what we are not. And while traveling our chosen path, doesn't it make the journey more enjoyable to know we have a companion? A companion to help us keep our current pace?
I believe Jesus is not saying that through only his likeness you will find needed forgiveness, but instead, by following his actions we all have a chance to find The Way for ourselves, or to see Truth in our own life, and to experience Light on our journey towards completeness and reconnection and lived forgiveness. And if it’s not Jesus one reaches for in their darkest and most light-filled times, then maybe it’s Krishna, or the Buddha, or another enlightened being not quite on the level of a living Avatar.
Jesus, for me, was what I was brought up loving as a child and early adult. Jesus, for me, was the goal and the hopeful destination. I hold none above Jesus. But I’ve come to realize knowing is always more powerful than understanding. So today, I place none above Jesus in stature, but I also know there are some who can call themselves brothers and sisters with the divine. I know today, that learning from Jesus and living out the pathway of service and surrender, one too has the chance at a certain point in this lifetime or the next, to call Jesus both Love, Savior and Brother in the same breath. Seeing others as God sees them, starts with but a simple choice: choose to follow someone who’s light shines bright enough to light your path. Once you’re in unison with light, your entire village gets an opportunity to see through the darkness. At this point, you’ll realize that religion doesn’t lead to God, but that it’s only a part of understanding which leads to knowingness.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR STEP TWO
Find a quiet space away from the noise of other people and from the busyness of the world. If you find yourself making it to this step and you cannot escape what’s around you and you’re ready to take this step, don’t worry about where you are, just close your eyes for a moment or two and take a few deep breaths. This step can be taken by speaking the words below internally or externally, but I would recommend doing both in succession and then writing them down after you’re finished reciting them. What this step means, is that you recognize that without the aid of something greater than yourself it is not possible to transcend your attachments to the ego/mind and the world around you. And that by staying in the place where the mind is what you believe you are, you are missing out on the opportunity to move past mind and into a world where love is more abundant and happiness is known and not just understood.
The power of this step is also found within in the humility to admit that you are not powerful enough to do this act on your own. If you were you would not be here taking this step. This step has truth within it to the degree with which you profess honestly a choice to surrender over the notion that you have the power needed for helping yourself, in exchange for power coming from something greater than you, regardless if you believe in something greater than you or not.
By taking this step, you are reaffirming that faith is a choice you’re making, and it’s not faith in the author of this work, but faith in the redeeming power of that which created you. Or that which you cannot define but hope exists. You do not need to believe in God to take this step, or even use the word God, but you do have to choose humility in the face of doubt about divinity and come from a place of admitting you don’t know the truth about divinity. You cannot trick divinity into believing you, so it’s paramount that honesty is your guiding principle. The key to surrender is radical honesty.
STEP TWO
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I have come to believe that a power greater than myself can remove the blocks to transcending my ego, and in and of myself, I do not have the power to do so.
STEP TWO PRAYER
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I let go of that which binds me, that which I have attachments to, and that which I have set expectations on. Thank you, Lord, for hearing this prayer, and for loving me more than I love myself.