Fear and Pain are Life's Greatest Teachers. Its Greatest Gift? Surrender.

Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress.
-Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

One of the greatest and most basic spiritual wellness questions that we all ask is "Why?" We find ourselves facing a challenging situation-a death, a sudden layoff or the breakdown of a relationship, and we ask: Why me?!! Why not that person who cut me off on the freeway today??

We even get self-piteous when we feel off for a prolonged period of time, uncomfortable in our own skin and unable to name exactly what's wrong. Whatever the origin of the problem, our first impulse is often to wonder why this is happening to us: Why is life so unfair? Did I do something wrong? What did I do to deserve this? What did I neglect? Where's God? Doubt swirls in our minds, and we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our self-pity inhibits our growth. We lose hope, and we find it difficult or even impossible to have faith in joy, happiness, love or safety.

But let's turn to history to provide us with some insight. Do you remember being birthed? It was the most traumatic experience of your life. Just ask your mother. Think of any time of great challenge and you will see great growth. History shows us that no matter how much we think we will never make it through, we do. Pain always changes. Wounds heal, and we will emerge. Even though we know that it will get better, we fight it; this brings more pain. So, what is the answer then?

Surrender.

Surrender is the most pure way to release and trust the flow of life. It is the way to find joy in times of great confusion or sorrow. Surrendering is connotated with defeat, but it is, in the case of spiritual challenges, the only way to win. Have you ever swam against a strong current? That is what self-pity and a lack of trust feel like. The world is saying, "Hey. You were fired so that we could make way for the most amazing job of your life. Just wait." You are hearing, "You are fired. You failed." Message error! Find a way to surrender to the process, and joy will come.

When looking at a problem, our first instinct is to fix it. We see all of our problems as being outside of ourselves. We believe our troubles are caused by work, other people, finances, school, lack of time, a dirty house. We believe that, because all of our problems lie outside of ourselves in the material world, the answers will come when we take the right outward actions, or when we find ourselves in the right outward circumstances.

We often feel abandoned in our times of need, believing that it isn't a great universal force that holds the answer, but a specific plan of action that will make things right and make us feel better. We develop plans to "fix" ourselves, or "fix" situations. Even when the situation is something that we have no power over, such as the death of a loved one, we think that we can make everything alright if we just take the right actions. We fight reality, trying to gloss over the problem of our negative emotions, thinking that avoidance through action is the only channel available to us for making those problems go away.

When we're trying to "fix" our problems or working to make them "go away," we're often not facing reality head on-and we're missing out on one of life's greatest blessings. The reality is that all problems (no matter how major or life-altering) are ultimately problems of perception. Our spirits hit a wall of pain, and we are faced with an internal struggle, even though we want so badly for the problem to be a material one. We try to force the problem outside of ourselves so we can wrestle it into submission. We make it about circumstances, other people, bad luck or lack of money. All we gain from this denial of the problem's true nature is even more pain. This is where surrender comes in.

It is often