I get this feeling that deciding on my own is not the right thing to do, given everything that's said about choosing not to decide, not doing it all on your own, etc. So then I feel torn.
But what I then see is that really, when I am in a state of indecision, fear, doubt, etc I am really not in a state of decisiveness. I probably am trying to decide, but I am not being decisive. And my attempts to decide are really delaying mechanisms to avoid the certainty of decision. In this state, I'm not really making any decisions at all anyway.
Pretty much every time Jesus says "decide", I am in a state of fear and self-doubt. I recognize then that staying in this state is not going to bring about any kind of decision, and if I want to become decisive, I have to get out of the fear.
Sometimes then, I will remark to Jesus that I don't know what to decide, and He will say, "you know". As I pull myself out of the fear and become more dynamic, more certain, more sure of myself, I then automatically feel more decisive and knowing and sure of what it is that I will do.
Then I have to even put aside this idea that I don't already know - that I even need to decide, and stop for a minute to become aware of what it is that I know already.
If I already know, a decision is not needed. If I already know, then I don't need to even get into the fearful drama of "not knowing" what to do. Then, somewhere deep inside, I tune into what it is that I know, and in this there is an acceptance, a peace and a clarity that makes it much more obvious what to do.
Usually knowing is covered up by all kinds of faffing about, doubting, fearing, drama, control, thinking, etc. None of it is really needed because it's actually all a distraction away from knowing. I can't know what to do when I'm choosing to be in a state of not-knowing. Seems so simple, but easy to get lost in.
As I go forward, and as I embark on new endeavors led by trusting Jesus etc, I find myself coming up against fears and concerns I didn't have to face before. Yet each step of the way He guides me to trust, to know, to put aside fear, and to recognize the ways that I am undermining my own certainty and decisiveness. In other words, learning to claim and work in a more empowered state of confidence.
I am finding that the more I am willing to put aside the dishonest toys of fear and self-sabotage, the more I am growing in confidence and strength and certainty. Also fear is reducing, people are growing ever-more approachable, and procrastination is melting.
This is how we gradually move into action. This is how we get off the fence and become truly helpful. And this is how we let go of the dependency on the ego as our guide as to how we should waste time.
We need to learn to be truly decisive, certain, knowing and trusting, before we might become actually willing to allow God to guide and direct us in all that we do. This somehow is tied into becoming willing to do His Will, and to follow Jesus's direction. But in a partnership of mutual agreement.
In the course, Jesus says that decisions are constant. You don't make a decision as though it's one point in time, and then move on with life as though you are no longer deciding. You don't 'choose' something and then proceed as if the choosing is in the past.
You are always choosing.
And that also means, if something seems to 'happen' that seems to 'cause' something such as a sickness or bodily issue etc, that's a decision too... and if that sickness STAYS, or if that condition CONTINUES, it is because there is still an ongoing decision being made.
In other words, decisions are based on whether or not you CHANGE YOUR MIND. If you 'set' your mind (choose), and then you leave it set that way, it will constantly remain in that 'mode' until you change it to something else. That is constant decision. You are constantly sided with or in favor of something, until you change your belief.
Therefore your belief is what your decisions are made of. You set a belief and forget it, but it keeps on running your life. You can set these decisions in early childhood - "I'm not worthy" or whatever... and then you keep it, and it keeps on producing results, over and over and over and over again, until you change your mind. Because it's a constant decision.
The ego wants you to believe that there are many separate problems because this implies that there are many separate CAUSES of problems. It suggests if you fix this one problem it will be solved, but there will always be a large number of other problems to take its place.
Distinct specific problems have no 'transfer value', i.e. if you solve them you will ONLY solve them, specifically, and the solution does not transfer to or have an effect on any other problem. This way the ego keeps its idea of many causes, and ensures you will never solve them all, keeping you lost in specifics and distracted by form.
The purpose of having many causes is that the ego wants you to not realize that there is only ONE problem with ONE solution. That would be extremely threatening to its whole thought system because if one `miracle` agent (Holy Spirit) could come along and see that all problems are the same, and undo them all permanently in a single action (the atonement), that would be the end of the game.
