People are always so worried about the future. So much so that we often ignore what’s happening in the present. “Stop trying to control life, it’s impossible” … is what inspirational speaker and transformational teacher Kute Blackson did. Kute is the CEO of The Blackson Group and has his own inspirational weekly blog focusing on spiritual growth, love and relationships, gaining success, and much more. Kute is also the author of the national bestselling book, You Are The One and has JUST released his newest book entitled, The Magic of Surrender. Join in as Kute and Adam discuss the magic of surrender so that you can unlock your true life’s purpose and achieve your goals.
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If you want magic…pre-order The Magic of Surrender here!
I am so excited about Kute’s new book called The Magic of Surrender: Finding the Courage to Let Go. It’s such a powerful book for the times we are living in now. I whole-heartedly share Kute’s belief that, contrary to conventional wisdom, surrender is the invitation to take all limits off of life itself. So magic can happen. More than you can imagine. More than you could ever plan. More than you are able to fathom.
This is the magic. And, if you want magic… you must surrender.
** When you pre-order The Magic of Surrender, you will also receive some amazing free gifts from Kute!!!! So get your copy today, and open up to the magic.
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The Magic of Surrender In Achieving Your Goals (with Kute Blackson)
I’m feeling blessed at this moment for a few important reasons. They’re simple. There is nothing too profound in this except that I feel lucky to be alive. I don’t use the word luck. It’s funny that that word is even coming up but it is how I feel. I feel quite fortunate, blessed and lucky. They’re all words that mean some similar things. I had time to take care of myself, swim, take a walk, eat something slowly and not be rushed. Even in the midst of that, I found that I blew a deadline or an appointment. It’s funny that in the midst of taking care of myself, I realized that I overlooked something.
I’m even feeling blessed at this moment for that awareness. It’s always going to be this harmony between what we do for ourselves, what we do to restore ourselves and keep ourselves resilient. Also, what we do to take care of other people and handle our responsibilities and commitments. That’s the relationship that’s constantly in flux and being managed. In case you’re wondering if I’m struggling to find the word balance, I’m intentionally not using that word. To me, balance always felt more like the stress of trying to keep things even and equal. I don’t know that harmony is about things being even or equal. I don’t know that it’s about a magic formula. In many ways, it is about how things harmonize one to the other.
Speaking of harmony and blessings, I have this great honor to introduce all of you to a dear friend of mine. He’s probably somebody you’ve already heard of. He is fairly well-known around the world. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s somebody you want to dig, getting to know, listening to and learning from. With his book coming out, he’s somebody you’re going to want to find out more about. His name is Kute Blackson. He is the winner of the 2019 Unity New Thought Walden Award. Kute is widely considered a next-generation leader in the field of personal development. His mission is simple, to awaken and inspire people across the planet to access inner freedom, live authentically and fulfill their true life’s purpose. I know Kute not from that end of his world, but from the Transformational Leadership Council that we both happen to be members of. We got to know each other and become madly in love with one another. I’ll say, I’m madly in love with you Kute. He’s got a book called The Magic of Surrender. We’re going to dive into that juicy bit of work. Kute, it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Stop trying to force and control life to be what you think it should be. Share on XThanks for having me. Thanks for making the time. I’m excited always to hang.
I just got out of the pool and was drying off. I look at my phone and I get a text from Randi, my wife, who’s also a member of the team. She says, “What are you doing? You got a show starting in ten minutes.” I’m weaving this in because you said let’s talk about The Magic of Surrender. I had to surrender at that moment because the earlier version of myself, let’s say fifteen years ago, I would have immediately felt that mix of wonderful things like guilt and agitation. I probably would have been a little pissed off at something, maybe myself, maybe somebody on my team for not making me well aware that I had to be back. There would have been a nice little concoction of emotion and would have produced lots of good chemicals inside my body. I didn’t and I surrendered to the fact that I was going to be late. Whatever was going to be was going to be. If it didn’t fit your schedule, we were going to have to do what we had to do. In any event, Kute, thank you so much for being on the show and allowing me to practice my surrender skills.
It’s great to be here.
What’s something that you would love for people to know about you that’s not typically a part of your bio or your introduction?
