November/December 2002 Spirituality
The Importance Of Self-Realization

by Ali Ansari

Surrender is the means to Self-Realization. Self-Realization is a Functional Awareness of Soul, i.e. Soul-Recognition. Soul-recognition is the source of health and healing. Soul is each individual's manifest portion of unlimited divine love. It is maintained by the constant, unfathomable, unending outpouring of divine love that maintains creation and everything in it in perfect, beautiful, seamless harmony.

Self, the physical body, is the means by which we perceive Soul, and thereby receive divine love, hence the importance of cleaning it and keeping it pure, for God alone. This purification implies the investigation and removal of the inner causes to not receive divine love that have been planted there by environmental inheritance.

Surrender means letting go of the fight, laying down the weapons of war, allowing God's will to unfold as it may, and relinquishment of preference or attachment to outcome. Enough surrender and your true self will finally emerge. Your true self, or soul, is the means by which your body receives love. Your false self (ego) is the means by which it receives the punishment that it is due in your mind. If you use your body for the accomplishment of artificial goals for the sake of artificial responsibilities, then in effect you are saying that is what this body is for, it is not worth anything else, and that's certainly a form of self-punishment.

People will lay their bodies on the line for their ideals, no matter how perverse those ideals may be. The last thing on their minds is the concept of laying down the struggle. They call it "giving up" and will "never" do it.

But peace is a requisite for health. A peaceful heart is the absolute requisite for a peaceful body. Without peace there can be no perception of love and it is the perception of love that heals the body, heart and mind. And where does this love come from? It is not outside of us, so we have to stop looking elsewhere. It is when we stop seeking that we can feel. As long as we are seeking, we're still in our minds and projecting a time or a place when or where we will discover something. But that "something" is not "located" in any place or time. It is not "out there" somewhere to be "found". "The goal is not found by seeking, but only the seekers find it".

Soul does not need healing. That would be like saying God needs healing. God does not need healing. God is the healer. It is from God that the energy of love, support and maintenance of the soul comes. So the Soul, created in God's image, and supported completely in its capacity as the highest and most perfect manifestation of God's Self-Recognition, Love and Perfection, does not need healing. It has and is everything we need. But the self needs to discover the soul completely in order to rise to its fullest potential. And it does this by means of dissolving itself in the remembrance of God.

Ali Ansari is a Sufi healer and teacher and author of "The Way of Divine Assistance." He can be contacted at reachnin@yahoo.com or 503-493-0448.