Surrender & Acceptance
Questioning Our Need for Identity

~By Catherine Patillo

As a therapist and bodyworker, my practice has consistently focused on facilitating my clients’ conscious awareness of any underlying emotional contributors to their physical pain and disability. I’ve found that a massage or craniosacral therapy session goes only so far in helping them feel better. If their pain is a result of long-term muscle tension, originally created with or from emotional discontent, the relief will be short-lived. It can result in a great deal of frustration for the client, as well as me, their therapist.
           
Consequently, early on in my practice, I decided to “bone up” on any modalities known to facilitate change in the deeper layers of the psyche. While those have certainly helped, I still questioned why many of us often seem to hold on to our pain. That led me to wonder about possible behavioral nuances after loss. As much of my motivation in searching for “tools” to help others facilitate change is to also better understand my own emotional minefield, I thought back to the first years after my son Ryan’s death. Immediately after, I remembered feeling outside my body, as if in some kind of trance. I couldn’t relate to the world around me; I couldn’t even listen to the news accounts of the Oklahoma City bombing. Those things that were previously so important held little interest now. I recall absentmindedly wondering if this state of being was shock; I felt so numb.
           
Then, later I began to feel more functional, but still nothing like I’d been previous to Ryan’s death. I watched myself talk about him to everyone—the store clerk who unwittingly happened to notice the young man snowboarding in the photos I was picking up to the waiter who looked so uncannily similar to Ryan. It was eerie. Some part of me wondered, “Is there a reason for this? Do these people actually need to know about Ryan, or am I just using any opportunity to hear myself speak?” That line of questioning led me to decide I must be talking to convince myself of his death. That sounded pretty good, but didn’t feel like the whole story. Something made me question if I was somehow benefiting from being “Ryan’s bereaved mother,” and that thought, if even remotely possible, was very disturbing.
           
Then, driving home one evening, clarity struck as I listened to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. “There are many accounts of people who experienced that emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives,” Eckhart said. “Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away. Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear. . . . It is indeed a peace that doesn’t seem to make sense, and the people who experienced it asked themselves: In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?”
           
Tolle went on to explain that when the forms you identified with, that gave you your sense of self, are taken away, your ego, which identifies with form, collapses. “When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you?” Eckhart asks. “You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I am.”
           
That peace of being in the moment was what I experienced right after Ryan’s death. I do still believe I was in shock, but I also know I was more aware of the beauty and immediacy of life around me than before Ryan’s death, or unfortunately, even now. However, Eckhart goes on to say that the ego is really uncomfortable with no form; with no identity. Hence, it is equally possible to immediately create a strong mental image or thought form in which we see ourselves as victims. These thought forms, and the emotions they create, such as anger, self-pity, and resentment, immediately take the place of other identifications that have collapsed through loss. Eckhart continued, “The fact that this new thought form is a deeply unhappy one doesn’t concern the ego too much, as long as it has an identity, good or bad.”
           
As I listened, realization dawned. Yes, in talking about Ryan, I was probably making his death more a reality in my mind. But, I had to admit, I might also have been possibly making my identification as a bereaved parent into some kind of badge of honor. This is a club no one wants to join, but like the soldier who comes home with a purple heart, even though he may no longer have legs to stand, we bereaved might also feel we’ve earned the right to others’ respect.
           
Absorbed, I continued to listen. This wasn’t comfortable, but I was determined. If there was more to learn, gain, or understand from Ryan’s death, I wasn’t going to let myself off the hook.
           
Eckhart explained, “Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life. Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego. You are closed. Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God.”                                                                       

Acceptance. Surrender. Alignment. When we can become more aware that we are defining ourselves in some way, we are open to a presence of consciousness that transcends peace. Listening to Eckhart was bringing many pieces together for me—why the pain of loss can be so relentless; why we come together to help one another, but then we may no longer need to find an identity in a group as we begin to connect with our child or children more in our hearts; why it is possible to eventually go on living in a new way, a way our child or children would wish us to do; why doing so is not closing ourselves off from our loss, but actually opening ourselves to it in a new way. So many answers. So many more questions.
           
I’ve often believed this heartbreaking challenge of bereavement is one I’ve walked for many reasons. It now looked like the path was taking me even farther into discovery. Surrender hasn’t previously been a preferred choice in my vocabulary or identity. I realize now how much more I can learn.
           

Thank you, Ryan.

Catherine Patillo is editor of The National Compassionate Friends' Magazine, We Need Not Walk Alone. She is also a craniosacral therapist, hypnotherapist, and hospice massage therapist. She looks to her three little teachers—her grandchildren—for even more insight. She can be reached at catpatillo@comcast.net.