As a young boy, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My father’s a minister and a healer. That’s something I speak about. We live behind my father’s church. My bedroom was the size of most people’s little bathrooms. I had all these dreams and visions. I would sneak into my father’s church in the middle of the night with the key. No one’s there at 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM. What most people don’t know is probably from age 11 to 18, I would speak and give seminars in the darkness to the empty chairs for 2 to 3 hours a night. On weekends, I would spend my Saturdays giving seminars, imagining thousands of people in a ballroom and teaching. No one was there. The chairs were empty. It was pitch black and I would be giving seminars.
I’ve read these spiritual books by Louise Hay, Marianne Williamson, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy at the age of twelve. I’ll be imagining all of the content I was reading. I’d be coming up with my own ideas and understanding. A lot of people don’t know that I probably put in thousands of hours before I even came to the US and did my own seminars. I loved it. It was my passion. It was my joy. When I first found Jim Rohn at age twelve, I was walking to school on the pavement reading Jim Rohn’s book. For me, it’s a calling. It’s a passion. It was never a business at all. A lot of people are getting into self-help now because it’s a business. It’s a way to make some money by coaching. For me, it was love.
You have since spoken on huge stages with thousands of people. You’ve spoken at A-Fest and countless other places. You’ve done your seminars all over the world. Was it better in real life or was it better when you were delivering those insights to the darkness and the room of imaginary people in the middle?
It was humbling. In the darkness, it wasn’t a conscious thing. It was an intuitive thing where I felt the souls of people around the world calling me. There are moments on stage when I’m in the flow sharing what’s coming through. I look out at the audience and I feel so profoundly humbled and privileged. There’s a moment of, “This is what the souls of the people looked like,” that I somehow imagined on some level that I spoke to way back even though I couldn’t see anyone. It’s a beautiful feeling. It’s hard to explain the feeling of the manifestation of something that I felt in a vision way back. It’s different. I wouldn’t say it’s better or not but it’s a humbling feeling.
Visualizations can be powerful. I remember when I began speaking and was still practicing law at the time. I was going to sleep at night with a visualization of myself in front of these large crowds of people. I would visualize that my heart was radiating love in color, and the people in that audience were also feeling this love. Their hearts were radiating and were this purple shade. I could see that the color coming from their heart was purple. It was pulsing through. That was a visualization I had before I went to sleep at night. I have spoken as you have to a lot of people around the world and it’s different.
There’s no way to compare the two things. It’s not a better or worse thing but it is different. Maybe a way to get into the content of your book is to say that a lot of the things that we want in our lives, that we aspire to, that we have a burning desire for, don’t often look the way they look when we’re envisioning or visualizing them. That’s to say that often, they manifest. I’ve known a lot of people who’ve created some pretty great visualizations for themselves, and have seen those things come to fruition. They look different. They feel different. The question is, what do you do with that?
When you are wrestling with life itself, you won't win. Life is the ultimate heavyweight champion. You won't win against it. Share on XVisualization and this whole creative manifestation process have to be held lightly because many times, we think we know what we want. We go for what we want only to realize, “That’s not what I wanted,” but it was a journey that we needed to go on. Sometimes, our capacity to visualize and perceive goals, dreams and desires is limited to the level of our current consciousness and our current evolution. From the current consciousness of our own ego structure in this particular moment, we aren’t necessarily able to see the total infinite possibilities and tapestries of what life itself is seeking to express through us.
Many times, what we visualize and what we project onto life is based on our personality, conditioning, past, programming and childhood. Some of the things we visualize, dream about, want, design and what have you are ways to get some unmet needs as a child. We think, “If I can be on stage, if I can do that thing, if I can win an Oscar, if I can drive a car, then I’m going to finally be enough.” We have to be careful. That’s why for me, part of the theme of the book and where I’ve come to at this moment is a shift.
What I wanted to invite people to is a shift in paradigm from an ego persona and a personal power way of living life, a drive of life that moves from, “What do I want?” The notion of “I” is limited in and of itself. It’s an identity-based thing. It doesn’t mean we can’t create an incredible life from the sense of I and ego and personal sense of self. We can create a good life. What I’m inviting people to consider is I don’t believe you can create a truly great life. I’m inviting people to consider rather than asking, “What do I want?” It’s opening to feeling and tuning into beyond one’s self. What is it that life wants to express through me? What is it that I surrender my idea of what my life should look like, who I should be, what my relationship should be, and my idea of everything?
