Someone came to me after my talk on surrender in ropes in London and said it was good for them to hear me speaking of surrender as a skill, because that means you can be bad at it.
This perspective gives us a lot of permission. We can be bad at things, simply because we never learned. That also means, we can learn them.
All the aspects of trust, communication, relating, intimacy, these are all skills that we begin learning early in life.
And most of us didnt have very good teachers. So we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves.
You know what I mean? No one expectsto be right away good at dancing, or playing a gitar. We know, it takes time to learn. Why do we expect anything different when it comes to relating…?
Maybe – hopefully – later in life, as we grow older, we meet good teachers and mentors who can guide us in our learning.
I am learning to surrender. I knew how to trust, but I’m still struggling to soften up and surrender. Over the last 15 years I’ve been learning to follow the guidance of my partner. The one who is my chosen partner, the one whose guidance I truly desire with all my being. And yet, at times, it’s still not accessible to me.
And must admit that it was – and still is – very difficult for me, because I had never previously experienced following someone who would guide me towards my unfolding, not towards the comfort of their own trauma.
So I’m learning. Because it’s just a skill. You can learn it.
