How to Find Purpose Through Surrender, with Kute Blackson

0:00 One of the most difficult lessons in life is learning how to surrender. We struggle to let go of broken relationships, jobs, homes, our past, even parts of ourselves. We feel like surrendering means we're quitting or giving up. But our guest today hopes to redefine the idea of what surrendering means from something seen as weak or passive to the most powerful thing a human being can do. Coming up on The Fit Mess. We may not be able to change the entire planet, but what we can do. is begin to bring peace in our own hearts, to begin to be a bit more compassionate with ourselves, to begin to be a bit more kinder to ourselves, to begin to bring ourselves into more integrity and more alignment and more wholeness and more harmony.

0:41 If we all do a little bit, then I think the projection in the world will also shift. That's Coot Blaxton. He's a transformational teacher and bestselling author. Today, we'll talk with him about harnessing the power of letting go. to discover more purpose and meaning in our lives. But first, I'm Jeremy. And I'm Zach. We've spent years pushing ourselves to learn more about our own physical, emotional, and mental health and picked up a few coaching certificates along the way. But really, we're two guys who got sick of our own shit and started making changes to be healthier, happier, and live more meaningful lives. And each week, we talk to world -class experts with advice to help you do the same. So Zach, I wish we had done this interview a few weeks ago, because as we were wrapping up the kid's school year, I also picked up some more work at the same time.

1:28 The combination was completely overwhelming and I fell into old habits of trying to control outcomes, control behaviors, control the people around me. And it's so frustrating when I do that because I know, and I preach to others all the time, the importance of letting go. But there I was trying to convince the stupid river of life to flow in another direction. And then of course I get angry when it doesn't listen. It's funny. You try and put that dam in and like. make the water go a different way. Something about that just makes life clobber you. Yeah. When you're trying to push water up a hill, as it turns out, that's kind of a losing battle. You need a really big bucket. Yeah. I've been having the same thing in the last couple of weeks.

2:08 I've been thrown out of all of my routines and I'm really struggling to get a workout in, get to yoga, and do all the things that I normally do. And I'm beating the shit out of myself for not doing that stuff. Yeah. Part of me is just like, you suck. You're not performing to the image that you have in your head. But I got life. Like I could probably step it up a little bit in a couple of different areas, but for the most part, like I have reasonable obligations that I need to take care of. And that's what's getting in the way here. So I just need to be okay with that. And be like, okay, this is my life. We'll figure something out. Life will figure it out. I will find a way to get to the gym, eat the things I need to eat.

2:50 But for right now I need to eat this almond bar with chocolate drizzled all over it. Cause it's the only two seconds I have to eat today. Get out of my head. I've been doing the exact same thing. I haven't gone to the gym and every day I was like, Oh, I just can't stay steady. I can't stick to it. What's wrong with me? Why am I such a piece of shit? And I can't just stick to the stupid commitment that I made to myself. And then finally, like I did have some time today where I probably could have gone, but I was like, dude, okay, let's be real. Okay. Tomorrow you're going to Las Vegas for a week. You're not going to go to the gym while you're on vacation. What is the point of squeezing in one more workout today when you really don't have time, but because you tell this story to yourself that this is a thing you have to do all the time, you're going to, you're really, you're going to take time to go jam that in with everything you have going on in your life, only to then not do it again for another week.

3:38 Like let go dude, come on. It's fine. It's one day. I think under normal circumstances, I would say, you know what? No, get that one workout in because every single one workout. You're good. Yes. But in this situation, that would be your first workout after not having worked out in a little bit and going to Vegas. Right. So you're going to be really, really sore in Vegas. Right. No, Vegas is not a place you want to be sore. No, no. And it's just, it's just done. And it's just because, you know, I made this commitment to myself and, you know, when I've already dropped the ball for seven days in a row, an eighth day is not going to, you know, it's not going to sink the ship. Besides when you're, when you're, when we're talking about being in pain and Vegas.

4:19 It's on the way home that you are in pain, not when you're on the way. Just, I mean, just quick sidebar. This is going to be my first time sober in Vegas. So it's, it's going to be interesting to not have that pain all the time. So more about that later. So even though like my, my eating is not out of control, like I'm eating relatively healthy stuff. It's just not as healthy as I want it to be. Right. Um, my exercise is still there. Like, you know, I walked a bazillion miles in New York city at the pride festival the other day and. I'm getting exercise. I am moving. I'm just not doing the things that I necessarily want to do. But through all of this, all of these issues that I've been having with keeping to my schedule, one thing has remained and I think has actually been keeping me grounded and giving me actually the energy that I do need to do all the things that I've been doing.

5:06 I've been taking athletic greens every day. I started taking athletic greens because I really needed to have a supplement that tasted great, gave me all the things that I needed. And I didn't want to have to take 10 pills a day or spend all of my time cooking all the meals. I try and get my nutrients from food, but let's face it, we don't get everything we need every day from food. So, athetic greens was a great solution for me. It tastes great. It gives me everything I need for more energy, better gut health, optimized immune system. It has less than a gram of sugar and there's no nasty chemicals or artificial anything. And it actually does taste good. And for what you get, it's less than $3 a day. And right now is the time to incorporate better health and Athletic Greens is a perfect start.

