Lately, my right SEL 12 (on the back/side of the neck) has been incredibly stiff and sore, to the point where I’m taking aspirin and wondering if I might need physical therapy.

Since Mary told us that tension in the right 12 means you’re in “the mental institution,” and in the left 12 means that you’re in “the penitentiary,” I don’t feel too happy about having tension in either one of my 12’s!!!

However, I can take this tension as the signal that it is. Mental/emotional stress shows up in the right 12 as a sign that we need to surrender “my will” to “Thy will,” and let go of stubbornness related to cosmic life being my one and only Source.

SEL 12 is congested by “willfulness,” “over-doing,” and by being “afraid to be.” Or, as Mary puts it in Self-Help book II, “’12’ came into the universe meaning…submission of personal consciousness to the direction of Universal Mind.” I don’t like the word “submission,” for obvious reasons. And I don’t like being called “stubborn,” because it tends to be true. 😉

There is only one way to make peace with cosmic will, and that is to surrender to it. But like a teenager individuating from her parents, it’s been important to me to rebel a little bit (or a lot) in my lifetime in order to find MY will and MY voice.

As I hold the back of my neck, or hold my middle finger (the harmonizer for SEL 12), I can feel tension in that area melting away, and surrender begins to make more sense. I can also hold the right side of my neck with my left hand and my coccyx with my right hand, which is the first step of the Bladder flow. Bladder flow is in the 4th Depth, whose attitude is fear.

Letting go of fear is central to surrendering to cosmic will and accepting “Not my will but Thy will” be done.  I don’t like surrendering, because it feels scary and dangerous sometimes. But I like to think of it as laying back in a warm ocean. As I’m held, I feel safe, and there is no more fear. I can feel supported and loved by the cosmos, and I don’t have to rebel any more to know who I am, because I AM this ocean, and it is me.