If someone is seriously ill and completely accepts their condition and
surrenders to the illness, would they not have given up their will to
get back to health? The determination to fight the illness would not
be there anymore, would it?
Surrender is inner acceptance of what is without any reservations. We
are talking about your life — this instant — not the conditions or
circumstances of your life, not what I call your life situation. We have
spoken about this already.
With regard to illness, this is what it means. Illness is part of your life
situation. As such, it has a past and a future. Past and future form an
uninterrupted continuum, unless the redeeming power of the Now is
activated through your conscious presence. As you know, underneath
the various conditions that make up your life situation, which exists in
time, there is something deeper, more essential: your Life, your very
Being in the timeless Now.
As there are no problems in the Now, there is no illness either. The
belief in a label that someone attaches to your condition keeps the
condition in place, empowers it, and makes a seemingly solid reality
out of a temporary imbalance. It gives it not only reality and solidity
but also a continuity in time that it did not have before. By focusing
on this instant and refraining from labeling it mentally, illness is
reduced to one or several of these factors: physical pain, weakness,
discomfort, or disability. That is what you surrender to — now. You do
not surrender to the idea of “illness.” Allow the suffering to force you
into the present moment, into a state of intense conscious presence.
Use it for enlightenment.
Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender
transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is
transformed, because the world is only a reflection. We spoke about
this earlier.
If you looked in the mirror and did not like what you saw, you would
have to be mad to attack the image in the mirror. That is precisely
what you do when you are in a state of nonacceptance. And, of
course, if you attack the image, it attacks you back. If you accept the
image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot
not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world.
Illness is not the problem. You are the problem — as long as the egoic
mind is in control. When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you
have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for
treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is
resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment.
Anything “bad” that happens in your life — use it for enlightenment.
Withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let
it force you into intense present-moment awareness — and see what
happens.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into
consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just
said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your
sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity — as well
as protecting the illness. The condition that is labeled “illness” has
nothing to do with who you truly are.