Acceptance And Surrender In Healing From Chronic Illness | Ashok Gupta | Gupta Program |

Well, hello and a warm welcome to our Facebook Live event with myself, Ashok Gupta from the Gupta Program. It's a wonderful opportunity for us today to talk about acceptance and surrender in chronic illness. And I just want to start off by saying that many of you may be suffering from a chronic illness, so it might be me. Chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, or chemical sensitivities, mold sensitivities. Others may be suffering from other kinds of illnesses and conditions. So what we're going to cover today can really be applicable to so many different situations. Acceptance and surrender is something powerful in all areas of our lives. And today I'm going to be specifically talking about chronic illnesses and how it can support our healing. Now, let's start off with what is the opposite of acceptance and surrender? What do we experience experiencing day to day with our conditions and our illnesses? It's resistance. And resistance is that of the mind. Resistance is that feeling that I want this to go away, pushing something away. I don't feel like having this condition. I don't like these symptoms. Why are they here in my body? It's that wanting, that desperation to get rid of these symptoms and get back to health. That's natural, of course, but we know that from psychoneuroimmunology. The more that we stress out, the more fear that we experience, the more anxiety, the more grief, the more those emotions can lower our immunity, lower our immune system, and actually make things worse. Now, of course, we're not saying that any of these conditions are in the minds. And for those of you who follow the Gupta program, we say that these are real physical illnesses with real physical symptoms in the body. However, our state of mind can influence the course of the condition and how quickly we're able to heal. So resistance creates all types of emotions which then lower our immunity and make it harder to get better. And I'm going to explain why. The first emotion that comes up. By the way, we'd love for you to share this. Please do share this video on your social media, on your Facebook, on your Instagram feeds, wherever you'd like to share this video. That would be wonderful. We'd love to get this message out there to as many people as possible, especially Those suffering from COVID 19, or indeed those suffering from Long Haul Covid, which, as you know, we are now treating at our clinic. So if you do know people who are suffering from those conditions as well, this information is just as applicable. There are three core emotions that contribute to our resistance to being unwell. And you might expect that the first one I'm going to say is anxiety or worry. Actually, I'm going to talk about grief, first of all. So grief is one emotion. Secondly, we've talked about anxiety. So anxiety, fear, anger, the fight or flight response in response to how we're feeling. And thirdly, victimhood. Feeling a victim of having this condition, whatever it may be for you, blaming others, blaming ourselves, that keeps us stuck in the past. And each of these three emotions can block us from fully healing because they are aspects of the mind, aspects of resistance, which keep us in the past or the future. So grief, the grief of having this condition and the life that we've lost keeps us stuck in the past. Anxiety about what might happen in the future, whether we're going to get better, keeps us stuck in the future. Blame. Victimhood can keep us stuck in the past as well. In terms of what's happened, why did we get here? It's someone else's responsibility to fix me. And when we move from resistance to surrender, which is our journey today, it is recognizing these three core emotions or states of mind which can influence the course of our condition. And it's about awareness. Awareness, awareness. When are we aware of these core emotions bubbling up within us and blocking our thoughts? And they're like a marketing message. Yes, believe it, believe it. You are a victim of this. Yes. It's so unfair what's happened to you. Look at everything that you've lost in life. The mind can go down those cheeseless tunnels of darkness and today is all about recognizing that and moving towards acceptance. Finally, surrender. What a beautiful journey this is for each soul. So let's start off in terms of that first emotion, grief. Now, many of you may have heard of the grief cycle, which I'll just share on screen here. And many people don't think of necessarily healing from chronic illness being something to do with grief. I'm going to show you this slide here in terms of the grief cycle. So imagine when we first got the illness, we were normal functioning on the left hand side. And when we suddenly got, let's say me or chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia or post Covid long haul, there's this shock and denial. Oh my God, I can't believe I've got this. This doesn't make sense. Then there's anger, there's frustration, irritation. Whose fault is this? Why can't my