It also wants to keep the idea of multiple causes because this stops you from realizing that you only NEED a single solution. If all problems stem from separation from God (which they do), and there IS NO OTHER CAUSE, then there is only one solution: turn to God.
The healing of the separation from God solves ALL problems permanently. So your choice is really extremely simple:
a) Choose to remain separate
b) Relinquish separation and return to God
Choosing to remain separate keeps all problems.
Choosing God solves all problems.
There is NOT any other cause or source of problems other than the separation from God. Think about that for a minute. Look at all the ways you believe there are multiple problems with multiple causes, and realize that ALL of them MUST be because of the separation.
You only have one relationship - with God. When that relationship seems damaged by separation, you will believe in ego and all kinds of problems and suffering will emerge. All fear, all guilt, all sin, all death. ALL of that will disappear when you turn back to God.
Have you experienced what happens when you commune with God and go to Him with your questions? Your questions disappear. They don't get 'answered' in the way the ego would think the need to be answered, they get UNDONE. All questions arise from separation. Healing the separation undoes the need for all questions.
"Let me see this problem for what it is" "Let me realize all of my problems are undone" - ACIM
Think of yourself not as confined to a small body, but think of yourself as, in your natural state, being expansive and the size of the universe. You are omnipresent, you are everywhere and in all things. You share the entirety of existence with all other children of God. You overlap with everyone. You exist in the same space, share all of your being with other beings, and commune intimately in a state of oneness.
What happened to that self, which was a universe-sized fully sharing being, in the separation idea, is you attempted to withdraw from immersion in the whole, you confined yourself, you shrunk down, you limited yourself, you withdrew yourself from the communal experience, and so made yourself show up as an isolated body person.
You became small and little and weak and frail, fenced off from the rest, not wanting to share with anyone, wanting to have something special just to yourself, something exclusive, something that only you have, which makes you different and unique and selfish. Instead of being everywhere you decided to be somewhere, restricted in spacetime to a small tiny spot, around which you defend against the entire universe from entering.
This is what happened in the separation. This is how you took your pre-existing sharing self, and "made it separate". You separated it from its communal experience with other infinite beings, putting yourself in a corner and walling yourself in, in order to keep them out and you in. You did not want to share in them, and you didn't not want them to share in you. This was the purpose of the body idea, a separation device and a wall of flesh around the mind.
This produced what is termed "the separated self" which is a self who used to share with everyone, who now does not want to share at all. This imprisoned self, is still a real self, but has placed itself under limitations. And these limitations are made of illusions, which seem to now substitute for a sense of real, full self, making it seem as though you "made up a self" to replace the fullness of your soul. You made the body, and identified with and as it, in an attempt to isolate and exclude. This is all that happened in the separation. You just became selfish and special and different.
The restoration of your true nature simple entails the willingness to drop the walls, remove the isolation, transcend the body separation device, return to being the size of the universe, re-immerse yourself in creation, rejoin the community of the Sonship, and resume a state of perfectly unselfish sharing. The willingness to let others share you, as much as you share them. Restored to being your natural self as God created you, a self who is equal to all real brothers and who shares everything with everyone.
Once you can see what you were like BEFORE the separation - a limitless universal being who shares everything with every other limitless universal being - the family of God - you can easily contrast this against the position you now find yourself in, and realize that it was the attempt not to share that put yourself into this situation. Where you are now inside a body, everyone else is kept outside, you seem to inhabit it alone, and now no-one shares anything with you inside your little fence. Being kept apart and separated off and unwilling to join, is a lonely and isolating experience.
The walls of separation, the body itself, all physical matter, all illusions, the ego, body identification, forms, the world, all things little, every prison wall which keeps you from sharing and immersing yourself in communion with God and Sonship, which occurs only in Heaven, keeps you from being IN heaven, and keeps you imprisoned. This is why the body cannot contain you who are love, any more than God can enter a body or join you there. You must expand. You must become unlimited. You must return to being an eternal being who is everywhere and sharing with all other eternal beings in an unlimited, open and unselfish way.