5:49 To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one -year supply of immune -supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens .com slash fit mess. Again, that's athleticgreens .com slash fit mess to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. That link will be on the show notes and it's plastered all over our website at thefitmass .com. All right. Well, Zach and I are working very hard on letting go of all those things we cling to to help ourselves feel better. And someone that can teach us a thing or two is our guest today. His name is Coot Blaxton. He's the author of The Magic of Surrender, Finding the Courage to Let Go. And we started by asking him why surrender is something more of us should be leaning into, especially now.

6:31 Wow. I think that surrender was the most important thing we can do. I really believe that surrender is the most powerful thing we can do. I really believe that surrender is the key to our next level, is the key to greatness. If you look at the truly great ones, whether it was Jesus, whether it was Buddha, whether it was Bruce Lee, whether it was Muhammad Ali, whether it was Mandela, or whether it was Martin Luther King, I think at some point they all surrendered themselves to life, to their purpose, to their soul. And in surrendering, they transcended their own human limitations. They tapped into a dimension of their potential and dimension of life, and life was able to flow through them. And so I think that surrender gives us access to a whole nother level of our potential.

7:16 And, you know, I think right now, as we look at the world and the uncertainty and the changes in the planet, and we just went through a two year, you know, madness pandemic and people questioning what the hell's going on and who am I and what's happening. I think that we've all been put into a surrender seminar, so to speak, as a humanity. And I feel as though as a humanity, We are being initiated really into a new way of living. And so I think unless we are truly surrendering, we're going to go crazy. I think unless we're truly surrendering, we're going to be frustrated and we're going to suffer. I like to say surrender or suffer.

7:57 It's just the nature of life is constant change and much of it we can't control. And I think part of surrender is letting go. I'm going to say of the illusion of control. because we think we have control, but perhaps the last few years have shown us as a humanity, maybe we're not as in control as we thought we were, control being a master addiction. I mean, we can talk about that, but we're not as in control. I mean, life happens in ways that we couldn't have planned and can't predict. And so surrender is really when we stop trying to force. life to fit our limited idea, manipulate life to fit our limited idea of what we think it should be.

8:39 And it's when we let go of the idea of who we think we should be and the way we think life should be. And when we get so attached to those expectations of what we think, how we think things should be, how we think people should be, that's when we set ourselves up for suffering. And so I think, especially in this time when so much is uncertain, when we truly live surrender, we're going to be much more free because, so many things that we expect aren't happening the way we expected them to. And so I think in our culture though, we have this misconception that surrender is weak, that surrender was passive, that surrender means giving up, that it's like waving the white flag. So who the hell wants to surrender?

9:20 That if you surrender, you're going to be a victim, you're going to be a doormat, you're going to be taking advantage of, you won't manifest your goals, dreams and desires. You're going to get less than. And really what I want people to... maybe refrain in their minds and see surrender as something active and inspiring is that in surrender, what if you didn't get less, but you got more? Like actually in letting go of your own limitedness and ego's attachments and controlling nature, what if you actually ended up getting more than you could have planned and imagined and intended with your own ego's limited perspective? So I think surrender is... I think surrender is the key right now.

10:02 I'm going to make an assumption that you haven't always believed this. So I want to ask, you know, like, w w when did you realize that surrendering was important to you? And I, and I really do love the way you kind of put it there. I always took surrender as giving up, right? Like you lost the battle and you're laying down, but that's not it. So like, when did it first come into your life? When did you first realize that this is really important? Yeah, I could go in a few different ways and that. Going all the way. Okay. So, so, so let me just say that on some level it's been in my entire life the entire time, but like the magic of surrender book was this was not the book or the topic I thought I was going to write about.

10:49 It was not the book or topic I wanted to write about. I had all of these other plans and my own agenda and the book I thought. would be a New York Times bestseller. The book I thought publishers would want, the book I thought my audience would want, the book I thought, you know, would make me reach more people. And I had an entire white board of ideas and none of those felt aligned. None of those felt in integrity. And the only word that stood out for me in my brainstorming was the word surrender. And I was like, hell no, I don't write about surrender because, you know, it's the thing that deep down as human beings, we know we kind of should do, but we don't want to do. And we resist for reasons which we can go into as well. And I just felt the rightness of it.

11:31 And when I surrendered to the book that was seeking to be written, I had to surrender to the book about surrender. Then all of my entire life just began to make freaking sense. Everything I went through from my childhood and how I was raised and my parents started to make sense. But I would say more recently in 2016, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. And that's what really focused this theme back into my life. I mean, it was something I'd been working with and practicing, but this is when it really became into focus. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer. I was living, I'm living in LA. She was in London.

12:12 I basically started flying back and forth every month to be with her and be with her in chemo sessions. So a week, a month I was in London just taking care of her basically was, was brutal. And. I had every intention to make her well, to heal her, you know, alternative therapies and supplements. And after about three or four months, I think I realized pretty quickly that no amount of prayer, no matter of meditation, no matter of alternative green juice, nothing was going to save her life. And I basically surrendered. And in that surrender, it really just freed me up to just be with her.