We stop trying to force life and control life to be what we think it should be. We open our hearts to our souls. We open ourselves to the deepest impulse that life is seeking to express and unfold through us. We tune into that, feel that and open to that. I have found that we tap into an infinite stream of energy, consciousness, power, and the possibility that the fullness, the magic, the greatness and the infinite intelligence of life are then able to manifest themselves through us. That’s when you look at people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Mandela.
They surrendered themselves beyond themselves to life and to nature. Life was able to do through them more than they could ever have written in their goal list or journal, more than they could ever put on the poster board. They opened to life and life used them. That’s when miracles happen. That’s the whole idea of surrender in The Magic of Surrender. When I say magic, it is more joy, more abundance, more bliss or whatever the magic means to you. When you surrender, surrender is the passport to freedom. People think that “If I surrender, I’m not going to get what I want.” I’m saying, “If you surrender, what if you got more?”
That’s part of the thing that is a bit of a paradox. It’s wanting something, that burning desire, the way people visualize, think about, obsess about what they want, that the pain or the suffering that often is associated with getting something, meaning seeing it through. You visualize you want this thing and then it happens but then you’re still not happy. You still don’t feel fulfilled and worthy. You still didn’t fill the gap that was left by your parents not loving you unconditionally or by life giving you some lemons to deal with or some bad hand.
The Surrender Experiment is a book I read some years ago by Michael Singer. That concept of surrender is tough for people because I remember in that book, he was like, “If people want to move on your land and pitch a tent, you could surrender to it.” He did surrender to it. People started pitching a tent or building a structure on his land. I bought it because I love the book. He wrote The Untethered Soul and that part was a disconnect for me. I would love it if we talk a little bit about your brand of surrender or the way that you distinguished it.
We live in an infinitely valid but simultaneously contradictory reality inherent in the nature of life. The mind wants to hold on to this or that. The real freedom in surrender is not in the “this or that.” It’s in the “and.” Surrender is not just passive. Surrender is when you stop trying to force life to be a certain way. Surrender is where you stop negotiating with life and negotiating your destiny. Surrender is the willingness to not know, to give up the need to know, and follow the energy and the flow. It’s learning to follow the flow. Rather than going to the ocean and trying to make waves happen, you’re feeling for the waves.
Surrender doesn’t mean laziness at the same time. Surrender means you give 100% to the moment and you show up fully. You give everything going in, following your most authentic, deepest truth at the moment and yet not being attached to the outcome or to the result. There is openness and willingness. Maybe that journey of surrender worked for Michael Singer. What we have to be careful not to do is to be attached to that way of being like, “I’m going to make that into a formula. There’s my wife. Do you want to sleep with my wife? Sleep with my wife. Do you want my bank account? Here’s my bank account. Do you want to eat my kids for breakfast? Have my kids. Take them. Sell them.” To me, that’s not necessarily surrendering. If you see a child being abused or a group of people being taken advantage of, you let whatever happens.
Sometimes surrender means you feel the deepest impulse of what life is moving through you. To me, this is the expression of love. Love is to follow the most authentic, deep impulse that is moving through you. Sometimes, love is sweet and cuddly. Sometimes love is fierce. Jesus went into the temple, threw away all the money changers and crashed everything in the temple. He destroyed everything because they were selling things. If we allow the impulse of love to flow through us, this is surrender. It can look like however it needs to look like at the moment to serve with the highest evolution of everyone involved.
We try to predict what’s that going to look like. I’m saying, “Give up the need to know what that will look like. Even give up the need to know what surrender might look like.” Every time I go into a situation, I do 1, 2, 3. Surrender is following the deepest truth in the moment, which may not always be what you want to do. It may not always be what it was yesterday. It might look different from what it was yesterday. It’s the willingness to meet life innocently in the moment with a pure openness to, “Here I am in this moment. What is the most authentic impulse that can happen in this moment?” To me, the real power of now is to be in the moment, to live in the moment truly from that deepest, authentic place. That might mean protesting. That might mean taking someone to court. That might mean realizing I’m going to have to fight this person. That might mean turning the other cheek.
What is beautiful about what you’re expressing here is it’s not either/or. It’s both. It’s and. It’s not about scarcity that there’s one path or even a formulaic path but rather, there’s a path that is revealed in the moment. I’d like to fill in the blank because you’ve already given us a lot of what is the meat on the bone there. I still want people to understand how to train themselves to be available in the moment, to meet life innocently and to be guided? First of all, people have to get your book to get more of what that looks like, The Magic of Surrender. While I have you here and put you on the spot, this is not something that gets taught to most people in school.
