Eiman Al Zaabi - The Art of Surrender: A Practical Guide to Enlightened Happiness and Well-Being

Praise for The Art of Surre nder

For seekers of truth, Al Zaabi is a wise and intrepid guide through the wilderness of the self. In plainspoken and heartfelt language, she shines light on the spiritual path and reveals the beauty and necessity of surrender, which has for too long been misunderstood in the west.

Krista Bremer, author of A Tender Stru ggle

I read many books that discuss spiritual paths, so it is a true delight to come across a book with as much wisdom and clarity as The Art of Surrender. If you seek to move closer to the Divine, this book may give you a certain clarity to help you on your journey. It is truly a remarkable book.

Paul Coleman, PsyD, author of Finding Peace When Your Heart Is in Pi eces

One line leapt at me from the early pages of Eiman Al Zaabis book: create a space for the soul to explore and find its connection to Source. Those words capture the essence of spiritual surrender, which she explores with simplicity and beauty, revealing how we might release ourselves from those frail illusions that obscure the Greater Mystery.

Hal Zina Bennett, author of The Lens of Perception: An Owners Guide to Higher Conscious ness

What are you seeking? Spiritual awakening? Self-awareness? Higher purpose? Eiman Al Zaabi journeys with you into a world of deep inquiry to discover answers. A must read!

Waleed Khan, author of Reyyans Pen ance

Transformation is generally perceived as an overwhelming experience. Similarly, The Art of Surrender is an overpowering exercise in attentiveness. This book makes the lofty statement, All the pieces youve been trying to put together fall into place. Keeping this promise, the book presents chaos theory and puts the capital T in Truthall while kneading and nurturing the proposition of proper alignment. We all wish to feel good about ourselves and have a worthwhile existence. The Art of Surrender provides the ways and means to achieving everlasting fulfillment.

Kevin J. Haselhorst, MD, author of Wishes to Die For: A Caregivers Guide to Advance Care Direct ives

This book is filled with pearls of wisdom and practical exercises for learning to live a happier and more spiritually fulfilled life.

Cindy Perlin, author of The Truth About Chronic Pain Treatm ents

A fundamental shift in the spiritual journey occurs when we realize the inherent gift that lies in surrender. It means we are willing to move closer to the heart, to be with the Presence in presence and flow with the changes of life with more trust and more flexibility. In The Art of Surrender , Eiman Al Zaabi beautifully captures the spiritual freedom in letting go despite the fear of wanting to hold on. With a willingness to hold the space of new possibilities, Eiman demonstrates how we can come to understand there is no need to cling to the unknown from a place of fear. We can instead be with the freeness of knowing that life is always conspiring for our highest good. In surrender, if we can truly be with our heart, we will come to know the profound capacity of the heart to lead us through it all.

Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley, author of The Gift of Crisis: How I Used Meditation to Go from Financial Failure to a Life of Pur pose

When you are huddled in the dark, this book puts a hand on your shoulder, lifts you out of the chaos of your mind, looks into your eyes with deep love, and, step by gentle step, shows you what the soul needs to find and connect (re-connect) to Source.

Jodi Aman, author of You 1, Anxiety 0: Win Your Life Back from Fear and P anic

I needed Eimans honest voice to cut through the saturation I felt with purported experts selling me strategies to live my best life.

Deina Rabie, Linguistic Anthropologist

An insightful and intuitive path to self-discovery and how to connect with a higher power in order to thrive in all aspects of your life. It is a fresh approach that opens creative and powerful ways to take control of your personal journey!

Aija Jundi

The Art of Surrender

A Practical Guide to Enlightened
Happiness and Well-Being

Second Edi tion

Eiman Al Zaabi

Copyright 2015, 2019 Eiman Al Zaabi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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1 (877) 407-4847

The Rubais of Rumi Translated with commentary by Nevit O. Ergin and Will Johnson published by Inner Traditions International and Bear & Company, 2007. All rights reserved. http://www.Innertraditions.com Reprinted with permission of publisher.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4517-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4519-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4518-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015919362

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/15/2019

Contents

Dedication

To my sister Fatima, who believed in me even though she wasnt sure what I was doing. May your life be a garden of love filled with Divine l ight.

and

To my beautiful children, who willingly sacrificed time with me so I could complete this project. I love you all to the moon and back!

Y ou are holding some truly lovely insights in your hands right now. Eiman Al Zaabi has spent her life noticing whats realreally realin a consistently mindful way. She has reached in and conversed with the soul and our collective self, and has sorted through the concepts and practices that come from her own lineage and culture. She has rediscovered a way to achieve communion with the Divine, a way to find simultaneous peace and creative excitement. And she has redescribed this universal wisdom and these methods for todays accelerated and distracted world. As Eiman herself says of others, It takes an inquiring mind to consider both the factual and the spiritual and to be able to put the two together. We are lucky to have her thoughts condensed here and organized so cleanly. If you take time to read this book mindfully, to be with each paragraph, youll find that it is chock-full of individual sentences that resonate deeply and take you directly into specific revelatory experiences.

I admit I am particularly drawn to the exploration of simple wordssuch as surrender, delight, sincerity, sweetness, gratitude, faith, prayer, blessing, and even egobecause they are our shorthand way of encapsulating complex states of being, kinds of consciousness, and methods for attaining or using those states of consciousness. We tend to gloss over these descriptors, not taking time to feel into them and drop into the wealth of knowledge they contain. By allowing our mind to move too quickly, we may not notice how we can be trapped in the more superficial interpretations applied to these symbolic words. Surrender, for example, can have a negative connotationthat of giving up, giving over, or giving in to a greater earthly power, as in war; to a dominator/dictator; or to an addictive substance. Surrender can seem to indicate passivity, powerlessness, and lack of self-esteem.