12:54 And there was no like future. There was just this moment holding her hand. And that moment could be the last moment and could be the last moment of sitting in chemo with that last moment to look into her eyes, the last moment to have a cup of tea. And it just, I don't know, it changed my life when I just stopped resisting. And about seven months into the process with my mother, the doctors basically looked at us and they said, there's nothing else we can do. You're going to die. And it was a very emotional moment. And they said, you're going to die. So get your affairs in order. And I think I looked my mother in the eyes and I said to her, are you afraid?

13:35 And she said, my mother's Japanese. It's a little Japanese woman. She said, no, I'm not afraid. And I said, why? And the first thing she said was, cause I know I'm not this body, but this body is a temporary vehicle for my soul. And I know that even when I die, this body will die, but. But when I die, like, I'm gonna be with you from the other side. And so there was a fearlessness that she had. And then I looked to her and I said, and this is when I think, so when the really started coming into focus, I looked at her and I said, what can I do for you as your son to make your final days easier? What do you need? What do you want? And she looked at me and she said, and I'm not like a religious person, but I'm very spiritual.

14:18 And she said, you know, there's nothing I need. There's nothing I want. The only thing I want is what God wants for my life. And in that moment, I realized that she was free. Even in the most raw, real situation, like, you know, it's easy to live surrender when you get what you want. It's easy to live surrender when you have a million dollars. It's easy to live surrender when you're in the Himalayas, but when you're faced with your mortality in a real, raw situation, my mother wasn't attached to living. She wasn't attached to dying. I looked in her eyes. And I saw that she was at peace, truly at peace with whatever her soul's journey was.

14:59 She was demonstrating surrender and this entire year she didn't cry. She didn't feel like a victim. She didn't complain. She was just being where she was experiencing what she was experiencing, whatever was happening. She was just being with it. And, and, and that showed me the power of surrender, you know, and, and, and that's what really inspired me. and made me reflect in my own life in many ways. Sometimes I wonder if the extreme situations like that, where you really don't have a choice, it becomes easier to surrender because what else are you going to do? You know, flail and scream and be angry. Which we do. Which we do. We do for sure. But why do we then, you know, when it's just the simple things like, you know, the kids won't stop screaming, life won't, the job won't work out, the thing won't.

15:48 Why do we struggle against it so much? Right, right, right. I think it's a foundational question. And what I will say is... When you understand the nature of something, it actually transforms your relationship with the something. And I think because we don't understand the nature of who we are and what we are, it creates a lot of suffering. You see, surrender is our natural state. Just to kind of set a context. Now, I will say, yes, we do resist. This is normal. And surrender can seem hard.

16:29 But really it's our natural state. If you look at, let me start here. If you look, what resists, constantly resists, we are resistance machines as human beings. What resists is the ego. The ego is our perceived sense of self. Ego is what we perceive ourselves to be. and what we identify as, as name, as body, as form, as person, as stories, as history, as memories from the past. And the more we identify with ourselves as that thing, the more we are an ego, the more we're identified, the more type we are.

17:13 And we believe ourselves and we're conditioned by society, by parents, by religion, by media, by life and everything and everyone around us to believe that we are. this ego thing. So we believe we're the ego and the job of the ego is to reinforce its existence and the job of the ego is to protect us to make sure that we don't get hurt again. And so the ego means well but it's limited. See as children we were surrounded like We would run naked through the garden. We didn't care. I'm a little sad.

17:54 What do I look like on Instagram? We were just beat. We were completely surrendered being what we were. We would jump on the table and sing. We didn't care if we don't sound like, you know, Bruno Mars, Celine Dion. We were just being beaming essence life. We would cry. Then we would laugh. We would hit our heads. Then we would cry, get over it and just move on. We wouldn't be wallowing about it. 14, you know, weeks later, we were just being present in the moment to me, that is surrender, being with the experience as it's arising and being and embracing whatever's happening in the moment, pure surrender. So what the hell happens? I think it's important that we understand the nature of how we get conditioned so that we understand the mechanism of the ego so that we can see through it.

18:39 With these bright beings in free flowing surrender, we incarnate into the human experience. We meet our parents, our parents, you know, interesting characters, we all have interesting parents, they're just doing the best that they can do based on their life and their upbringing, their childhood and their parents and their grandparents and society media. So now as children we incarnate, we're born into a preset pattern or framework of conditioning. Maybe dad was an alcoholic, maybe mom had mental health issues, maybe they're crazy, maybe they hate each other, maybe they're fighting all the time, maybe there's abuse, mental, emotional. Maybe there's alcoholism, addiction. Maybe they're great people, but they just didn't know how to meet our emotional needs.

19:20 And that was painful. So two things happened. And this is where ego gets created. And this is where we learn to start controlling ultimately to function and survive. First thing is we learn to often unconsciously to disconnect, shut down and not feel. And we start suppressing, controlling, suppressing our feelings, emotions, suppressing the pain, suppressing. before you know it, layers and layers and layers and layers and layers and and layers of unfelt, unprocessed feeling begins to build up and our true light, our true essence gets kind of buried underneath the layers of decades of unfelt feeling and emotion that we have to control, control in order to like not feel the pain and survive because we feel it's going to be overwhelming.