"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."
Think of an apple. Now think of a knife cutting through the apple. The knife is separation. BOTH sides of the knife will experience the effects of separation. The knife will come between them and attack both of them. The inner and the outer will both suffer.
So sickness, as an implementation of the separation idea, isn't just happening to you. It's happening towards yourself and its happening towards others.
What applies to you applies equally to everyone else. That's the rule of the Holy Spirit's thought system, and the truth of how your mind works.
You cannot attack yourself without attacking others. You cannot separate yourself from the truth without pushing others away, which is an attack.
This is why Jesus explains that when we have sickness in the body, we are using sickness as an attack on our brother. The sick are always accusers. A sick body is a sign of an unhealed mind. And sickness is a device for separating you from everything else through attack upon yourself and others.
Death, as pathetically powerless as it seems to be, is the ultimate form of attack. It's not only an attempt to attack yourself so thoroughly that you completely separate from Life, but is also actually an attempt to attack Life - all life. Those who die are attempting to destroy all of creation. And they are attempting to destroy God. Their insistence that God is dead, which is a vicious attack, causes them to die.
So don't think of sickness as, one person has this sickness and another person doesn't. Sickness comes BETWEEN people. It is a separation device, a wall, a crow bar leveraged in-between what once was whole and joined and connected. It comes as a defense and as an attack. All defenses (against the truth or wholeness) are attacks.
So yes, everyone who is sick right now, is attacking not only themselves and God, but also everyone else. Anyone with a common cold is attempting to destroy themselves and others. This is why many supposed forms of sicknesses are contagious as well - an expression of the idea of attacking not only self but others also.
If you are sick it is because you have gone into isolation which means you have attempted to isolate yourself FROM others, but in so doing, also isolating OTHERS from you. Sickness is always a double-edged sword. It hurts you and it hurts everyone. It is applied to the whole sonship simultaneously.
It may seem in this world that for the most part, the sick are the only ones who suffer, or what can happen to them isn't happening to anyone else. But this isn't true. This is why a joining of minds with your brother can heal sickness because sickness is separation in the mind - separation between separate selves, who really are One.
Your sickness keeps you imprisoned and keeps everyone else imprisoned along with you. I'm not trying to make this a guilt-trip, but we need to recognize it for what it is so that we can be free of it. Self-attack is all-attack. Sickness is an attack on everyone.
It is a scene in the mind. It is an imagined scene. A dream.
It is inside of a mind. It is made of thought. It presents images but these images are only there because of imagination.
Physical matter is not fixed and is not separate from the mind that dreams it into being. Bodies, made of this matter, are similarly just images in the mind - the mind that is dreaming the world.
You could liken it, symbolically, to as if we are living inside someone's brain. Inside someone's imagination. The universe is a giant idea. A thought. Even physical matter itself is not really physical or fixed matter, it is just an imagined idea.
It is all mind. And it is all within the mind. There is no such thing as outside the mind, and ideas leave not their source.
Objects, bodies, people, cars, houses, planets, they are all just ideas in the mind. They are being held in suspension and made to seem as though they have their own personal history and a "state" of their own, but this is entirely an illusion.
All forms are being regenerated and reprojected by the mind, within the mind, every quantum of time. Each object is completely forgotten and regenerated.
The only reason that objects appears to maintain their "state" or have a "history" over time, is because the mind that is dreaming them maintains a certain belief over time, and therefore keeps re-generating an almost identical image of form.
You think objects such as your body have a history, but they do not. They are being recreated now by the mind. What they appeared to be a year ago only seems to correlate to how they appear now because the mind that is making them keeps making them in the same way, based on the same beliefs.
Your body does not have a will of its own, or a story of its own, or a history of its own, or a state of its own. It is nothing but an image coming out of a projector. The projector is running a movie and keeps projecting a similar-looking object with similar properties, to create an illusion of consistency over time. Your body now has nothing in common with your body a moment ago, at the bodily level.
