Why surrendering means strength, not weakness
And how you can do it to have a surprisingly beautiful and authentic life.
Surrender is for the strong and brave. It’s not weakness or passivity. It requires great wisdom, self awareness, trust and patience.
When you surrender, you drop the small ego self's likes and dislikes, most of which came from conditioning from your family, schooling and culture.
These likes and dislikes often don't represent the real you. They're ideas that have been fed to you growing up.
It takes a lot of strength to let go of the strong pull of likes and dislikes you’ve been used to all your life.
When you surrender, you dive beneath the surface level noise...
...and feel out that small current of “something” that wants to happen - where life is guiding you to.
A true story of surrender
Recently, some friends and I wanted to take a plant medicine to receive guidance about the next chapter of our lives.
There were two options - get and take the medicine ourselves, which was cheaper, or go for a guided ceremony with a shaman - a significant investment.
The voice in my head didn’t want to do the guided ceremony. I had checked out the shaman’s website and it didn’t resonate with me. Plus, I wanted to save money.
But all things were pointing towards us doing the ceremony.
My friends were keen to be guided, because it was their first experience with the plant.
On top of that, I received a recommendation from a mentor about the shaman. And the available dates perfectly lined up with all of our schedules.
A small, quiet voice inside me said, it's ok to go ahead.
So I dropped my resistance, said yes, and arranged it.
It turned out to be the most beautiful, profound experience.
I received life-changing insights (more on that later) and it deepened the bond between me and my friends.
I learned a lot about the plant that I otherwise wouldn’t have, which I’ll benefit from for life.
Your likes and dislikes aren’t always correct
Don’t listen to the screaming voice in your head that insists it doesn’t want something, or it absolutely needs something.
Let it go, and calmly think about how you can help the situation become more “complete” and win-win.
Conventional wisdom says: follow your heart, do what you really like…
Or - the other camp - act based on logic, do what makes sense.
But it takes wisdom to discern whether those feelings or thoughts comes from conditioning...
Or if you’re hearing the voice of your soul.
This requires practice, finely tuned intuition, and of course, a healthy dose of faith, because the ego will always come in and make you doubt yourself.
It requires patience, because you won’t know the outcome immediately.
All of this takes the utmost courage and strength.
That’s why surrender is for the brave and wise.
And it's the doorway to having beautiful experiences for your highest good, that you never would have imagined.