doctor heal me? Why can't the support groups actually say something positive? Why is my doctor not believing me? Right, we have all of those types of emotions and anger and frustration and irritation only keeps us locked in the past with the condition. And I know so many people who are involved in support groups who'd rather be right than, than. Well, you know, they are so working on the advocacy and making sure that the medical profession understands that this is a real condition, which it is. But they get so angry and frustrated that once again, it keeps us locked in illness. And there comes a point, and remember, these aren't sequential cycles. We can jump back and forth. We get into a state of depression and detachment. This also can compromise our immunity and our immune system where we feel depressed, detached. Oh, I wish this would just go away. I'm fed up. And it's not a surrender to the condition, it's a dejection about the condition. And we'll talk about the difference between dejection and surrender. The next stage is dialogue and bargaining where we begin to try and make sense of what's going on, begin to reach out, begin to understand the deeper meaning behind what's going on. And finally we move to acceptance, acceptance of our condition. And then we move on to that next stage, which is what I'm going to talk about, which is surrender. And within that there's empowerment, there's self esteem increasing. We get a sense of this happened for a reason, and we get back to a meaningful life where something shifted. So I'd love for you to now reflect, where are you right now in this cycle with your condition? What might be compromising your ability to heal? Are you feeling really depressed and dejected by what you're experiencing? So you're at the bottom of the cycle there with that depression detachment? Do you feel just numb with what's going on, with the amount of anxiety you've had to experience? Or are you still in the anger phase? Anger at those who didn't support you or anger at your doctor? And one way that we can overcome this grief cycle is to understand the deeper meaning behind these illnesses. Some of the grief can be a grief of the loss, the loss of normal functioning, the loss of normal life, the loss of our job, our career, our friends, our family. But if we stay stuck in that, we then can also go into that victim mentality. Look what I've lost. Look how terrible my life is. And sometimes we can compare ourselves to others. Look at all my peers. Look what they're achieving in life where I'm stuck in this illness. Let's recognize that. And I know many of you who are doing the Gupta program. When you're visualizing, you notice that it brings up difficult emotions because you're thinking about the life you had before, wish you could go back, and tears come up, sadness comes up. Let that sadness come up. That is the release of those grief emotions that you haven't processed. So first of all, during meditations or during self reflection, when there is the grief, let those tears come. Think about what you've lost, indulge it for a moment and allow it to be released. But if you find you keep going back to these emotions, then they need to be worked on. And what can help us through grief is recognizing the journey that you know. There are many paths, many spiritual paths, many different philosophies that talk about the power of suffering, that somehow suffering transforms us, helps us grow. And I would just challenge that. It's not that suffering helps us grow, but suffering opens up an avenue for us to grow. It forces us to recognize our habits and patterns of the past and evolve. And the analogy here is this idea of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. A caterpillar has its old patterns, its old ways of doing things. It may be patterns about life, childhood patterns that come from our parenting and our upbringing. And then suddenly an illness comes along. And if we're in that resistance phase, we think, oh, I hate this illness. The illness is like going into a cocoon. I wish it would go away. But if that caterpillar goes into the cocoon and starts resisting the cocoon, then it just causes more pain and it delays the transformation into the butterfly. Caterpillar says, why did I come into this cocoon? Not realizing that that was its destiny, that was its cosmic destiny, to make that transformation, to become a more glorious version of itself, to expand and evolve to higher and higher levels of evolution. If we shift our perspective and see it like that, then that helps us let go of the grief that keeps us stuck in the past. So we're in that cocoon. And if we recognize that this is happening for a reason, this illness is a spiritual accelerator, then we no longer battle with what we're experiencing. And it helps us move towards acceptance of this condition. So that's the first secret. Transform yourself from grieving about what you've lost in life and the impact this illness has made on your life, to recognizing it's for your growth, which helps you move towards acceptance and surrender. And then you gradually