Softness: The Secret Forgotten Power

It tore through my back and caused my heart to burst. I didn’t want this necessary pain. I knew that without experiencing this decades-old pain, I could not advance towards being authentically me. I was like a chick, cramped and uncomfortable in the eggshell, with no choice but to break out. No one loves pain. If anything, modern life avoids pain, and in my mind, I preferred comfort. This event gave me more power than anything else. To receive it, the awful pain was necessary. If I instead held on to the pain, it would control my life. This realization gave me the one solution to clear this emotional pain. Surrender. Before I explain, you need to understand why. Then my story will fill in the gaps.

Yin is Stronger Than Yang

It sounds contradictory, but it is true. Yin beats Yang. Softness beats hardness. What action is more yin than surrendering? Ancient Daoists were fans of the yin aspect and, by extension, surrender. The more you could surrender, the more powerful you became. I’ll repeat it. Power lies in surrendering. Have you heard of “be like water”? The concept is mimicking water’s soft or fluid qualities. Despite its softness, water carves through rocks. If you were at the bottom of the ocean, the water’s pressure would crush you. Water isn’t doing anything; water is affected by gravity and goes where it is led. Even when gathered, water is powerful. These yin qualities lend strength to water. This is the concept of Yin overcoming Yang.

Surrender is Not Weakness

Despite what modern life says, to surrender is to be strong. Yang is associated with strength and actions. Strong and dynamic, like the modern-day adrenaline-fueled movie hero. Quick and explosive like an athlete. This is not where true power lies. Yang is always defeated by yin. If you stay awake for days, what eventually happens? You will fall asleep. At some point in your life, sleep lasts forever. Yin always wins in the end.

In a practical manner, can you surrender? Yes, although water is inside you, I don’t recommend you exert your dominance by punching rocks. Far from it. It ties back to surrender, but to understand it, you must understand, or inner-stand, yourself first. As the great Sun Tzu said:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The Secret Lesson of Surrender

The most powerful lesson to help you surrender is rarely spoken. Most people who hear it refuse to believe it. Others hear it constantly and believe what’s “heard” to be true. Take a breath if needed before you read the next sentence and surrender to it. Because after you read it, you won’t be the same person.

The voice inside your head is not your voice.

If you’re confused, I understand; allow me to explain. When a person, like you, is born, you are a blank slate. The growing baby learns everything from observation, mimicry, and repetition. Usually, these are the customs and cultural traditions passed on to you. This necessary information to survive in the world also forms your subconscious beliefs. The subconscious will recognize patterns faster than you can say “yes”. It makes decisions. Your subconscious runs the show. Who runs your subconscious?

If your parents hated the color red and screamed at you every time you held something red, you would associate red colors with fear. This forms a mental story about the world and how to navigate it. As an adult, you’d dislike or be afraid of the color red.

Ask yourself, if this were you, do you dislike red or were you told to dislike red? Everyone operates from some subconscious programming. The pertinent question to ask yourself is, ‘Whose voice is it?’ This is the first step: break free of the matrix. The next step to your power is about what’s stuck.

Issues In the Tissues

Imagine inside you there are ping-pong-sized balls. These balls energetically represent a story or experience trapped inside your tissues. The trapped balls steal energy used to run your system. Like having too many windows open on your device, they slow the system down. To speed things up, close the windows. In other words, get rid of the stories trapped inside you. Only then will the flesh machine operate as intended. This is the second part of the great work. Find your voice by clearing the stories that muffle it.
These trapped stories muddle your understanding. You aren’t able to get the whole picture. If you were snorkeling while in murky water, you might mistake a fish for a shark. These stories filter perceptions and cause false assumptions. If you ever looked at a body of water after watching the movie “Jaws,” you have experienced this. You associated the water with danger, even a swimming pool with no sharks in it.

Back to My Story

The pain that arose that day, gnawing at me for weeks, was related to my mother. I was 2 years old. At the time, she had to work and left me at my aunt’s home. At that young age, I could not comprehend why my mother left each day. With tears streaming down my eyes, I only understood it as one thing: abandonment. This became very difficult for me, as that fear of abandonment controlled my adult life. The fear built the way I acted around friends from that fear. My approaches to dating were driven by this fear. My actions, words, and more were all custom-tailored to avoid abandonment. I could not find a situation where this subconscious belief didn’t have its slimy tentacle wrapped around it.

I needed to work through the pain and process the grief of feeling abandoned. Only after this did I understand the grip it had. I had relinquished my power to live authentically because of my deeply embedded fear. It was scary. It was painful. I hated it, but I slowly found my voice. I stepped back into my power. My life was no longer controlled; I was leading my life authentically. I was me. But it took surrendering myself to the situation, pains, and emotions. It took facing the ugly face of abandonment head-on. It held me back until I slayed it. This is how surrender is true power. If life is like a circle, yin is the lower half where you surrender to gravity. When turned sideways, it is the flat portion of a spiral before it rises again. Surrendering is power.

The Art of Surrendering

The art of surrendering takes heart to accomplish. This is not easy. We are not taught how to surrender. As a society, surrender is equal to giving up. This is wrong. The proper way to surrender is to be like a tree. When the wind blows, the branches yield to a point. Then the branches rebound back. This is surrender. This is power. This is the strength of yin. The branches don’t fight back nor give in. They surrender to the oncoming force and let it pass.

How do you surrender? Through secret, dedicated practices, you learn to surrender. Daoists had many practices to start this process. The prominent one being Qigong. By using Qigong practices, you release the stories holding you back. You start noticing your true voice. Qigong helps to unravel the stories stored in your tissues. You learn to recognize whose voice is driving your day-to-day life and when your authentic voice is breaking through. How you start is with one practice. This ancient practice has been passed down for millennia. It is called “holding the immortal post”. Here is how you perform it.

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
2. Raise your arms in front of your chest as if you are holding a beach ball.
3. Close your eyes and breathe in and out through your nose.
4. Stay in this meditative state as long as you can.

You may experience discomfort at first. Surrender to the discomfort. Start with 3 minutes and work your way up slowly. Reach the edge of comfort and surrender. Let the practice do what it does and allow the energy to flow.
This is how you train yourself to surrender. You lost your power by surrendering to those trapped stories. Now is your moment to surrender to your voice. Not conceding is difficult, but surrounding yourself with like-minded people on the same path helps. Find a group or join a community. Either way, surrender to you, and then everything else unfurls for you. Publilius Syrus said it best many millennia ago, and it still rings true. “Vincit qui se vincit.” He who conquers himself conquers.

TAKE ACTION: If you’re ready to explore surrender as a source of strength and reconnect with your authentic voice, discover more from Jose Mendoza and follow his work at @jmdcem.