The kind of letting go that fulfillment requires

Surrender is hard for men.

Our testosterone fueled brains interpret surrender as giving up, ceding control, being dominated and demonstrating weakness.

Wolff’s philosophy summarized the irony of surrender perfectly back in the sixties, pointing out that surrender stands in opposition to the official western consciousness, in which our relation to the world is that of mastery, control, efficiency and manipulation. This relation is virile, rather than womanly.

In short, any form of surrender feels to men like castration. If you find yourself resisting reality, it’s because there is a part of your ancient brain that is afraid of your genes biting the evolutionary dust.

But lest we forget, many of our evolutionarily advantageous behaviors are not essential to our survival as they were millions or thousands of years ago.

Thankfully, we’re at a point in human history where the practice of surrendering probably isn’t a life threatening experience. Unless you get caught in a knife fight down a dark alley.

Truth is, once we get into the habit of surrendering, we soon realize that it actually creates breathing room for us. The act of releasing ourselves from whatever frees up our consciousness, leaves space for higher forces to enter and clears the path for change.

And that process of letting go of what needs to be shed leaves us feeling lighter and more alive.

The other thing about surrender is, it’s not like we’re not abandoning our post while everything is going swimmingly. There’s a difference between quitting and avoiding what is impossible to win. There’s a difference between giving up and wholehearted acceptance of what is.

Surrendering, at its heart, is a form of ego deflation. Which is scary for men.

But what we forego in control we make up in calm.

As a friend of mine once told me about marriage, we lose more than we ever sign up for, but we gain more than we ever could hope for.

Just know this. The person who is truly free is the person who has surrendered.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Will you let go of what you never had control over in the first place?