This is all happening in the mind. Inside a giant mind. This entire planet and everything happening on it is just a bunch of images in a mind. Imagination. A dream of the Son of God.
When this mind changes its mind, you can bet that the dream it is imagining is going to change as well. When this mind chooses forgiveness, you can bet that the images in the mind are going to out-picture a forgiven state of being as well.
This is why miracles - as expressions of love which CURE - and as expressions of love which DEMONSTRATE that the body has not been harmed, to symbolize the fact that the mind is unharmed, MUST be expressed on the level of "form".
This world is not just some place. It is not just a physical location. It is a place in the MIND. All of the objects in it are THOUGHTS. All of the forms and all of the so-called matter is nothing but a fluidic, liquid state of mind which can change at any moment.
It is not fixed, it is not permanent, and all of its illusions of continuity are just that - an illusion, maintained by a mind which keeps on projecting the same or similar images. That does not mean the mind cannot project different images if it wants to.
Miracles then, as demonstrations that you are healed, will manifest as the so-called "body" being healed, which means that the MIND is healed. And since the body is IN the mind, the undoing of the ILLUSION of a body will make the body change. It has to.
The body is not separate from mind or outside of mind. It is made OF mind. And if the mind chooses to stop dreaming a particular part of the dream, or to dream something different, that dream - physicality - will change.
You are living in a thought-world. It is a thought-form in the mind of the Son of God. Where else could you be but in the mind that you exist in, shared with God? There is nowhere else. There is no separate place to go.
Therefore, miracles, in A Course in Miracles, must be expressed as changes to FORM - which really are changes of MIND - whereby the "personal mind" that hides in the body and the body itself as an extension of that mind, must show up in the same way.
This is why Jesus, when he ascended, saw that his body - an image of a body - was just an illusion, and that it had no real meaning, it disappeared. It disappeared WITHIN the larger mind. The mind that is dreaming the dream. He erased part of the dream, because it was nothing more than illusory images - imagination. Clearly, if a dreaming mind decides to stop dreaming, whatever it was dreaming will cease to exist. And as such the "physical body" will disappear, IN the mind, because it was always in the mind all along.
Realize this. The physical universe is made of MIND! It is made of thoughts and thinking. It is constructed by consciousness. It is entirely within the bounds of the imagination. All of the forms and objects are just images in the mind. That is why when you change your mind, when you forgive, FORM WILL CHANGE. Because mind will change.
World events, tragedies, disasters, wars, attacks, celebrations, weddings, carnivals, shows, sporting events, whatever... all of it is happening in the mind. Its all a MIND-show. Mind events. Mind choosing to create dreams. Absolutely anything is possible. The mind could even create a fantastically perfect-looking world filled with abundance and incredible creatures, if it chooses to.
And people are collectively, worldwide, constantly choosing and creating futures which comprise of all kinds of stuff happening, because they chose to believe in it. We are changing "reality" because we are changing the dream as we go along.
And this is also why certain parties attempt to manipulate global consciousness to bring about a mental manifestation of certain outcomes. (Conspiracy theory alert! lol) - they know that mind creates this world and that mind can be coerced to create preferably futures. It's all part of manipulating the dreamer.
To believe that form will not change is purely the belief that mind is limited to the body and that the body is not inside or made of the mind. And that is a very common misperception, because that's precisely what the ILLUSION shows, if you believe it.
Your car is in your mind. Your house is in your mind. Your body is in your mind. Your job is in your mind. Your family is in your mind. Your entire life is in your mind. Even the physical stuff. It's all mental. Thus, changes of MIND, changes FORM, and that is why supernatural miracles happen.
They are demonstrations of truth, that the mind that is BEHIND the form has chosen something different, defying all of the illusory laws that the IMAGES in the mind appear to follow.
