Sovereign and surrendered as the way forward

Seeing the subjective reality of truth

Whatever we believe in, it is not the absolute truth. Education and cultural influences produce conditioning that structures our reality.

If we eat a ton of asparagus, our pee will turn green. If we drink liters of beet juice, our shit will turn red. Depending on what we take in, a natural process leads to what inevitably comes out the other end.

Input determines output, with food, as well as with worldviews. Beliefs are created — rationally and predictably — by the news and information we consume.

One person’s colonizer is another’s refugee. One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. One person’s leader is another’s tyrant. There’s nothing inherently true about the names we give to things. Reality is framed by the location we’re looking from.

We swim in a sea of AI-generated images, rapidly reposted memes, and carefully crafted narratives. Our media diet is engineered by data geeks to be the most attention grabbing. So we scroll in a state of hyper-arousal with overwhelmed nervous systems.

If we find ourselves in emotional reactivity, we’re probably being manipulated by someone. At a minimum, that entity is profiting from our captive energy. And that entity may even be directing us to see or feel things that serve their hidden agenda — which may or may not represent our core values or support our well-being.

Tune in. Not to the television or Internet news, but to your own inner vision. What is happening behind the smokescreens of information? Can we access a deeper knowing that pierces through the propaganda of statements and statistics?

Discerning deeper truth requires us to do more than just process data. Only by feeling can we know who’s hiding secrets and who’s trying to promote an image. Only by feeling can we hear voices and feel vibrations of the true suffering of other beings.

When we drop into heart space, confusion evaporates and clarity remains. It’s understandable that the mind clings to pre-existing beliefs, because they anchor a known reality. Letting go of beliefs means allowing ourselves to become untethered in a frightening void space of uncertainty.

This is what aliveness feels like. And what aliveness asks of us in this pregnant moment is to participate in the creation cycles of life.

Participation in creation means re-writing the story as it’s happening. Not echoing sound bites. Not reciting prepared lines. Participation in creation means questioning everything. Not assuming that we already know how this ends.

In aliveness, we engage curiosity to create new understandings. In aliveness, we are encouraged to change our minds. In alignment, the purpose of existence is to be the living platform for something that hasn’t yet been created, which must birth through us.

Why make others wrong for their beliefs, or bully them over the blind spots we see? Instead maybe we can imagine that if we had walked their path, we would believe exactly the same things. Instead of trying to convince, maybe we can ask, “What do you mean by that?” or say, “I don’t get it, what am I missing?”

The way forward is not the path of story or judgment or blame. It is the path of inquiry into how we arrived here, collectively. It is the path of compassion for all beings, and the path of courage to ask what needs to change. It is building bridges by taking responsibility for our power to shape the world we live in.

The real hat trick for awakening beings is to be able to inhabit a human-level perspective — to hold preference or advocate action — while also remembering that the positions we take on are temporary features of constructed identity.

Can we give ourselves and others permission to have emotional biases and strongly-held beliefs (as all humans do) without spiritual bypassing and without spiritual shaming? An awakened heart is neither detached nor emotionally reactive. An awakened heart is compassionate and courageous.

Can we embrace the perceptions, beliefs and actions that are uniquely ours to embody, while also trusting that everyone is exactly where they need to be, doing what they need to do, playing their correct and perfect role in collective awakening?

We must mind our own healing; we can only sweep our side of the street. The way that we do that is by meeting the inner terror of our personal insecurity.

Insecurity is the tip of the iceberg, which hides our fear of death and fear of insignificance just below the surface. It is insecurity that drives one person to assert superiority over another. It is this same insecurity that drives a collective body to assume supremacy over another.

Imagine the spiritual desolation of a person or entity that can see no other alternative for alleviating insecurity, besides the complete annihilation of another. If we succumb to this infection, we will have sold the soul of humanity.

We build our immune response to this energy by learning to balance sovereignty and surrender.

What does being sovereign and surrendered look like, on a practical level? It means not abandoning the self. It means holding our entire human experience — our emotions, opinions, desires, sensitivities, and all the mess they bring — as holy. It means allowing others to have their own ways of seeing and moving. It means relating with those around us, without taking responsibility for their process.

Yes, I have preferred beliefs and concepts. Yes, I have desired outcomes and favored possibilities. Yet I want to maintain a posture of no argument with anyone outside of me. This means holding my own view as sacred, without treating it as superior to any other.

Being sovereign and surrendered means standing unflinching in my personal truth, while launching zero aggression against those who disagree, or who simply don’t see what I see.

We are called now to stand in our sovereignty, while surrendering to reality-altering movements far beyond the grasp of our control. This is the only sustainable way we can participate in co-creating a prosperous future together.

It’s guaranteed that we will feel helpless when we reach for power over situations outside us. It’s certain that we will be exhausted when we think it’s up to us alone to end human suffering.

When we tend to what’s truly ours — our time our energy our bodies our voices our choices — we reclaim a resilient power that persists no matter what others do. We remember that we’re part of an interdependent web of life that moves intelligently. We recognize that we’re part of a higher plan that we can’t fully see. From there we can engage with ease.

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