The Real Secret to Manifestation: How To Surrender To The Magic That's Meant For You

If you truly understand the real essence of surrender, what if you didn't get less, but you got more?

Surrender takes you beyond yourself, beyond the ego, beyond the known, beyond the limitations of anything that you can conceive and imagine and visualize with the mechanism of your mind.

And you tap into a dimension of infinity. But you say that surrender is the real key to manifestation, the real secret.
Talk to us about why that is. You ask a whole different question.

The surrender question, which is really about what is it that life, what is it that this divine innate intelligence that is living me and breathing me that is the source of all existence what is it that life is seeking to manifest through me the depth of your own soul's intuition often doesn't fit the ego's paradigm or idea when we can just set the intention of saying you know universe i am open to my highest good whatever my highest good is whatever the perfect person that is aligned with my soul is, I am completely open to that and only that.

Then you are invoking the highest vibrational possibility for your life. And even if you can't see it with your mind, your focus is on what is truly aligned.

Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast.

Today we're exploring one of the most powerful paradoxes on the spiritual path, that true manifestation doesn't come from forcing, striving, or trying to control life, but through surrender.

We'll talk about what it really means to let go, not as giving up, but as a deeper alignment with reality, with truth and the intelligence that's already guiding our lives.

We'll explore the dance between creating and allowing, why the ego resists surrender so fiercely, and how letting go can actually open the door to more love, more abundance, and more freedom than you ever could imagine.

Joining us today is inspirational speaker and best-selling author Coop Blackson, where his wisdom is going to invite you to question everything you ever taught about manifestation, especially the idea that you need to make something happen.

Because what if life is already trying to lead you and the real work is to learn how to listen? Let's get into it.

I would love to start off talking about why you feel like surrender is the real secret to manifestation.

I know a lot of the times people can think that they are going to visualize, they're going to change their energy so that they attract what they want.

But you say that surrender is the real key to manifestation, the real secret. Talk to us about why that is.
I mean, I feel that surrender is the most powerful thing that we can do.

I feel that surrender is the real secret to the next level of manifestation, that surrender is the key to freedom, the key to power, the key to true greatness.

If you look at anyone great, those that we respect, a Jesus, a Buddha, a Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, an Oprah, an Elon Musk, a Jordan, regardless of whether you like them or not, those that have achieved anything sort of out of the ordinary, I believe that all of them, whether they knew it or not, at some point in their life, they had to have surrendered.

And when in the surrender, they actually

transcended and went beyond their own mind, their own ego, their own idea of what they thought life was going to look like, their own idea of who they thought they should be.

And in that surrender, I think they were able to tap into another dimension of life, another dimension of possibilities, another dimension of grace.

And that's when When we truly surrender is when I feel life,

God, this innate intelligence, starts to use us, starts to flow through us, starts to actually manifest through us.

Because when we try to manifest, the challenge is you can manifest from the level of the ego.

And from the level of the ego, we are taught to like know what you want and make shit happen and hustle and create it and put in the effort.

And you've got to get clear on exactly what you want, which is great.

But anything that you create from your ego mind or ego intelligence will be limited because the ego in and of itself is a structure that is limited.

The ego is limited to past experience, to conditioning, to childhood memories, to the known. So, whatever you create from the lens of the ego will be limited to the known.

And so, you might manifest what you thought you wanted, only to realize that what you thought you wanted was just what you thought you wanted based on who you thought you were.

And if you have an erroneous or limited perception of who you think you are based on belief systems and structures and programming and conditioning, I'm not enough,

I'm too this, I'm too that, then

which is most of us, right?

Until we become conscious and awake and do the work, you might manifest what you thought you wanted only to realize that what you thought you wanted was only what you thought you wanted wasn't who you thought you were, right?

And then you manifest, but you're left with this sense of, this is not really what I wanted. Is this it? And so I think when you truly surrender is where the real freedom is.

When When you truly surrender, you move beyond the question of what do I want,

which is this limited sense of I-ness. What do I want? And you actually shift the whole question.

You ask a whole different question, the surrender question, which is really about what is it that life, what is it that this divine innate intelligence that is living me and breathing me, that is the source of all existence, what is it that life is seeking to manifest through me, to express through me?

And part of the process in surrender is to open yourself, to become receptive to the, shall we say, the deepest impulse of what life is seeking to manifest, what life is seeking to express.

So then I think we bring ourselves into alignment with the flow. We bring ourselves in alignment with true grace.
We bring ourselves into alignment with divine intelligence, with thy will.

so to speak. And I think that's when we are no longer

the ones manifesting. We are no longer the doer that's trying to make things happen.

We essentially get ourselves out of the way and life starts doing us. Life starts doing through you.
Life starts creating through you. And if you look at Mandela, right?

You look at Gandhi, you can't script that kind of life.

You cannot sit in a goal setting workshop, nothing wrong with goals, and say, well, I'm going to spend 27 years in prison and I'm going to go through all of these hardships.

And then 27 years later, I'm going to come out and be the president of South Africa and be iconic. That is a life beyond your mind.
That is a life beyond a goal.

And so I think surrender takes you beyond yourself, beyond the ego, beyond the known, beyond the limitations of anything that you can conceive and imagine and visualize with the mechanism of your mind.

And you tap into a dimension of infinity. And that's when the miraculous happens.
You know,

the life beyond your wildest expectations.