Surrender is the willingness to not know, to give up the need to know. Share on XIt’s not because we’re constantly conditioned. One of the ways I see that we’d like to control life is the constant need to know and understand what everything needs. What does this relationship mean? Where are we going? Where is this going? What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen in the future? Let me reach the astrologer. Let me get the psychic. Let me try and predict. Many times, we are projecting, imposing and trying to figure out what everything means. We then end up missing the true and authentic meaning of what it really is. We’re only able to discern the meaning of something based on what’s in our consciousness right now. There are many times where we might think we know what something means but we’re not understanding the true meaning of that situation or that relationship. It’s important to look at where we’re constantly projecting in the moment and into life, “This means this and that.” Step back and say, “I don’t need to know what this means.”
We’re meaning-making machines.
We’re constantly making meaning, the challenge is a lot of the meanings we’re making up about situations, people, relationship or what this is are based on the state of our nervous system and programming from our entire life. Every single experience that ever happens to us is stored in our nervous system. The nervous system is that antenna to the world. Information comes in and we are filtering reality through the current state of our nervous system. The nervous system is then making an interpretation about what something means to the best of its ability, which may not mean what it really is. It is just an interpretation that we’re making up that may not be accurate. If we’re willing to step back and say, “I don’t need to know. Let me just be.” Jesus said, “Be like a child. The innocence of a child.” I don’t need to know what this means if we were able to just be open. The moment we attach to, “This is what this is,” we’re now not truly open to life.
I want to test something with you because I gave some advice to our youngest daughter. I’m going to tell you what I said to her. I’ve faced her on. I said to our daughter Eden that the answers are always within us. You say release or let go of that need to know, that is if you don’t have a need to know and if there isn’t this neediness.
To hold on to something, “This is what it is.”
For safety and security, we know why.
It’s for safety and security but we end up limiting. It’s important that we cultivate curiosity. That doesn’t mean we just sit there, watch TV and do nothing. No. You move in the direction that is most authentic. Many times we’re thinking, “Why?” We’re mentally taking action that is often fear-based. We’re going in directions that aren’t necessarily authentically aligned. I’m saying go in the direction and make a decision that is authentic. Even though you don’t understand where it’s going to lead you, go in that direction. There is intelligence because then you’re following the energy that is not coming from your mind or conditioning. You then cultivate a curiosity. You feel and you go in the direction. You look around. Life will start to meet you and reveal to you what’s needed next because then you are in the flow. When you’re in the flow, things start happening that you can’t explain. That’s when I’ve seen the magic happen. That’s when I’ve seen miracles happen. That’s the invitation.
You are following these breadcrumbs.
You’re following the energy that’s not something you’re making up in your mind. Sometimes people say, “Why are you doing that?” I’ll say, “I don’t know why.” I’ve given up the need to know why I’m going there. I don’t know why I’m going there. For instance, my intuition guided me to spend a few days in Miami. I stopped questioning why. That’s the question of what I don’t need to know. All I do is follow and obey. Something’s pushing me. This is not my mind. I’m going to take the questioning mechanism out. There’s the intelligence that’s bringing this impulse to my conscious awareness. It’s the same intelligence that’s breathing me, you and a billion people. It’s the same intelligence that functions the sun, the star and the moon. It’s the same intelligence of all existence.
Who the hell am I to question this intelligence? I stopped questioning it. I said, “Let me just take a step. I’m going to go to Miami for four days.” That’s it. I went to Miami for four days. All this amazing strange synchronistic stuff happened that I could not have planned. That same something said to come back to Miami for a month. This is not Kute making it up like, “Yes, do this and plan.” There’s no logic, “Come back to Miami for a month.” After I’m in Miami for a month, after a week, I found this great laugh. Something says, “Move to Miami.” Everything starts falling into place and here I am. Had I heard something say, “Move to Miami,” months ago, I would have said, “Hell no.” Sometimes, the universe doesn’t show us everything upfront. Either we’re not ready for it yet. We wouldn’t be open to it yet. We just have to take a step. Life and our purpose reveal to us what’s needed as we take a step. The challenge is many of us don’t take the step. We’re trying to figure out our entire life purpose upfront, but we don’t go in that direction. We don’t take a step. Take a step.
