SURRENDER

Spiritual surrender gives us a positive way out of our inability to meet the demands
placed on us by our addiction - active or in recovery.

Our submission is voluntary and grants immediate relief from antagonism, hate, counter-plotting, rivalry and all the times we are otherwise at cross purposes with life.

Surrender is positive for us because we have hope and many other to turn to whatever our dilemma.

In keep with our NA 12 Steps and Tradition, it becomes obvious that the recovery process of Narcotics Anonymous won't work without an individual capacity for surrender. This quality is so prevalent in allowing recovering addicts to provide our common welfare that it qualifies as a principle in it's own right. In truth, other recovering addicts themselves are the realist form of the welfare of NA.

Surrender can guide us when we don't know what to do. Without surrender to the reality of our powerlessness, we are catapulted back into our disease.

When we try to participate in NA services without a capacity for spiritual surrender, we find it impossible to make or maintain conscious contact with our Higher Power. Without our Higher Power to strengthen and guide us, we set about trying to do service as if it were a business, our member so many clients. Service is simple with the help of a loving God. Otherwise, we quickly find ourselves lost in a sea paperwork, reports and personalities. Responsibility to other services bodies can interfere with or completely over ride the direct responsibility we all have to our group. Without this sense of responsibility to directly inform, respect and listen to what our member want, service degenerates into most pointless kind conflict.

We find ourselves on opposite sides of imaginary boundaries, cut off from those who have helped us, unable to ask for help and clinging to desperate sort of ideals.

Trying to do service as part of our Twelfth Step without spiritual assistance, we become miserable, confused, unhappy and resentful. All the beauty and freshness of recovery fades and service opportunities become a chores.

Surrender allows us to look at the bright side at any given point. The principles which gave us power to escape from our addiction, slides neatly into place and things begin to make sense again.

Our desperation fades and we gain the ability to see the long view - on a daily basis! Our sense of attachment to obsessive ideas and our personal preferences are once again mixed in with the ideas and preferences of others. The sense of win or lose is replaced with a continuum of thought, feeling and interaction with others. We are never alone. As our fear decreases, our sense of purpose and the ability to laugh at ourselves returns.

Those unable to carry their recovery into their service can be hard workers, brilliant tacticians and convincing speakers. Oftentimes, their efforts have provided benefits to our Fellowship that we have accepted graciously. We know as no one else can how the disease of addiction can drive addicts.

We have need only to be loving, kindly and gentle in the face of those who cannot surrender their self-will. We may have to be especially firm about maintaining correct policies and procedures. Those who have yet to surrender in the sense of this principle do not yet believe God can restore them to sanity and will try to get better results by applying money, willpower and manipulations of group conscience.

Rewriting guidelines is a symptom of a committee without faith. Major rewrites indicate either an inability to study or the presumption that prior committees failed to embed working principles that both get the job done and adhere to our spiritual nature. All our major achievements in NA have been the result of courage, faith and a willingness to work with others for the common good. Our periods characterized by excessive preoccupation with guidelines have been infertile and indicate an unclear sense of purpose. Concern is focused not so much on what we can do to help addicts but how we go about it. This brings personal preferences into sharper focus than the object of our service - to help others. The resulting conflicts have deadened the service initiative and little service gets through to those we serve.

Guidelines can only point the way for an inspired service body to do something for the benefit of others. Guidelines can never take the place of people. Changes have to be made in a structurally correct manner if they are to be successful in `guiding' us. Otherwise, they are seen as attempts to make rules for others rather than offer assistance charted from successful personal experience. Service committees cannot function without knowledge of what their contributions will mean and how they will fit into NA as a whole.

No sensible person can work in a situation where the rules are changed without consultation. There are too many ways to serve in NA for our members to waste precious time trying to serve on a committee that cannot maintain internal order and adherence to the principle of direct responsibility to the Fellowship.

Layering is a term to describe committee systems that become cut loose from their roots in the Fellowship thought and feeling. They float and attempt to perpetuate one another through responding to one another more that to the Fellowship. This is the same thing that plagues other organizations of any description.

We should never allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking good guidelines will replace good people and principled actions. In Twelve Step service, we surrender to the Fellowship's will as we surrender to the God of our understanding in recovery.

We have in our early years seen what happens when members proceed on faith and function within their guidelines. Even against great odds, they succeeded.

Those who tried to introduce policies and procedures through trickery have consistently failed to please this Fellowship. There always comes a time when the `cat gets out of the bag.'

Committees which have become obsessed with changing their guides have found, or at least shown others, that the real work of the Fellowship languished undone.

Without faulting others or casting blame, we NA's finally saw the truth of the matter: That we are miracles and so are our service efforts. In the world of miracles, there is little need for ego and much need for God.

For those who have experienced this realization, surrender has become a key principle not only in their recovery, but their service as well. Service is based on our Twelfth Step.

Where others who have not gained the ability to surrender become numerous, we can only conclude that this is a price we have to pay for so effectively carrying our message that newcomers, and those who seek the support of the inexperienced, will inconvenience the main body of the Fellowship for a while. We can choose to accept this is going to happen.

As soon as the rush for apparent political support and competition for key service positions flags, we have noticed that the secrets become known, the posturing slumps and the clean up process begins. Members who have the deep love and dedication will be on hand to help their much loved cousins in the great and loving Fellowship.

Surrender as a principle allows us to go on, whatever the service season happens to be and do our best, with he help from a loving God.

We can see clearly that the need to manage and control stems from a fear of losing control. We can take measures to stabilize, limit and cancel our fear through ingenious faith and good humor.

Active listening and clearly formulated efforts to take the fears and concerns of others seriously in a prayerful manner allows us to give assistance when asked. We can serve in this manner.

Those of us who attempt to govern deserve our patience and understanding but not our tolerance. If we tolerate improper acts, we become participants in those acts. We have not come through all our painful struggle to behave as if we lacked good sense. Even if it is uncomfortable and there seems to be no one else to speak out, take up for your principles and state your views clearly. You may be the one God chooses to use as an instrument that day.

Once you've been recognized and had your say with each person who might need to hear it, let go of it and tend to your recovery, those who look to you and your service commitment, personal or structural. Surrender allows us to do what we can do and frees us from trying to do what we cannot.

When we see others in pain who are maintaining their composure and struggling to use spiritual principles instead of reverting to their old ways, it gives us courage.

Degeneration sets in as soon as we stop telling the truth and doing the things we need to do to maintain our spiritual way of living.

For many of us, pain has become all too familiar and we have to adapt a happiness habit to overcome our tendency to be morose and downcast.

Where ever we need peace, it can come almost instantly if we can apply acceptance. Peace is a state where we remain totally free to do what we can without bothering with concerns and issues which are in fact beyond our ability to control.

We hope that we'll be ready when things get better.

It takes a lot of energy to perpetuate a lie but the simple truth perpetuates itself.