And this is also why the Course's REAL definition of "miracles" is that they are SUPERNATURAL. They defy the natural laws implied by illusions and come from a mind which is dreaming the world, easily capable of changing them and producing "healed" images of bodies.
Ultimately, a completely healed mind will acknowledge that the body does not really exist at all, and that it was just a dream coming from the mind. The mind was just projecting it and making it up. And it showed up in the "world" because the world is in the mind. And then, it will cease to dream the body, and the body will disappear.
A disappeared body is the ultimate body in perfect health, because perfect divine health means freedom from illusions and forms. Thus the perfect body is disappeared into perfection and by perfection, as the ultimate HEALING of the mind that dreamed it.
The body was made to come between the mind and God, and to make it seem like the Son of God was not Himself. It must go. And its ultimate healing is its removal. Its total undoing. This is the final demonstration that you are not a body. And if you want, you could re-manifest one later to demonstrate this, just like Jesus did after the cruxifixction.
The world is just a dream in your mind. Anything goes.
Perhaps rather than say everything in this world dies, which really only describes one aspect of it which seems to shut out the 'living' part of it ..... we should say instead, everything in this world changes. It's a place of change, in which everything is constantly transforming. Nothing stays the same. Everything is constantly in a state of turning into something else. Almost like it has a curse upon it which forces everything to stop being itself and transition into something different and strange.
The sperms and eggs turn into babies which turn into children and adults and old people and decayed corpses and compost and plants. It all just keeps changing. Change encompasses both birth and death and every illusion. Things becoming other things, transitioning between things, never stopping forever to be anything permanent. Always temporary, always shifting and modifying and losing itself. It's an entire system of things becoming unrecognisable, where truths turn to lies and everything becomes lost.
Seeds become plants which become flowers which become seeds which become dried up leaves which become soil which join again with seeds to become plants. It all just keeps changing all the time. It's not just that things die, because thing are also 'born', but all things here are encompassed by change. Nothing stable, nothing permanent, nothing trustable, nothing reliable, nothing consistent, nothing constantly true, nothing that is ever anything for very long.
All things that seem to be here now will not be here at some point, when time has converted them into who knows what like a systemic disfigurement and a constant distortion of reality. The world has always been this way and always will be until it disappears someday. Don't expect ANYTHING in this world to last forever. Illusions come and go, but what is of God is eternal and never changes and is not a world of change.
"The shifts and change are what the dream is made of."
"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain."
"Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge."
"Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness."
"The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests, and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment, and grow dim, as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness, darkness and light, sweep constantly across your minds. The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order which YOU establish. The very fact that you can DO this, and bring ANY order into chaos, shows you that you are NOT an ego, and that MORE than an ego MUST be in you. For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible."
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur."
When your attempt at healing asks "what is wrong with me?" .... you know you're on the wrong track, because you're actually trying to find something wrong with you.
The truth can NEVER be that there is something wrong with you. The truth is that you are always perfect. How can anything be really wrong with you?
Yet this mode of diagnosis is extremely prevalent, where the ego is trying to come up with an explanation for "why" you are sick. To explain why you are sick is to completely assume that you ARE sick. This alone cements the sickness in place regardless of what diagnosis you come up with. By the time you THINK you know what the cause is (which will not be the real cause), the sickness will have been amplified even more.
You can't find health by asking in what ways you are unhealthy. It just makes the sickness real. Once you've made sickness real, that means you've lent it a sense of truth and reality, and having done so, you cannot heal it. What is true is permanent and your belief that the sickness is real KEEPS IT.
God does not need diagnosis. Diagnosis is an ego device for prolonging the story and the drama surrounding the sickness, while PRETENDING to be doing something to deal with it.
What if the sickness were to just disappear, right now, never to return? Would you want it? Would you be willing to drop all of the drama and story and side-benefits that arise from having the sickness? Perhaps in your sickness you actually want to be sick because it's serving a purpose?
