Surrendering to Our Own Healing

Why is surrendering essential during the course of healing and self-transformation? And what does it mean? The true purpose of healing is to evolve and transform ourselves. Healing is about bringing back movement in areas of our life we feel stuck, revealing hidden potentials, breaking old patterns, replacing limiting beliefs, adopting new behaviours and overcoming fears.

True healing indubitably involves a growth in consciousness of self. True healing is about transcending our egotistic behaviors based on fear, and uncovering our true self which is concealed behind the thick walls of our family, educational, religious, moral, societal and atavistic conditioning. Healing provides us with an opportunity to honor our higher self (soul), get closer to it and connect with this part of us which is unlimited, all-powerful, unconditionally loving and blissful.

To surrender means “To cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority.” Let us define what resists in us and to what it does not want to submit to. In the context of healing and human evolution of consciousness, the ego is the part which resists to the power of the soul and refuses to surrender to its will, to give in.

As some of you already know, the ego (animal part of us) and the soul (our individual divinity) are the two forces at play within us. Indeed, the human being is in transition between two states: animality, which is the survival program based on fear and governed by ego; and idessity (inner divinity), the ultimate manifestation human beings are meant to accomplish in their lifetime on earth. The aim is to emancipate the divine being in us which is under the governance of the soul.

Our body is where the battle between those two opposite forces takes place. Disease, emotional disturbance, accidents, misfortunes are the visible manifestations. The ego wants to stay in power, like a regent who , after years in power, refuses to leave the throne, to surrender his power to the legitimate sovereign (the soul) who has now become mature enough to take over the governance of her kingdom (the body).

Our ego fights to keep the control over our body and life because it is scared to death of the unknown. Our ego would rather maintain an unsatisfying status quo than change. So it invests all its energy in maintaining us in our human animality, in an evolutionary plateau, through institutions such as family, government, laws, education, morals, religion, etc.

Concretely, how can we facilitate our inner transformation and by ripple effect our healing? By transcending our fears and surrendering to our soul’s will which often manifests through profound aspirations. Our everyday situations, often the most ordinary ones, tell us where our evolutionary blockages are and what is the next step we need and we are able to take to move forward on our path to connecting to our true self. And dis-ease (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) is one of the most precise pointers to show us the direction to take in our life.

Let us see how it works through two real case stories of two men in their early thirties affected with the same pathology.

For the past 8 years, Benjamin has been getting constant lower back pain. It started a few weeks after he moved out of his mother’s house into his own apartment. At some point during the session he expressed that he was tired of “carrying” his mother. Each time she needed something she would call him and he would respond immediately without arguing. As the eldest child and only son of the family, he felt it was his responsibility to take care of her especially after the death of his father when he was a teenager. It was inconceivable for him not to help his mother each time she needed it.

But his body was screaming for change. Part of him, the deepest part of him, was not fulfilled. He did not have the life he really wanted. He wanted more time for himself to fulfill his own passions. But the idea of putting himself first and respecting his deepest aspirations created a profound guilt feeling. He felt he was letting his mother down and she would be disappointed in him as would be the rest of the family, especially his two sisters.

The family program with all its roles is deeply ingrained in our genes. In nature, mammals live in herds to insure the protection and the security of the group. The idea is that together we are stronger to fight the outside enemy. Outside the herd the animal is weak and runs the risk of being the pray of a predator. Because of those cellular memories, we firmly hold onto the family even if it frustrates us, destroys us, and sometimes kills us.

Benjamin understood the fears that were holding him back in honoring his higher self’s aspiration. His back pain stopped as soon as he realized that his two sisters never took on the role of the “good caring children”, as daughters are usually supposed to do. They would help their mother from time to time but never to the point that it would truly disturb their lives. His sisters knew how to establish boundaries, and he decided to establish his own as well. He gave himself permission to say no to his mother and say yes to himself. Eventually, he realized that his fear of losing his mother’s and sisters’ love was groundless.

Getting out of the animal programs (ego-fear based) to honor our higher self requires courage and determination. Surrendering is really about stopping to respond to our inherited egotistic programs and transcend our fears. Sometimes the surrender seems doable because the fear it awakens is manageable. And sometimes it seems impossible to do, as we are going to see with Cesario’s story.

Like Benjamin, Cesario experiences lower back problems. The pain started at a specific day 5 months ago when he was bathing his 2 years old daughter. When I asked him if he went through any major stressful event 5 months earlier, he could not recall anything. The only complaint he had about his life was that he did not have time for himself, and he missed playing soccer with his buddies.

He and his wife were happily married. Both were working full time, but Cesario was self-employed. Since his schedule was more flexible, he was taking care of his daughter after daycare, doing most of the house chores, and even cooking the meals: a caring modern day husband and dad! The solution seemed obvious: find a way to clear up some free time. “It will not be possible anytime soon,” he replied. “With the second baby on its way, we’ll need a bigger house, and my wife wants to switch to a part-time position so she can take care of the kids. I will have to work on weekends to make up for the loss of income.” For some reason, he had forgotten to mention that his wife was 5 months pregnant! This baby was the overload in his already super busy schedule.

Cesario’s back issues did not resolve despite all the doctors and therapists interventions. After two years, the pain became so excruciating that he was considering a back surgery. Part of the reason the healing did not happen is because he could not go over his belief that a father and husband is the pillar of the family and has to sacrifice no matter what. It was the way he and his wife were raised in their Hispanic culture and breaking the tradition felt more devastating to him than having back problems.

Cesario’s case raises an interesting point: the symptom fulfills a positive purpose. The symptom often remains in place to force the person to do what he is unable to do voluntarily. Here, Cesario needed to slow down, work less and take some time for himself. Since he was not able to transcend his family and cultural belief, the symptom remained to slow him down. He had no other choice than to work less and rest. Of course it is frustrating to have back pains, but at least it prevented him from facing his worse fear: be judged, lose the respected status due a strong responsible man, and be rejected by his wife and family. Unconsciously, it feels safer and more honorable to stop fulfilling others’ expectations because of a physical disability than to voluntarily choose ourselves over overwhelming and unfulfilling duties and responsibilities. That is why so many people unconsciously let themselves slip into sickness and remain in chronicity.

The path of true healing is to consciously and voluntarily choose to get out of the outdated animal programs as soon as we identify them, and stop responding to our egotistic fears which control all our actions and thoughts in all aspects of our life. As we are transcending one fear after another, we are deepening our connection to our soul, our highest self, and we start to manifest the expression of our true intrinsic identity.

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