This is the other thing I said to Eden, “The future is none of your business.” That is in getting into college. I’m not saying you don’t plan to save money. I wasn’t suggesting to her to just give up all thoughts of the future. If you took the approach at least on a philosophical level that the future is none of your business, how much creativity or presence would that free up for you in the moment? We know the past is none of our business. That much we need to get through.
At least spiritually and philosophically, it’s true. We have lost touch with this innate intelligence that is life. People say, “How do I trust life?” I look at you and I say, “How can you not trust it?” Look around. Every breath that we take is living proof of life’s power, of life’s grace, of the trustworthiness of life. You and I, we’ve been breathing. We’re not sitting here doing some special breath technique. It’s just happening if we just pay attention to nature. We’ve lost touch with nature in our hyper technologized world. We become disconnected from the fact that you and I are a part of nature. If we look at nature, every day the sun shines, the moon rises. I don’t know about you but I can’t remember the last day in my entire life that the sun didn’t rise at 10:00 AM. It was pitch black and we say, “What happened to the sun?” “It just forgot to come up.” Every day, there is a rhythm and a flow. There are the seasons. Every day, it happens for billions of years. It’s this same intelligence. If we start paying attention to nature, the trees, the sun, the laws of life, our body, and the trillions of processes that are happening in our body, in spite of us, something is happening.
The nature of all those things is change. That’s the common denominator. That’s the constant. It’s a bit of an oxymoron but the constant is change. If the nature of nature is that everything changes, how ironic is it that the fear that we’re talking about, the thing that people are holding on to that’s white-knuckling life because you have to know what’s going to happen a minute or ten minutes from now? It’s as though you’re wrestling with life itself.
You won’t win. If we’re going to take that wrestling metaphor, life is the ultimate heavyweight champion. We won’t win against life. It’s impossible and yet, it’s understandable.
Surrender to the idea that change is going to happen constantly.
All the time. Surrender to that. Change is the nature of life. Life is a process of continual evolution and that’s just how it is. We are here to evolve and life doesn’t care about comfort or convenience. Life just cares about evolution. If we can surrender to that and realize, “Let me let go of that.” As change is happening, then we’re more able to participate.
That’s not the formula. This is not the classic, “Here are your three steps to whatever.” This is the philosophical, “What is life?” You talked about Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn was famous for philosophy. What’s your philosophy? This is the thing that guides your steps on the path of your life, whether that’s a spiritual philosophy or path or something other than that. What you laid out is tangible and important because we have to be willing to surrender to the fact that life is a constant change. Therefore, when change happens or when you anticipate it, instead of feeling the fear of it and trying to control it or stop it, you could do something else with it. You could be curious about it. You could lean into curiosity.
It’s like being in the ocean. If you go into the ocean, there are waves. It’s the nature of the ocean. Imagine going to the ocean moaning and groaning like, “Why are there waves in the ocean?” It’s the nature of the ocean.
You want it to be flat.
That is not how it is. There are moments in our life where we evolve and we outgrow the current level or structures of our life. There comes a moment in life where the life that we’ve created and set up for ourselves is too small for what our soul is seeking to become. I always say the next level of our life always requires the next level of us. That requires letting go of what is not aligned, letting go of the situations, the identities, and the people that aren’t aligned. That can be a bit of a scary process because we often get identified as the person we’ve become. We often get identified with what we have created. We get identified to the success we have. We get identified with some people in our life. It’s scary to let go but this is the process. What we tend to do in those moments is we hold on, but holding on keeps us stuck.
It’s the caterpillar that says, “I’m going to stay a caterpillar. I’m pretty content on this leaf right here.”
We were born to fly. Let me see if I can lay out a few phases. In those moments where change is happening or even before a change is happening, although change is always happening, the first stage might be we’re living in denial. We’re living unconsciously. We’re not even aware that things need to change, at least consciously. That’s one way to stay stuck. We then start becoming aware that some things aren’t quite working, “I think I need to change,” but we’re still a little bit afraid to change because we’re afraid of the consequences.
We start moving into a zone of resistance and the ego starts resisting as self-preservation tactics. We start resisting in some way. We then begin negotiating with life, “Maybe I can keep this but not do that. I can do that. Maybe that relationship has potential.” We start negotiating with life as a way to keep ourselves stuck. One of the things we do in those moments is lying to ourselves. I’d ask everyone to sit with what lies are they telling themselves and feel the cost of that. We then move into a realization that no matter how much we negotiate, it doesn’t change. Things are the same. We’re the same. Our partner is the same and the situation is the same.