strengthen your wings coming out of your condition, learning how to do that, learning about yourself, learning about self care, self love, self acceptance. Those are the strengtheners of your wings that as you struggle out of the cocoon, the Wings get stronger and stronger and stronger so that you can fly. Imagine each moment that you experience your illness. Rather than having that resistance to what you're experiencing, you were to recognize the deeper meaning of your life. So this is a beautiful opportunity to recognize this. And suffering can awaken and evolve us. And you know, in Christianity and Christian traditions, they talk about the way of the cross, Jesus path that he took, the path of suffering which he accepted and loved. The people saying they not know what they do. In the east, there's always analogies related to food. So they talk about rice, that when you get rice, it's all hard and brittle, but when you cook it, when you expose it to strong heat and pressure, it becomes soft and fragrant. And so in that way, the challenges that we come up with in life that are bestowed upon us are there for our growth and expansion. That's our first emotion, grief that we now understand, the deeper meaning to transform us to acceptance. The second one is that fear, that anxiety, that resistance to what we're experiencing and notice in your body right now, if you have symptoms, are you holding your body against the symptoms and what you're experiencing? Are you saying, I can only be happy when this illness is gone? That keeps us stuck in the future, always anticipating, I will be happy, I'll be free when this illness is gone. But no, let's reverse the causality. When I am happy and at peace in this moment, then I will move faster along the journey towards healing. And what is that anxiety doing to us? It is keeping that physical resistance where there's a tension or a holding of the body. And then there's that emotional resistance where we experience fear, anxiety and grief. There's that mental resistance where the thoughts are very busy, that monkey mind. Let me introduce you to Mike the monkey. He always loves making an appearance in our Facebook lives. He loves the audience. This is our monkey mind that says, oh no, I'm feeling unwell. What does this mean? How will I feel in the future? I'm going to feel like this forever. So we eternalize the problems we catastrophize. Can we notice this in our monkey mind? Take a step back. Witness what your mind is doing. In fact, the most important question in self development is, wait for it. What is my mind doing now? What is Mike the monkey doing now? Without judgment, without trying to change it. What is my mind doing now? When you experience chronic illness, you'll notice that it catastrophises, eternalizes, compares yourself to others. Oh, look, they got better from the illness. Why Can't I do it? Oh look. Doing so amazing in life and I'm stuck with this condition. So let's really be the witness to the mental noise about our condition. And the journey to acceptance is through the brain retraining. So as you know, as part of the Gupta program, we teach you how to retrain the brain. Remember, these are not. This aspect I'm talking about is obviously conscious. But brain retraining is not cbt. It is not saying, it's in the mind. It is a deep retraining of our nervous system to stop this over reaction of the immune system and nervous system. It's a very different thing. But brain retraining also helps us deal with this type of emotion which might be compromising our immune system. Also that hyper vigilance that we have on our bodies. And there's also a spiritual resistance. So we've talked about physical, mental, emotional. There's a spiritual resistance which leads us onto that third core emotion. So number one is grief. Number two is anxiety, fear and anger. The third one is that victimhood that blame that anger at people. So I'd like to introduce you to another friend of mine. This is Jess, the princess. There we go. So Jess, the princess represents the victim part within us. And Jess says, why me? Everyone else has got a great life, they're enjoying life. Why do I have this condition? And remember, I'm not saying that you're walking around all day thinking like that, but it can be subtle, on the periphery of consciousness which might be draining your energy. Because each time we think think these types of patterns, we know from research that it increases our compromises the immune system and it increases our anxiety levels and drains our energy. And sometimes we can get so used to being the victim of this condition we feel disempowered. Oh, there's nothing I can do about this. Yes, I've got the program. But what's difference is that going to make? I'm not good enough to do it. And we also identify with the condition. We get so used to being ill that we think it's part of us, part of our lives. And that identification keeps us stuck in the past. So let's recognize, do I blame others? Do I blame myself for getting this condition? Am I angry at the world around me? Am I stuck in a victim