20:01 And then we kind of can turn ourselves into a certain shape and we erect walls around our hearts and our sensitivities in order to not feel the pain again. And now we hold on to a certain way we go into our mind, become overly analytical, disconnect, and our heart gets very guarded in the heart, not because we're bad, not because we're controlling people, but ultimately it's survival. So now the way that we learn to survive when we were five, we do when we're 10 and then 15. And it worked for us when we were five, but now we're 25. And now we're 35 in relationships, you know, and falling in love and now we're 45. It now starts limiting us.

20:42 And so the mechanism with which we learn to control the ego thinks that if we can control everything and everyone around us, I'm going to be safe and I won't get hurt again. And so we learn a way of being in order to not get hurt. We also learn the sense of who do I need to be in order to get love and validation and approval? If I can, you know, it's If I respond a certain way, dad loves me. If I don't respond a certain way, mom, you know, gives me a pat on the head. Good boy, good girl. So we start developing a role, a mask, a persona, an identity based on who we think we need to be to get love, to get validation, to get approval, which again is survival. So we unconsciously can tour ourselves into a certain shape, a pattern that is really a set of.

21:30 of conditioned patterns that we think we are. It's like, ah, it's coot, it's John, it's Donald, it's Susie. It's like, this is who we've become. We become nice, we become sweet, we become the yes person, we become the caretaker, we become the responsible one, we become always appropriate, we're always smiling, always happy. All of which is great, but in so many ways, we develop these roles that we hold onto that gets reinforced by those around us. So we become the shape of a person. thinking that the version of ourselves that we become is who we are, not realizing it's really a conditioned set of patterns that we've learned to hold onto as ourselves.

22:12 So really what I want people to understand is like, is who you are, who you really are, or is it simply who you've been conditioned to become? And this position, this version, the set pattern that we've become is ego. Ego is not a thing. We think ego is a thing and we think ego is us. And then we hold onto like, this is just who I am. Ego is a process. It's a process of identification that has happened from very young that has been reinforced. But we think it's a thing because all of society reinforces that. So we hold onto that. And so for the ego whose job is to make sure we don't feel helpless, like we felt when we were five, to make sure we don't go through that sense of.

22:58 you know, fear when Dan was raging and it was so much uncertainty. So we just kind of shut down disconnected and learned to numb ourselves. And so for the ego, when you talk about, Hey, go with the flow, surrender, let go. It's like, hell no. That that's like terrifying because like what might happen. And that's why ego doesn't want to change. Ego doesn't want to reinvent itself. Ego isn't open to new ideas. because new ideas might mean I have to question what I currently believe. I have to question who I thought I am. And that's a little scary.

23:38 And so we don't question, we're not open. We just, we want to, ego wants everything and everyone else to change, but it doesn't want to change. And that's why we did. So, so all I'll say is when we understand the nature of ego and when we start understanding that it's a pattern and a process on a thing. and then we understand that we are not that, what we are is so much more, then we can begin to observe the pattern that we previously over -identified as me, and we can start seeing the dots and the pattern like, shit, I always do the same thing. My wife responds the same way, I react the same way. My boss responds the same way, it's the same freaking reaction.

24:20 And when you start up, up until that point, we're so identified with it, we don't see it. There's no freedom because they're being reactive. But when you really step back, you can start seeing the reactions and the pattern that you previously thought was you. And here's the thing, because you understand the job of the ego to keep you safe, not only can you start observing it, which creates some space and freedom, but then you can start meeting it with compassion. Part of the surrender, is to begin meeting your ego, which is the mechanism that resists surrender with compassion. Because when you can meet the ego with compassion versus judgment or force, then the mechanism of the ego, which is rooted in fear, can begin to relax.

25:08 And to me, real healing happens when we can meet ourselves with love and compassion. And that's when true surrender can happen, because the part of us that's resisting can begin to relax. So anyway, that's a kind of a whole explanation. I'll just say when I was five, were you in the living room? Because you basically described what it was like for me when I was five. I mean, that was that was how I grew up. So there's a little bit of my drama. But yeah. Yeah. But I guess I guess I really want to fast forward a little bit in there. OK, so I've got my seven hundred thousand layer cake of feelings that I've put away. Um, that I'm not feeling and, and my ego is, is driving my life and, and you're literally burying it by eating that cake on a daily basis.

25:56 Yep. So I hear your story, I hear your message and I want to start taking those steps to understand my ego and understand who I am so that I can surrender so that I can have that life. What can I start doing? Like this isn't something I guess, maybe if you have like a, a really tough situation like you did, it can be a. game time decision where it happens, but you know, how does somebody ease into this? Like this can't be a one and done kind of decision. Yeah. No, I think it's a lifetime process, you know, I think, so I think we are all in the process of surrender because we're alive and life is really the process of surrender because you know, you can't control a lot of this stuff out here.