We then move to a level of acceptance. We start accepting what is. We often hear the term, “Accept what is.” It’s beautiful. We bring ourselves into a relationship with what’s happening. The thing though is that acceptance is not necessarily surrendering. Most people stop at the level of acceptance. You can be accepting a situation or a person, but still not be at peace internally. You can be accepting a situation or something, but still have the judgment internally that the experience I’m having is not the experience I should be having. I should be having some other experience. If it’s raining outside, you can be like “Shit, it’s raining outside.” You take the umbrella and be moaning and groaning that it’s raining outside, and still not be fully surrendering to the fact that it’s raining.
Surrender is the wholehearted participation. It is the open-hearted participation with the process of life that is unfolding because you realize two things. The first thing you realize is everything that happens is for your highest good. The universe is always working for your evolutionary highest good. That’s one. That’s foundational. When you realize if it’s not this, then I believe the universe is clearing things out to bring you something better. That is key. Surrender is possible when you realize or when you remember that the deepest spiritual purpose of life is we incarnate as souls to grow and evolve. Every single experience in our life is a vehicle and a classroom for our souls’ growth and evolution.
When we get that, then surrender is the willingness, even if it’s difficult, challenging, and not easy to open your heart to fully participate with the evolutionary lesson and gifts inherent in every single situation. When we realize that it doesn’t matter what happened, it’s about our evolution, then even though it’s difficult, it makes it a bit easier to surrender to, “Let me go for the lesson in this relationship. Let me go for this lesson in this betrayal. What can I learn? Why did I check this situation? What did my soul check this situation? What am I here to learn from this person?”
Go in the direction that is authentic, even though you don't understand where it's going to lead. Share on XThe difference in questions that people will ask is, “Why does this always happen to me? Why am I a victim yet again?”
They are staying stuck in the right or wrong victim game instead of going underneath that to focus on the evolutionary gift. You surrender the victimhood to the evolutionary lesson. I have found in any situation that if you go for the soul’s evolutionary lesson, no matter what happened on the surface, you always win. You might say, “Adam, that person did this and that person did that.” It’s not your job to repay someone’s karma. You learn your lesson and you will then transcend that lesson. As a result, you graduate to the next level and attract a whole another level of situation and experience.
Surrender is the wholehearted participation where you’re like, “It’s raining outside. Let’s go run naked in the rain. Let’s play with the kids in the rain. Let’s have an intimate dinner.” You’re fully participating. The challenge though is between acceptance and surrender, there is a stage that most people miss. It is the stage of grieving. Surrender is a death of an old identity, an old belief system or an old way of being. It’s the death of who you thought you were in a certain stage of your life. To truly surrender requires a level of willingness on a human level to surrender to your humanity to grief. By not fully surrendering to grieving sometimes in an effort to stay positive, to not feel, to be in control, we don’t fully allow ourselves to feel and release the grief so that we can let go and open to the authentic, open-hearted surrender. Grieving is an important phase that opens us to surrender. We move into surrender. We then move into the last stage or phase which is the flow or the magic. That’s when the magic happens.
What you’ve outlined feels like how you cultivate resilience in your existence. That’s one word that we talk about a lot on this show, but it’s also part of my own body of work. I’d love to get a sense of when you hear the word resilience, what comes up for you? How do you define it? You’ve given us a deep exploration of what I would call resilience.
I’m not a resilience expert like you but I would say that resilience is the realization, the belief and the understanding that who you are and what you are at your core is more powerful than any fleeting experience that happens in your life. That experiences, situations and moods come and go. If you want any of those things that what you are is an unchanging beingness that is unshakable and unbreakable, that is the core of resilience to me.
You expressed the through-line for our new book that’ll come out called Get This, Change-proof. You just defined what it means to be change-proof there. Tell us about the book, The Magic of Surrender. What is your highest aspiration for people who are going to engage with this book? Is there a specific audience that it is meant for? Is it for a particular time in your life? I’d love to get a sense of who is going to be the quintessential audience.
My aspiration for this book is that when I look at the great ones like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, Malaya, Greta and Oprah, they’re all human beings like you and me. They’ve shown us the possibility of what we are all capable of as human beings in our ability to love, persevere and visualize. They’re no different than you and me. Many times, we look at them and think, “They’re so special.” That is an abdication and a cop-out. We all have that capacity. The key to their greatness was in the fact that they surrendered. My invitation to this book is to open that bigger dimension of life that is inside of us. For every single human being or every single person who feels a calling to make a difference and to impact humanity in some way. It doesn’t have to be on the Gandhi level. If you feel an inkling or desire that you’re here for something more or that there is something you want to give, share, create, or express on the planet, then that’s who I want to reach.
