I guess it goes without saying that if I can find The Power to Surrender one thing is certain, along with my Surrender will come change.  For me, I have found in both my Recovery and my Surrender change is not only welcome and desired, it brings with it more freedom than I have ever felt in my life.  It's a simple freedom.  It's the freedom to be myself.  This "self" I have found by learning to "listen" to God is the same "enemy" I feared referenced by Ghandi in the above quote.  Just like Jerry Rice, "going deep", I had to go deep to find what there was to love "within" and "let go" of the coward who feared to love and be loved and find I too had the perogative to be Brave.  It's a choice and does not come from a place of fear or a false perception of Power born in fear, it comes from a place of love born in my Soul. In all of our souls that for too many gets lost in those too cowardly to exhibit love or Courageous enough to understand those who exhibit the most bravery as they walk amongst us are those who love ourselves enough to find the freedom to remove our masks, our hoods, and be ourselves and not feel compelled to exhibit their cowardice by projecting their negative self-image they are hiding, upon those of us that know and understand God is Love.  For me. with this heightened awareness, I can find personal freedom in Surrendering my fears of Submission and loss of self, to a more personal Surrender of no longer feeling the need to  impose my will upon others while also coming to understand I have the Power to not allow others to impose their will upon me.  Thus I become Brave, I have Courage, and I don't fear change.  In fact I love it, well most of it, but I no longer Fear it because I know I'm not the enemy anymore because God told me to "love my enemy" and I did....which gets me to thinking which I often do 

It gets me to thinking, what in the hell am I talking about?  Several things actually and if you will bear with me I might even get to one or two of them.  Let's go with change first, since everything, well most of it has changed on this web site and there are several reasons.  The first and most obvious is that I am not in Kansas anymore, but I am still serene - most of the time.  So in deciding to change the name of the site and purchase a new domain I also had to give some thought to a new name.  I did.  I knew what I wanted.  I wanted the obvious and the most logical, the one in which I write about how Surrender is not about Submission but more about Freedom.  So I wanted to name it the power of surrender....it wasn't available.  I will tell you, in part, why shortly.  I still wanted, and needed, the reality of the name having to include power of surrender because it is what I write about and what I truly believe.  I would be a Coward if I shied away from this part of myself that is now my friend and no longer my enemy.  In 2005 I copyrighted whatever I had in my "repertoire" then and all that has been added since under the power of surrender series.  At the time the "series" consisted of a handful of poems and whatever images I might use whenever publishing a "book with a poem"...just one....in it.  In my "wildest dreams" did I ever believe that I might write a "series" of books, regardless if no one reads them or not.  In following my understanding of God's Will for my life and not my own, I have come to understand the "series" is more than just a few poems, a few images, a few thoughts.  It's about Love, God's Love, feeling it when I died and finding both the Courage and The Power to share it with you by Surrendering my will and replacing it with the Gift of Gratitude.  Along the way accepting that all I really "need" for me, is to reach just one of you.  It's enough and so you are you just the way you are.  So my blog became a book, which I self-published (submitted?), totally unique, totally mine, none other in the entire Universe like it - or so I thought.  Until I successfully published my book on Amazon and there it was for all of you to see and I felt so proud and grateful until I noticed something right next to mine, another book and in recalling this "moment" it gets me to thinking....which I often do

It was a book written by yet another Michael, a different Michael and the name of the book was:  "The Power of Surrender".  However the only similarity was in the name.  This Michael is of all things, a Baptist Minister, a "disciple" of the God of my former understanding.  I will be honest, I have not read it but I am pretty sure I know it.  It's the God that invokes fear, in which surrender is submission, and not nearly as much about Love as fire and brimstone.  I know another Michael, one of the people who have what I want and he used to describe this God of his former understanding as a "Getcha God", in the home he grew up in if you didn't do what you were told even if it was wrong God was going to GET YOU!  I know that dude, and I know that for whatever reasons this God works for some and that is okay with me.  I hope if it does not work for me, it is okay with you.  I tried, but it was too scary, and I apparently was cowardly because I could not exhibit the Love in a way that worked for me, for you, or for anybody for that matter.  I thought it was both ironic and kind of funny, that here were two books filled with "wisdom" of how to find Power, how to Surrender and with the exception of the title they could not be more different. And the difference was that his book is only one book with this name, while mine is a series.  A series of events and life experiences the greatest of which is culminated with my Soul feeling the Power of God's Love in Death and living to share it and not just describe something that is unknown.   All I know is that for me, I never truly felt loved by God until I learned to no longer fear Him, that there were no "conditions" imposed by humans living out their will in the name of God's that have contributed along with a disease to my feeling unworthy of even loving my enemy.  Which gets me to thinking....which I often do

When I first became member of Al-Anon, the people who have what I wanted and still do I read a book entitled:  "From Survival to Recovery - Growing Up in an Alcholic Home," which I have mentioned several times in my Power of Surrender, the first in a series of books.  Recently I led a meeting here in my new "place" of serenity on the desert and I talked about something "wonderful" I read in this book 18 years ago.  What I read was so wonderful that when I first read it, I thought of it as total and complete - BULLSHIT. Impossibe and improbable and certainly nothing I was worthy of ever feeling much less living.  See back then, I had not learned to love my enemy first.  I hadn't changed.  I hadn't learned that if I Surrender all of my Fear, and instead accept the Power of Love it was possible to live a life beyond my wildest dreams, in fact it was a Promise.  Several of them. and what I explained to my friends who understand what I was saying is that the true miracle of these promises is not that the world around me will change, or did change, or the disease would be cured in fact in many ways life around me got worse.  However, like my web site, through a "series" of changes in and around me and accepting that if I Surrender my Fear and accept unconditional Love, I will find Power and it will come not from a promise of a religion, a person, a dogma, or from anyone or anything other than Divine Spiritual Inspiration found in The Twelves Steps of AA and Al-Anon which for me is unmistakable. of their origin.... and "Just for Today" I will share with you these Promises and let you decide if they come from a place of Fear or of Love.  I will also tell you that through the course of the last 18 years along with "changing" my perception of myself, I have also changed my perception of these "promises" from bullshit to reality....because not only have I learned to appeciate their Power, I have actually experienced and lived them "most of the time" and the last feeling I feel is submissive.  Oh yeah, one other "thing" I need to mention before you turn the page, along with these Promises comes a guarantee.  Al-Anon only asks that you give us a fair try, it is suggested you try at least six different meetings because just like us they are all as unique as we are different.  If after attending for six times, if you still feel it's not for you it's okay with us and we will love you anyway.  The guarantee?  Oh that, no problem, we will gladly refund your misery!!  Turn the page to find the Power of Surrender