26:42 It's just happened. You're born. And then you age and you die and, and, you know, hair falls down and no matter what you do, the body does things, you know, when you're 98, 70, a hundred. And so I think it's not about whether you're going to surrender. It's just about how we participate in the process of surrender. That is life itself in this game of life. None of us make it out of here alive. And that's the, you could say the ultimate surrender. And so. I think if someone's wondering, okay, where do I start? How do I start? I think there's maybe a couple of places. One might be to just begin gently questioning yourself.

27:27 You don't have to do anything with that. Just start questioning. Okay, I thought I am who I am, but I'm here and maybe I'm not. And just begin questioning, like, who am I? What am I? What do I believe? All these belic Because ego in our sense is held together by a set of beliefs that we identify and hold onto that is the construct of who we think we are. And so if we just even begin questioning, who am I? And what do I believe? Do really believe that? Do I know that to be true? Is that my truth? I know I was told that by my parents and I was told to believe that by my uncle and my dad, but I never really questioned. And so many, many times we just haven't questioned ourselves as human beings.

28:09 And so... just begin questioning, we often don't question our stories and our thoughts. We're constantly telling ourselves things like, I'm not enough and I'm not wealthy and I'm unlovable. And I'm, because we have experiences in life that we think prove that point that maybe I'm not lovable. And we don't really question our beliefs and our stories. And so I just invite people to really question, is that true? I'm not lovable. How do I know that to be true? And so I think something starts happening. when we really begin questioning ourselves. That's one. The other thing I would invite people to do is look at, one of the things that keeps us stuck resisting and from truly surrendering are all the lies that we tell ourselves.

28:55 I think as human beings in many ways, because of the reasons I shared about the ego and the construct, in many ways we lie to ourselves and we don't even know that we're lying to ourselves. We're just lying to ourselves about who we are, about what we feel, about what we want, about so much. Many times we're afraid of, if I am who I really am, then you won't love me. And so we've learned to hide who we are, betray parts of ourselves in order to fit in, get loved, be validated in the world. And so we stay in relationships that we know aren't right or aren't aligned, where we're not in love. And we work jobs that we know...

29:37 compromise our integrity. And this is not the true purpose why we were born and put on this planet and wonder why we feel pain and why we feel unhappy while we feel miserable. And so I think if someone wants to begin, begin by telling the truth to yourself and just ask yourself maybe the question, okay, what lies in my telling myself? Let me just start that. What lies am I telling myself? The way the ego resists and keeps things kind of together is we live in denial. You know, we live unconsciously or in denial. We don't want to know. We don't want to see because then I don't have to change. I don't have to change. So then we resist. And one of the ways we do that is lying.

30:17 And so I would just invite people to sit with what lies am I telling myself? Just be with the question. Innocent, genuine. What lies am I telling myself? Wow. Sometimes it can like there is no real transformation without truth. and you have to want the truth more than you want what you have. And you have to want the truth more than you want what you think you want. And so when you just sit with that, it can feel scary because sometimes we don't tell ourselves the truth because we're afraid of the consequences of what will happen. Wow, if I tell myself the truth, I might have to let go of my relationship. If I tell myself the truth, I might have to leave my job. And so what ego does is we begin to create a kind of smoke screen sometimes of confusion.

31:03 I'm confused. I don't really know what's right for me. I don't really know what my purpose is. I don't really, because if I don't really know, let's say, what my purpose is, right, then I don't have to really risk and put myself out there. I can always live in the comfort safety zone of where I am. And I can always have the future fantasy of having that purpose, but I don't have to put myself on the line and risk the rejection and the failure. If I don't really know if this relationship is right for me, then, or if this is the one or this is not the one or... then I don't have to do anything about it, but deep down, I think there's a part of us that knows. And so one thing that I found helps when it comes to acknowledging the truth is taking, take the, I always tell people, take the pressure off of yourself from having to take action.

31:49 Because if you just take the pressure off of yourself, I'm having to actually take action. Then that means if I, if you can just start acknowledging the truth, you know what? I'm not in love with this person. I haven't been in love. for 10 years and it's painful and I'm afraid and I know it, but I'm no longer in love and just feel that it's you don't have to leave. You don't have to break up. You don't have to divorce, but just start feeling the energy of the truth. I hate my job. Scary to say that because oh shit, well, how am I going to survive? And I don't even want to acknowledge I hate my job because what does that? I hate my job. I don't have to leave. And let me just feel that that starts a process inside.

32:31 And so. The next question you can ask yourself is like, okay, what lies am I telling myself? And what are the lies that I'm telling myself costing me? What does it cost? Really, it's ultimately, it's painful. So somebody might say, but how do I know if I'm lying to myself? If I'm lying to myself, because you will feel pain. There will likely be a level of pain that you will feel in your life. And that pain is a messenger. That pain is a blessing. That pain... I believe is your friend, the pain is just trying to give you feedback that there's a lie that you're telling yourself, or there's a part of yourself that you're not in integrity with, that you're betraying, that you're not acknowledging. And that pain is just trying to get your attention so that you can course correct.

