I love this! Erin, very precious teachings! I find your way of explaining things to be very needed in the world today. Thank you!
I have been on my own journey of learning to surrender after I spent my life previously thinking that my courage to not let anything or anyone stop me, and my strength to overcome anything staying on my way, are my biggest contributions and character strengths. That brought me some success, but also lots of headaches, and even worse, lack of joy.
One of the ways I understand today surrendering is that my "job" is to "stay out of the way" of life and let life happen “through me”, and even better “be one with the way”, as opposed "to make the way". I've tried to talk about that with people but I find that surrendering often gets interpreted as "giving up" on free will and independence, or on personal responsibility, and ultimately as lack of leadership. In fact, independence is way less joyful than interdependence, and leadership is not something outside of us in the form of a strong guy, or even a manly woman, telling us what to do and what will happen next.
The seeming absurdity (only on the surface) is that by surrendering, we step into our biggest power and we do the boldest thing we could ever do as human beings and as leaders. The opposite of that is understanding power as happening “to us” or “by us”, and looking for leaders who will be the “saviors” making the way forward for us. Society will look differently if we understand that when we think and act like that, we give away our real power, and it makes it even worse if we let “someone else empower us”. So, yes, the “hard work” and the real power is in us surrendering to life or at least cooperating with life happening “through us”, and to ultimately understand that we are one with life and power.
I love this! Erin, very precious teachings! I find your way of explaining things to be very needed in the world today. Thank you!
I have been on my own journey of learning to surrender after I spent my life previously thinking that my courage to not let anything or anyone stop me, and my strength to overcome anything staying on my way, are my biggest contributions and character strengths. That brought me some success, but also lots of headaches, and even worse, lack of joy.
One of the ways I understand today surrendering is that my "job" is to "stay out of the way" of life and let life happen “through me”, and even better “be one with the way”, as opposed "to make the way". I've tried to talk about that with people but I find that surrendering often gets interpreted as "giving up" on free will and independence, or on personal responsibility, and ultimately as lack of leadership. In fact, independence is way less joyful than interdependence, and leadership is not something outside of us in the form of a strong guy, or even a manly woman, telling us what to do and what will happen next.
The seeming absurdity (only on the surface) is that by surrendering, we step into our biggest power and we do the boldest thing we could ever do as human beings and as leaders. The opposite of that is understanding power as happening “to us” or “by us”, and looking for leaders who will be the “saviors” making the way forward for us. Society will look differently if we understand that when we think and act like that, we give away our real power, and it makes it even worse if we let “someone else empower us”. So, yes, the “hard work” and the real power is in us surrendering to life or at least cooperating with life happening “through us”, and to ultimately understand that we are one with life and power.
Beautiful. Thank you.