I may be reaching here by saying this, but what’s coming up for me is there’s this battle sometimes. At least I’ll speak for myself here that there’s a battle in between my heart and my head. My head will say something and my heart will feel differently about it. I will have an emotional reaction to something but my logical mind will say something else. When you say to surrender, on some level, are we saying that we’re surrendering to that knowing that is deep in our subconscious that we call our hearts’ knowing or our hearts’ wisdom? People always say follow your heart but I don’t know that everybody knows exactly what that means. Is it surrendering to our heart? Is it surrendering to curiosity?
It is surrendering to life that is what we essentially are. It’s this stream.
It’s a constant expansion.
Surrendering to life and to being lived by life. That’s the magic. The great ones, all got to the point and this is what made them great. They all got to the point where they realize that my life is not just my life. My dream is not just my dream. Every single person, big or small, your dreams don’t just belong to you. If you think that your dreams are yours, that’s when the ego gets involved. Your ego wants to own it. It then gets freaked out and it starts questioning, “Is it possible? What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m going to fail? What would people think?” You realize that the dream doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to life. The dream chose you because every single thing in your life makes you the perfect person. If you realize that the dream chose you, then encoded in that dream is also the seed for self-fulfillment. The dream is an impulse of life seeking to express itself through you. If it’s not yours, then it is life’s. We need to understand that we are just a part of life through which it can express itself through, then we realize that we are not the doer.
When we understand that I am not the doer, then something can open and drop away. I’m not the doer. Jesus performed miracles. There’s never one way where he says, “I’m Jesus. I did all these miracles. It’s me. I am the great Jesus.” The secret to Jesus and his miracles was he would say, “It’s not I.” This identity, Adam, Kute, Paul, Peter, Jim, John, Susie, Oprah, is not I that does the work. It is the Father, life, consciousness, “It is the Father that does the work through me.” When we surrender our sense of being the doer and when we show up and we’re willing to say, “Universe, I feel this vision. I feel this dream. I don’t even know how I’m going to do it. I don’t even know if I’m worthy of doing it. I feel it in my heart. I say yes to it. Here’s the secret, use me to fulfill this vision. I’m open. I’m available and I’m willing.” That’s when life will use us in ways that we cannot imagine. I’ve seen it in my own life over and over again. I’ve seen miracles happen that I can’t claim credit for. I’ve seen it in other people’s life. It’s available to us all.
It’s beautiful. There is very little I want to say beyond this. You’ve expressed it in such a clean way. There’s a lot of spiritual principles in what you’ve shared. You said it in ways that maybe people haven’t necessarily heard before. You’ve made it accessible through the book, I assume. I haven’t read it because I haven’t gotten a copy of it yet but I will.
People can go to TheMagicOfSurrender.com, order the book and get some free gifts.
You mentioned Bruce Lee. It’s this idea that we’re constantly trying to own things. I’m only bringing this up because it came through me as I was traveling back from the YMCA, where I’d been swimming before the start of this show. I was thinking in the car about ownership and how it is that we are at times caught up in this concept of ownership. In this instance, I was thinking about how. That overlapped with that idea of what surrender might look like if somebody decided to come and camp out in your yard, to walk outside and to say, “This is my land. You’re trespassing.”
We live on this island and I was driving past a “no trespassing” sign like a posted sign. It bothered me. There’s no coincidence that you and I were going to be speaking and this was going to come up, but it triggered me in a way. This concept of how it is that we put these signs up and we create these boundaries, these fences, and all these things that we say we own or I would say, we pretend that we own. Maybe if we were somehow able to surrender some of that egoistic ownership of everything from our freaking house, car, land and every other possession, we might be able to surrender to life living us as you described. I’m not a socialist or a communist, just to be clear.
That’s an important point because here’s what scares people from surrendering and this is why I wanted to tackle the concept. People are afraid to surrender because they think surrender means living in the Himalayas and giving up everything with robes. Does that mean I have nothing, no cell phone, no possessions, no car? That is not necessarily surrendering. Ultimately, we own nothing, we come with nothing and we take nothing. We go through existence. Surrender is not simply about form and structure. True surrender is an inner state of being. True surrender is in your relationship with life. In a sense, it’s not about what you have and what you don’t have. It is about your relationship with what you have and what you don’t have, and how free you are inside of yourself about it. You can have nothing, no house, no car, be on the street and inside of yourself be so attached to wanting things.