Most people who are sick... and this is not an attack... just observing.... most people who are sick, well let's just say ALL people who are sick, WANT to be sick on some level. They must. Jesus tells us so - nothing can happen without your own consent and you only get what you ask for. There are no accidents and no victims. So if you're sick, you chose it somehow, for some purpose.
This is what I'm finding to be a bit of a problem in terms of healing the sick.... on the surface they may very much want to be healed, but somewhere deep down there was a decision to be sick and a they wanted it. So there is always some kind of denial of healing, some kind of resistance to truth, and some kind of unwillingness to be healed.
Yet, if a person could leap from their state of denial and desperation and resistance, to a state of healing where the problem no longer exists... I think most people would simply celebrate and be grateful. The shift in awareness would remove all of the foundation for fighting against health. People think they want to be sick, but *REALLY* they want to be with God. This leap from not wanting healing to being healed, is a DIVINE INTERVENTION, which is why Jesus says in the miracle principles: "miracles intercede for your holiness."
So remember, as you try to perform miracles, or heal anyone, you have to be wary of yourself entering into a diagnosis mode, dwelling on the story of how the person was a victim, or of what ALLEGEDLY caused the problem. The truth is that nothing in the world causes anything because the world is nothing more than an illusory effect. So looking for answers in the world will always turn up empty handed. It's the ego's mechanism for distraction and for seeking but not finding, so that healing will not take place. Trying to diagnose problems simply makes them real, keeps them, and fails to cure them.
So we need to get into this mode of... instant healing, and it being not a spectacle, and simply being done with it and then moving on with enjoying Life. Like it's no big deal. But for most people it's going to seem like a huge deal because the limitations imposed by sickness probably has imprisoned the person for a long time. But sickness is nothing.
God doesn't need to diagnose in order to heal something. God is always in a state of health and radiates healing. God's health is instantaneous. He does not dwell on figuring out the cause, or why something happened, as though that would imply DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS depending on the problem. That would be a CONDITIONAL healing. He heals unconditionally, so doesn't care what the problem is or how difficult it seems. There is no order of difficulty in UNCONDITIONAL MIRACLES. He simply heals. Now.
Problem corrected. Done. Move along. Nothing to see.
Through struggles with being shy and sensitive and antisocial and so on, I gradually have realized that there is something fundamentally "estranging" about people's bodies.
When I go out and I see people's physical bodies, there is a fundamental disconnect. There's my body over here and this big gap between and their body over there - it is just experienced when taken at face value as a separation - a gaping divide between individuals, making us seem remote and distant and unlike each other.
Just the mere fact that their body has "differences" or seems like a wall of solid flesh, all by itself, IS a "form" of MAKING it seem as though the person is different to me and therefore IS NOT ME, and therefore there is some kind of separation or rift between us.
People in bodies seem confined and isolated and cut off from each other. It's as if we are supposed to be joined and sharing in the same place together, but instead, there is a huge distance physically between us, yet alone the fact that they are imprisoned in a physical form which they wear like a suit of isolation, which keeps them in and keeps me out.
I always thought there was something majorly wrong with me that I could not relate or connect with people. That communication was fundamentally difficult. That I feared strangers and was put off by appearances. I thought that I just wasn't good at it or there was something I just wasn't cut out to do.
But now I see that in fact, bodies are part of the ego's DEVICE to try to ENFORCE separation, by identifying brothers as strangers, with significant illusions of differences in appearance, in order to portray us as UNRELATED and isolated from each other. It's written into the physical form ITSELF. This was the purpose of the body.
So now I can cut myself a bit of slack, that my difficulty connecting with people isn't just about me as such. The physicality of bodies is a severe limit imposed on communication by the belief in separation.
Brothers/souls are supposed to commune with each other fully and share space and overlap each other in unity. Bodies were made to isolate and to stop us from connecting with each other.
The challenge as I see it now isn't so much learning how to relate to bodies better, but how to see PAST bodies to the person WITHIN, to the soul, the christ, the real person hidden underneath the illusion of form, to connect with their MIND, and to share love with them that BYPASSES the physical in order to bring about healing and the UNDOING of bodies.