33:14 The issue isn't that we feel pain in our lives. The issue is that we distract from the pain. We drink it away, we sex it away, we drug it away, we smoke it away, we shop it away, we meditate it away, we social media it away, just so that we don't have to feel. the pain, but the pain we feel is a messenger. And so when we lie to ourselves, it will tend to manifest as an emotional pain, depression, lethargy, lack of aliveness, apathy. That's giving you a silence. Some think you're suppressing, not dealing with. It might manifest as a temporary, let's say, physical ailment. It might manifest as a, let's say, more serious ongoing disease where the body has an intelligence and your truth.

33:58 is unconsciously manifesting through your physiology. And so all of these things are, I believe, messengers that we get to pay attention to. And so I think what people can just begin is starting with the truth. You don't have to like sell everything and move to India or Tibet or Peru. It just might be just saying, you know what? I'm not really in love with this person and that scares me. Let me just be with that a moment and just feel that. I'm not going to take action, but I'm going to just be with them and just see what happens. And so starting with the truth. I think the truth...

34:41 Truth is real spiritual practice. Truth is real therapy. Truth will set us free, but it can be a little scary for us. But I think if we start there, that begins a process inside and there's no way you can not transform it if you begin going down the path of truth. That's what I found. I have 4 ,000 more questions. One of them is about your free seminar that's coming up, but can I sneak one more in before we get to please, please go for it. I keep thinking about this concept of surrender and giving up and I recently moved from the United States to Canada. Wow. And I worked in the news media and so I was very much in plugged into every fight and every social movement and thing that was going on in the world.

35:29 I can't help but think of the people right now with what just happened with the Supreme Court in the United States and the fight that everyone is in. there right now, the fight that we just went through over masks and vaccinations, the fight, everyone's got to be fighting for this thing that is a part of who they are and the future of the world depends on it. How do I, how does that person, me, that person, whoever they are, how do you balance giving, I shouldn't say giving up, that's not the right word. How do you balance surrender with advocacy? Because it sounds beautiful to say whatever, whatever is meant to be will be and. and I can ride this wave and go where it needs to take me. But if I don't like a world where abortion is illegal, if I don't like a world where people aren't vaccinated, I don't want to sit by and wait and see if that works out.

36:17 So how do you balance surrender with advocacy? So yeah, it's a multi -layered question, I think. And I want to access it from different places as well and give an answer. I would say that... Surrender is not giving up. Surrender is not abdication of responsibility. Surrender doesn't mean you don't take action, just to be clear. I think that surrender requires that you feel, truly feel your deepest integrity, your deepest truth, your deepest truth beyond your attachment, beyond your conditioning, beyond just what you want. And you feel what's most true, what's most sincere, what's most authentic, what's most...

37:03 seeking to express through you genuinely, authentically, you know, in terms of your true purpose, your true essence, and then you align with that. And when you align with that, to me, it's like when you catch that vision for yourself and your life and you align with that, then... just to be clear, then you move in the direction, then you align your personality, your ego, your personality, your thoughts, your thinking, your resources, your money, your vote, your belief, then you align your action with what is authentic and what's true. Then you're going in a direction of what's true. And so sometimes surrender might mean you work harder than you've ever worked, you know, in pursuit of a cause that is in alignment with your truth.

37:49 just to make clear, like we look at people like Andy and Mother Teresa and Mandela, I mean, they work nonstop for a cause that was true and authentic for them. They were being lived by a mission and a purpose that was bigger than them. And so it doesn't mean you sit there and do nothing, but what you are pursuing is real and authentic and aligned with your soul, something deeper than just your ego, right? That's kind of one thing I would say. The other thing I would say is, now this might be a little controversial, but I think at least for me, being on a spiritual path, being around many, many, many enlightened mystics, people far more enlightened than me, gurus, teachers, what have you, truly enlightened beings that I've been privileged to be around, they always seem so free, you know, and like happy.

38:49 despite the way the world was, they were happy, peaceful, serene, radiant. I'm like, what the hell is the deal with these people? You know, like the world is messed up. People are dying. People are starving in India. People are dying, starving. You guys are just sitting around at a piece. Right. Can I get you some more tea? Are you good? What's the deal? You know, here I am crying because I'm seeing a homeless person and I just like beaming. And so what I understood that really helped me. And this is kind of more. It's a spiritual angle to look at something is for me, then understanding that I came to was realizing that we live in a 3D world.

39:31 We spiritual beings, but we live in a world of duality. It's just this realm, this domain, this dimension that we live in as human beings is not a mystical, you know, transcendental world. It's not a utopia. It is a world of duality, interdependent polaric opposites. It's the nature of this life. It's the Tao, it's the yin -yang, it's the up -down, it's the good -bent, it's the left -right, it's the black -white, it's the tall -short, it's the male -female, it's the interdependent polaric opposites that create its physics, you know, it's light -dark.

40:15 And so in this dimension, nature of the world. It's the physics and it's the Dao. Inside of, if you look at the Dao De Ching, inside of the Dao sign is inside of the white is a black dot, inside of the black is a white dot. That to me, this is life. And so I think for me, that understanding really helped me surrender. to the way of the duality of this world. And when I surrendered to that, it shifted my relationship with it, where there was less, shall I say, resistance and judgment to the dualistic nature of this dimension, plus minus, positive, negative, is the duality of this world.