mentality? It's all very disempowering. Let's recognize that, witness it. And then through various techniques we can use parts techniques to retrain the victim part. And as some of you know, we'll be Releasing a new victim audio exercise on the Gupta Program online system very shortly. So all of these things increase our resistance, our resistance to what is so. And resistance is like this rubber band. At the top of the rubber band is the expectations we have of life, or the expectations of getting well and being well. And the bottom of the rubber band is the reality. Tension happens when we have high expectations. We keep saying, come on, it's not fair. Why aren't I getting better? That just increases our resistance, which increases the tension and the tightness in our muscles. Whereas when we let go of expectations as we're healing from these conditions, let go of those and accept and surrender where we're at, the tension loosens and things become easier because that tension itself is compromising our immunity. So what do we do now? We move from that grief, that anxiety, and that victimhood, and we move to acceptance. And many people say, acceptance, Ashok, are you crazy? I can't accept this condition. I need to get better. And this is a common misunderstanding because we think acceptance means saying it's right, it's okay. But acceptance is a deep inner surrender and letting go that I accept what has happened. It's here. In fact. Non acceptance is the harder path. Resistance to what is going on is the harder path. Let's take the road less traveled, which is to accept what is happening in our bodies right now. And we can't change anything in life unless we accept it first. You might challenge me and say, but, Ashok, it's when we feel annoyed by something and we resist something that brings up the best in humanity to campaign for good. Yes, but we can still do that from an acceptance, a place of inner acceptance, which then conserves our energy to take dynamic action. Yep. This is the key point. By accepting and surrendering, we no longer have a drain of energy. We uplift and feel more positive. And we save ourselves. We save our minds to take that dynamic, amazing action which is retraining our brain for some people. Meditating, taking action, moving forward. And many of you may know that the soften and flow exercise that we have in the Gupta Program all about training your body to move to acceptance rather than resistance to what is so. And this is a crucial part of healing, because if you don't accept what your condition is right now, then you're stuck in the past. So each time you use any technique, whether it's the Gupta program or anything to heal from chronic illness, you are using those techniques. But in the back of your head, there's still that frustration and anger and annoyance which is just keeping you tight. And remember that as we move to acceptance, it doesn't mean that type of acceptance, which is, oh, I just let go, I give up. Acceptance and surrender is not giving up, it's giving in. It's a very different thing. Giving up is a dejected sense, oh, I can't do anything about this. It's disempowering. Acceptance and surrender is empowering because it says, I have the strength and the courage to accept this moment right now. And that actually is the bravest thing you can do in life, is to truly be vulnerable to what is happening, rather than hiding from it and ignoring it. So acceptance is a mind concept, is where we tell our mind that we want to accept something. So acceptance is something that happens after the event has happened. Surrender is going beyond the mind to the witness. So giving you the example, acceptance is when we become the witness and tell this part of us to accept and let go. But surrender is when we identify with beingness and say, actually, I choose now to live my life in a state of surrender and letting go. And surrender, once again has been misinterpreted as giving up and a negative connotation to it. But surrender is that sense of, I let go, I give in. I'm not going to fight anymore and resist and drain my energy. I choose to meet this moment with a sense of trust and faith that I'm on the right path. So what are some of the characteristics of surrender? Well, let's give the analogy of a boat, a ship in a storm. Now, when a ship is in the storm, if any of you involved in maritime, you can attest to this. When a ship is in the storm, it can feel like the captain should say, right, drop the anchor and let's stay put where we are. That's the worst thing you can do. You'll literally rip the ship apart with the anchor. Because the storm is coming, the waves are coming in that moment, you need to ride the wave rather than staying stuck in your position and say, I resist the storm. No, you let go of the anchor and say, let the storm come. I haven't surrendered to it. Let it take me, let wherever it wants to go. Or the willow tree in the storm, the oak tree is stiff and gets knocked over, but the willow tree can bend with the time, the moment. So that's what we want to do, is allow ourselves to accept and surrender