It entails learning that people are not bodies. Bodies are fundamentally AGAINST communication unless used PURELY for communication mind-to-mind (temporarily), and therefore I need to learn to interact with brothers/souls with love and really thoroughly learn to look PAST (forgive) all illusory appearances of body forms. To relate soul-to-soul and heart-to-heart and mind-to-mind, not form-to-form.
Bodies are illusions. They are not people. They are also not sick on their own. They are not the thing that needs healing as such. The body does seem sick but it's a *secondary* sickness - the "original" sickness (in mind) is hidden behind appearances. I had been targeting healing at body parts only for Jesus to remind me that the person is not a body... making me realize I was aiming the healing at entirely the wrong target, lol. People are not bodies. "I am not a body, I am free". Tough lesson. Long lesson. But I'm getting there.
What appears to be strangers, are in fact brothers in disguise.
Surrendering is always a great way to let go, give up ego resistance and settle into being guided. It allows you to admit to the truth and stop pretending. It's a way to dissolve denial and get to the real root cause behind things. It helps you to sink deeper into the Holy Spirit and allow yourself to be helped. It entails giving up on trying to do it all yourself, trying to fearfully depend on your own strength, and builds trust.
Without surrendering ego activities, you will remain "in control" and clinging tightly to problems and upsets, thinking that the more you do this the more you will avoid further suffering. But it works the opposite way. The more you try to control, the less control you have. Everything falls through your fingers when you try to grab it. You have to let it go. You then can gain everything by holding onto nothing.
As I surrender to the Holy Spirit and let go, I feel myself being willing to drop egotism, drop controls, drop the fight, and that puts me in a position of being open to support. The Holy Spirit can't do or take anything from you against your will. But in order to become able, you have to show a little willingness. And that means being willing to admit the truth, which in turn means surrendering or letting go of the ego facade, bravado, prowess, fake strength and "total independence."
It is natural for you to be completely 100% dependent on God. This doesn't mean you have no free will. It means you trust and will in accord with His will. You want what He wants because you know it's for your best, and He wants only good for you. You are a co-creator with God. The ego sees surrendering as death. It doesn't want to drop defenses. It doesn't want to let anything go. Attachment and possession are its motto, which keeps you bound to stress and fear and problems. Let all that fucking shit go.
It can literally be as simple and easy as saying over and over again, "I surrender", "I let go". Just say it or think it to yourself. The less time you leave in-between each repetition the more effective it is because it keeps you from drifting back off into problem solving. Usually now when I do this Holy Spirit steps in and starts healing me very quickly, and it was by doing this that I developed trust in Him to come into me and help me.
By surrendering, you open up to receiving. It's kind of like a willingness to let everything go to shit, which at first seems like it's going to be a terrible move and life will suck. But the truth is that when you let it all go you transcend the shit and it no longer seems important to do anything about it at all.
Especially if you are afraid, if you are fearing and worrying and doubting and are riddled with uncertainty, you need to surrender that shit. It means you're relying heavily on your own little ego self which is totally inadequate and is not the source of certainty or strength. Certainty (fearlessness) is an attribute of Knowledge, which is of God/Love. You can't experience certainty by "going it alone". You can only be fear-free by being joined with God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, higher-self, love, whatever you want to call it. Dependency on God is freedom.
The instant you start to surrender and let go you'll feel relief from the fear/anxiety. As soon as you surrender you'll start sighing, as an expression of how you admit that what you've been doing isn't working. It seems like a disappointment to admit that the ego's strategies are all bullshit. That your best "I can do it myself" reliance/independence simply is not working. Admitting to failure is a great step toward surrendering because it admits the truth, and that means opening a window for truth (healing) to access you. All your strategies suck. and aren't working. Let go and let God.
Surrendering will make you happier. Surrendering will bring you peace. Surrendering will make you calmer and less stressed out. Surrendering will open you up to spiritual healing and miracles. Let Holy Spirit manage the body. Let God in. Receive love. Be healed.