You could have everything. You could be a billionaire. I know some billionaires and one of them is the most surrendered people I know because truly, he doesn’t care about anything he has. He could have it. He could not have it. I’ve hung out with him and he doesn’t care. Even though he has possessions and owns things because of his internal relationship, it doesn’t own him. There’s a freedom in it that is beautiful to see. Surrender is an inner state of being. Instead, it’s realizing that those things don’t define who you are. None of that is who you are. It doesn’t add to you. It doesn’t take away from you. What you are is an infinite stream of consciousness. What you are is eternally free. What you are is freedom itself. We surrender to that and realize we’re not just this body, name, form, projection, personality, reputation, gender, color or religion. When we surrender those layers, we then realize, “I’m eternal. I’m free. I am infinite.” There is then the freedom to have it or not have it.
Here is my question for you about Bruce Lee. When he said, “Be like water,” is that what he’s talking about?
Yes, that’s surrender. There’s an interview with Bruce Lee that’s called The Last Interview. He’s like, “Be like water.” You put water into a teacup, it becomes a teacup. You put water into a glass, it becomes a glass. You’ve got to flow but beware. Don’t think that water is weak. Water can kill you. Water can erode a mountain. Water is powerful. We’ve got to flow. There is a quote from the Tao Te Ching. I’m going to butcher the quote but it’s what Bruce Lee was alluding to. It talks about something like, “Even though you do nothing, everything is done.” Life is doing through you. Life gets through Jesus, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi. Life will do through you.
It’s interesting because people say, “Do you.” That bothers me. I don’t love that whole expression but it’s interesting because you could make a slight pivot on that expression and say, “Do life.” Let life do you and that’s different.
Your dreams don't just belong to you. If you think like that, that's when the ego gets involved and wants to own it Share on XThat’s different because with “Do you,” the question becomes, “Who are you? Who is the you that you’re doing?” Many times the you that you’re doing is the egoic idea of you, then you do you but it may not be authentic. “Let life do you” is beautiful.
I had an interview with Hale Dwoskin. We know Hale from TLC. For folks that don’t recognize the name, The Sedona Method is one of his books and body of work for decades. He said something at the end of our interview that I thought was pretty cool. I was hesitating there because the Sedona Method was born out of Lester Levenson so Hale doesn’t take ownership of the Sedona Method in its entirety like we all are. We’re remembering. Plato said, “All learning is remembering. We’re all standing on the shoulders of everybody who came before us.”
I asked him about this phrase that is on my sweatshirt that says, “I love my life,” and we were just chatting about it. He said, “I love what is as it is.” That aligns harmoniously with everything you’ve been sharing with us here of what surrender is about. To love your life and to love life in many ways is simply to love what is as it is. It doesn’t mean you walk past a drowning person. You don’t walk past a child being abused. You don’t walk past things that your heart calls you or that life guides you to do something about. To love life as it is is peaceful, bliss and a blessing. You’re a blessing, my friend. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
What a tremendous gift. To everybody who has not yet run out to get their copy of The Magic of Surrender, do that. If you’ve got questions or comments for Kute or myself, please feel free to leave those comments at AdamMarkel.com/podcasts. If you know someone that would benefit from the insights that Kute has shared, please feel free to share this episode with a friend. As always, we’d love to get your feedback as well. I’ll say ciao for now and again, Kute, thank you so much.
Important Links
- Kute Blackson
- The Magic of Surrender
- The Surrender Experiment
- Michael Singer
- The Untethered Soul
- TheMagicOfSurrender.com
- The Sedona Method
- Facebook.com/kuteblacksonlovenow
- Instagram.com/kuteblackson
About Kute Blackson
Kute Blackson is a beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. He speaks at countless events he organizes around the world as well as at outside events including A-Fest, YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization), and EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization). He is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, a select group of one hundred of the world’s foremost authorities in the personal development industry. Winner of the 2019 Unity New Thought Walden Award, Blackson is widely considered a next generation leader in the field of personal development. His mission is simple: To awaken and inspire people across the planet to access inner freedom, live authentically and fulfill their true life’s purpose.