to what is so, because that is the easier path. And what are some of the characteristics of surrender? Let's look at those three aspects once again. Grief in the grief cycle. Surrender enables us to say, actually, I understand there's a deeper meaning behind this. I don't need to grieve the loss of those years because they were not a loss. They were for my evolution. So if you've had an illness for many years, please now completely shift your perspective and see, this is for my growth. I've evolved and changed. So that is how we help. How we move to surrender is through letting go of grief. We move to surrender by letting go of fear and anxiety about the future. And say, I trust in something higher, a higher power, a representation of love, whatever that is to you. You may not have a religious or spiritual inclination, but we can all believe in the power of love. That is what we share as human beings. So how can we move from anxiety to love, from fear to surrender? Let me trust and have faith in something, that I'm being taken care of. Whatever happens, I will find a way. I will handle it. Then we let go of those expectations and pressures. Come on, I've got to get well now. No, let go. Relax. Let your healing happen when it's going to happen. And be in a state of surrender. And those who are surrendered decide ahead of time how they're going to respond to something. They say, let the storms come. There will be storms in my life, but I choose to live life in a surrendered state of gratitude. And that helps us also with a third aspect, the third emotion that victimhood. Instead of being annoyed at what's happened to us or feeling a victim of it, instead we move from victim to victor and say, I surrender and let go to what has happened. I accept. And now I'm empowered to take dynamic action. So in summary, it's about letting go of grief and sadness about your past and saying this was happened for a reason. It was inevitable, there was nothing I could do about it. And this is going to be good for me. And I look back on my life and when I suffered from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. And at the time I can understand what was happening to me. But now, in retrospect, it makes total sense. And I'm glad that it happened because it transformed me as a person. Secondly, letting go of anger and fear and anxiety and that tension and that resistance is through brain retraining and meditation and all these things that help us move to acceptance and surrender. And finally, that victimhood we let go through parts work. And also realizing that we now are empowered to take responsibility rather than feeling a victim, not blaming ourselves, forgiving ourselves for what has happened. And moving forward with that strength and determination. You are that strong spirit, that warrior who can face this and move forward with grace. So I'd love for you to share this video on your social. This is really important information we want to get out there about how you can move to acceptance and surrender. And what we're going to do now is we're going to do a brand new meditation called the Acceptance and Surrender meditation. But we're going to do this as a new Facebook Live on the same page. So it's on the Facebook page for Gupta program. So I'm going to end this Facebook Live, I'm going to start a new one and then we're going to go into a meditation and I will have my camera off so that we get good sound quality and then we will go through that meditation. Okay? So once again, please do share this video on all your socials. Let's get people really understanding what acceptance and surrender really means. How it can completely transform us, make us happier, make us freer. It's a liberating feeling and can set us on the journey towards health and happiness. Now, how should we end? Shall we perhaps have a song? How does that sound to you? Okay. There's a song that we always sing that reminds us of surrender and acceptance and it's that great song by the Beatles, let it be. So please sing this with me. This isn't me performing it. I want you to sing with me. Really thinking about acceptance and surrender in your life. It's a theme tune, the anthem of acceptance and surrender. Singing along with me. When I find myself often times of.

Trouble Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom Let it be.

My.

Hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me Begin. Words of wisdom Let it be.

Let.

It be, Let it be.

Let it.

Be Whispering words and whisper Let it.

Be me Letting the broken hearted people.

In the end join the grief There will be an answer Let it be you.

Oh they may depart if there is.

Still chance they will.

So thank you so much for watching and once again, if you don't know about the Gupta Program, you can find out more@guptaprogram.com, our brain retraining Neuroplasticity program for chronic illnesses and long haul Covid. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you shortly on our Facebook page for our live acceptance and surrender meditation. Please don't miss it. See you shortly. Thank you and goodbye.