41:15 when that shift in my relationship to it, there was no resistance to it. This is what it is. From that place of... non -resistance. I think when we can understand the nature of something, it shifts your relationship with something from that place of non -resistance when you embrace it for what it is, then that's when I believe you can truly move into a situation, not from a place against us, not from a place of judgment, but from a place of acceptance. And from that acceptance choose because when you can't shift something at the same level of consciousness, I'll give you an example.

42:04 One of my mentors who I spent, I was privileged to know for 20 years. I met him when he was about 18 and he was a former disciple of Gandhi and he built 300 schools for the underprivileged kids in the poorest state in India called Bihar. Bihar is a place where like, I don't know now, but at then the illiteracy rate was maybe 70, it was so high, it was crazy. In fact, when I caught the train there from Delhi, the guy selling the tickets said, why the hell are you going there? Like that's where the illiterates live.

42:44 The guy at the train station called the people in Bihar subhuman. I'm like, what do you mean? And so I was privileged to spend time with this man of peace. A real man who didn't write about it, but spent at least at that time, 50 years of his life every day, 24 -7, dedicating his life to being of service and making a difference. And I'll never forget, he came here when George Bush was in power. And, you know, we didn't like George Bush and the war and what have you. And so I took him to a peace rally in San Francisco. And I'll never forget, I took him to the Peace rally.

43:25 He was invited to speak. The war was happening, you know, everyone's like F George Bush, F George Bush, F George Bush. It was like in the audience. I mean, it was intense. F George Bush. And his name was Dwarkoji. I said, Dwarkeji, how do you feel? He said, I feel good. Anything you want to tell me before you go on stage? No, no, no, no, no. He went on stage, thousands of people. F George Bush, F George Bush. This moment changed my life. He looked at everyone in the audience and maybe had a right to do cause he's eight years old and people, you know, he had some credibility, but this moment changed my life. He looked at, he looked at the audience, audience went silent and he said, do you love Bush?

44:16 was like, and he said, do you love Bush? Because here we are at a peace rally. and I feel a lot of hate, but you can't change something or bring love with hate. And I really got what he was saying. I really understood the essence of what he was saying. And he went on to give this whole talk, but he said, must love his soul and see his soul. Because if you just change something with the energy of hate, you just kind of perpetuate that energy and you feed into... the duality of this realm. And so then it goes from left, then it swings to right, and then it swings back to left, and it just keeps swinging.

45:01 And at some point, we have to transcend that to find the shared being, the shared oneness, the shared humanity where we can meet. Otherwise, it's just going to go left to right, up to down. We're all going to be stuck in the duality. So... Surrender doesn't mean you sit there and do nothing. Surrender doesn't mean you sit on the sidelines and just let people trample over you. Surrender doesn't mean you don't go protest. Surrender doesn't mean, but I think it means we move into it from a different place within our own selves. And the last thing I'll say just to add to that is, might sound controversial, but one thing I'll say is the world that we see.

45:52 Right now, 2022, we're having this conversation, divisiveness, war, you know, Roe vs. Wade getting overturned, George Floyd, the world that we see. to me is a manifestation of the collective consciousness of all of us, all of us combined. Every single one of us, our consciousness projected out there has created this world. To me, the world is a mirror of our consciousness combined. The leaders that we see, we can look at Trump, we can look at Biden, we can look at Boris Johnson, we can look at whoever, just pick them. The world that we, like, if we look at the leaders, if we look at the war, if we look at Ukraine, if we look at, you know, racism.

46:37 To me, we have to ask ourselves, if the world is a mirror manifestation of the collective consciousness of all of us combined, what does the world reflect to us about ourselves? And if we just, if we just focus on changing what's out here, changing what's out there, changing a leader, getting how many times in Africa, have we changed, how many times in America have we changed leadership? Nothing really changes. And so to me, if the world is a mirror, of the collective consciousness of all of us combined. If you can't, let's say change the world out here. What we all can do individually is change ourselves. And maybe we can start by just to me, surrender is by starting by asking ourselves the question, okay, this president, this leader, this mayor, they're a jerk.

47:26 They don't have integrity. They're like, How is that me? Where do I lie? Do I not? Well, they lie. Why not lie? We talked about the truth. Where do I lie? Where do I cheat on my wife? Where do I cheat on my this? Where do I tell little? Where do I betray myself? And so to me, part of surrender is the full responsibility for ourselves and being that change. It's like, okay, if I want, if I. If I want more integrity out there, how can I live more integrity in here? Okay, more. Where do I drop bombs?

48:08 I'm not a terror, but where do I drop bombs of self judgment and self hatred inside of my own consciousness every day? There's a war going on inside of my own mind every day, because that gets projected out here. Division. Where am I divided in terms of my own, you know, parts of me all over the place, parts of me suppressed in my shadow where I'm not whole in myself and So I think if we really want to change the world to surrender to saying, okay, we may not be able to change the entire planet, but what we can do is begin to bring peace in our own hearts, to begin to be a bit more compassionate with ourselves, to begin to be a bit more kinder to ourselves, to begin to bring ourselves into more integrity and more alignment and more wholeness and more harmony.

48:55 And I think that is really the surrender. And if we do that, if I do that, you do that, she does that, he does, we all do a little bit. then I think the projection in the world will also shift. So that's just kind of my two cents. And if we want to learn a little bit more about how to do that, I understand you have a seminar coming up or a summit that people can learn more about this. Yeah, I have a five day. It's a free five day online event. And I really want people to get access to just this information. It's called the Surrender Summit, five days free. It's online. If you can't make it live, you can watch the replays. www .thesurrendersummit .com.

49:38 I'm bringing together also, I'll be teaching, but I'm bringing together some of my friends, people like Neil Donald Walsh, who got Conversations with God, Michael Beckwith, Master Beck, she's been on Oprah, John Demartini, who was in The Secret, who else? Barbra the Angelist, John Gray, and 20 inspiring teachers from... all angles and all disciplines. I really love bringing people with a wide range of perspectives to share about how to live surrender in your life and also how to use the principle of surrender so that you can harness it and fulfill your true potential. So that's July 12th, 2019.

50:20 That's beautiful. We will have that link in the show notes for this episode. Where else can we learn more about you and your work online? Yeah, kubedlaxson .com. My name is K -U -T -E, kubedlaxson .com. Instagram, Coop Blackson, Facebook, Coop Blackson. Twice a year I do a very special 12 day event in Bali, www .boundlessbali .com. Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom today. Our thanks to Coop Blackson, author of The Magic of Surrender, Finding the Courage to Let Go. You can find links to him and his work in the show notes for this episode at thefitmass .com. And that was a really powerful story that he had about his mother and... It really hits my heartstrings when I hear things like that, but then also really makes me almost feel bad about myself of like, do I need to wait until something that traumatic happens before I can shift my life?

51:14 Like, why don't I just shift it now? And like you said, and this is one of the key takeaways from that interview was that your ego is a process. And that's something that, that as long as I've been studying, you know, Dharma and meditation and all this stuff, the idea of letting go of ego is really difficult because everything that we are in this life or this realm, this dimension, as he put it, is an accumulation of experiences and ideas and beliefs. And so you work so hard for most of your life to develop a sense of identity. And like he says, it's really just this series, this process. It's this accumulation of stuff that you hang on to, to convince yourself that that is who you are.

51:57 When in fact, that's just the stuff that the world sees you as, and you can change that at any time. Nobody's saying it's easy because if you've spent years building that up, I would reason from that, that it will take years to take it apart again. And it's something that in my experience, I built it up really, really well. And then I started taking pieces out and then like Jenga, you'd take a piece and a whole bunch of it falls out and then you panic and you put it all back up and start rebuilding that wall because it's, it's really scary to let go of. But like he said, and, and like I've experienced in my own life, the more you can surrender, the more the truth of what your experience, what you want it to be, I guess, becomes apparent.

52:42 And it becomes just a simpler way to live rather than constantly trying to impose your will on other people. And, and. life in general. I don't know, Jeremy, I really tried to put the square peg into the round hole. I mean, it, it causes so much pain in our lives trying to do that. Yeah. I think just his point about pain being a message, you know, when, when we get stuck in our comfort zones and don't really put ourselves out there and try to experience new things and try and live that life of purpose that we very comfortably imagine one day achieving.

53:25 The pain that comes with getting out of that comfort zone is very much a message that you are growing. Yeah. I struggled so much with getting out of my comfort zone. And I got to tell you, like, you know, the thing you need to do, you know, like just for work, like, you know, even today, like I had to deal with a contract and I didn't want to, I just didn't want to, I knew it was going to be painful. I knew I had to have arguments. I knew I had to like, go against the grain and I put it off. Like I put it off all morning. Like that's when I usually get all that kind of stuff done. And you just have to know it's going to be uncomfortable and put systems in place to help you along.

54:05 Right. So like, you know, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this and it's going to be uncomfortable and I'm not going to like it. But I put my headphones in, I put my neural beats on, right. And I just like, tried to set the stage and put myself in the most comfortable place possible and just grind it out. I mean, that's what it comes down to is like. those things that you don't want to do where you're going to grow like in this particular thing is just like a little outside of my comfort zone. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna be painful. But that just means the reward is that much bigger. All right. Well, those and lots of other very powerful lessons in that interview with Coop Blackson. You can find out more about him in the show notes for this episode at thefitmass .com.

54:45 But don't let the conversation end there. Join us on our Facebook group where you and fellow FitMass listeners can connect for monthly challenges, accountability to reach your goals, and connection with others who are on a similar journey. That link is also on our website, thefitmass .com, where we will be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks for listening. Hey, everyone. We know. This podcast is amazing. It doesn't seem to lack anything, but we need a legal disclaimer. Prior to implementing anything discussed in this podcast, it is your responsibility to conduct your own research and consult your physician. You should assume that Jeremy and Zach don't know what they're talking about and they're not liable for any physical or emotional issues that occur directly or indirectly from listening to this podcast.

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