And I think if you look at, if we all are honest and we look at the best things in our lives that happened, meeting a soulmate, meeting my wife, having a child, moving to Houston, all of these amazing, miraculous things, most of it we did not plan.

Most of it happened in the process of living life and in the process of just like, okay,

boom, it happens. And so I think surrender is the real password to freedom.
Surrender is the real key. And so

asking the question, what is it that life is seeking to express through me and feeling that? What is it that life is seeking to manifest through me and opening to that?

Then I think we're in a state of receptivity. We're in a state of openness.
And I think surrender is when you, you're no longer trying to like force life to fit a limited idea.

You're actually allowing life to show you, allowing life to reveal itself. And you become a kind of a follower of life, this intelligence, and you're following the wave.
You're following the clues.

You're not trying to, it's kind of like imagine you went to the ocean and you wanted to surf. And you said, I'm going to manifest some waves.
I'm going to make these waves happen.

And you bring a freaking fire hose and, you know, hire the fire department. Let's make some waves.

You can,

but.

It's not really going to flow. It's not really going to happen.
Plus, you're going to be full of anxiety and stress and misery and frustration.

Rather, it's about going to the ocean and learning to become in tune with the waves that are always unfolding. And I think if you look at the greatest surface, they don't make the waves happen.

They are learning to feel the flow, learning to feel the rhythm of life. And they're working in harmony with the flow and the rhythm of life and the rhythm of nature.

And I really believe that nature supports itself. And so when we're working in harmony with nature, we're working in harmony with the flow of all existence.
And that's when the magic happens.

You know, we all want the magic.

We all want magic. Like, I want more magic, but none of us want to surrender.
Right. And that's, that's, I think that's the, uh, I don't, I don't want to say formula, but that's, I think, the secret.

You look at Gandhi, right? You can't plan a Gandhi's life.

Like, you can't go to a goal setting workshop and say, this is what's going to happen on my timeline and my, you know, my idea of my concept of how I think life should happen. It's, it's beyond that.

It's beyond that. You look at a Mother Teresa.

So I think part of surrender requires that you let go of the idea of who you think you should be, you let go of the idea of how you think life should look, you let go of the idea of the timeline because most of that limits us, and you live in a state of openness.

The challenge is, I think many of us in our culture, we have been conditioned and brainwashed and ingrained because we live in a very linear logical culture to have this

misperception that surrender is weak. Right.
This idea that, well, if I surrender, I'm going to be a doormat. If I surrender, going to, I won't manifest my goals and my dreams.

Or I'm giving up or I'm waving the white flag or I'm going to be taken advantage of. And what if my dreams don't happen? Or what if I get less in life?

And I'm actually saying, no, if you truly understand the real essence of surrender, what if you didn't get less, but you got more? It might not be what you thought.

I think often it's not what you thought. But

what if it was better?

What if it was beyond? What if it was something more amazing? It's like, wow, I couldn't even imagine.

Like, if we look at the best, just go back and look at the best things in your life that have happened. Most of it

we could not have fathomed.

And I think

usually surrender is the last resort when nothing works out and when all shit falls apart and all hell breaks loose. Then we finally throw our arms up and say, oh, okay, I surrender.

And I'm actually saying, no, what if you did it from the beginning? From the very start. And it sounds like there's an initiation that happens through all of the examples, Gandhi, Mother Teresa.

There's an initiation that supports the surrender. Yes.
Because when our humanness is scared, the fear-based story is holding on.

What do you recommend for people to let go, to trust, to go into and feel the flow? On one level,

how can we not trust?

Same word. Like, if you think, how do we not trust?

Okay.

Somehow we have amnesia. Like, has there ever been a moment? When I say you, I'm talking to everyone.

Like, has there ever been a moment when you woke up and the sun wasn't shining and the sun didn't come up? It just forgot to come up. Has there ever been, like, how is it that we eat food?

Chicken, if you're a vegan, some tempeh, vegetables, whatever you eat, toast, and you eat food and it goes into your body.

And somehow, without any

intention,

without any effort, without any practice, this innate intelligence inside of you knows exactly how to digest your food. And you and I, we don't sit there and go,

digest, you know, digest, I got to do my spiritual, digest, like we don't do that. It's just, there's an innate intelligence that knows exactly how to digest.
And breath is happening. in spite of us.

We don't have to do some special breath technique. Breath is just happening, the the inhale and the exhale without any effort, without any doingness.
It's just happening, right?

And so I think part of it is remembering that there are trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of processes and trillions and trillions of mechanisms happening inside of us that is happening in spite of us.

And so really bringing our attention to that dimension of our being and remembering, what is doing that?

There's something that is doing that. Like,

what is that? It's like, even if if i don't surrender there's something that's already surrendered prior to that you go prior to

it's happening yeah it's happening and so i think if we can just bring our attention to that it's like wow if if we just even go back in our lives and look at all of the things when i when i look at my life i look at all of the situations that i didn't know how i was going to make it out of

In the moment, I thought it was, I was screwed. I thought it was over.
I thought it was the worst thing. And I go back and I look back.

And in the moment, it seemed a certain way and it felt like I can't trust the universe. But when I look back now,

I can see that there was the hand of grace.

That even in the moments where I didn't get what I thought I wanted and I lost trust, when I look back now in hindsight, I realize not getting what I wanted was actually the love of life, the love of God.

It was just grace unfolding. So even when we can't see it, many times when we're in a moment and we lose trust,

we have an experience and then we start judging the experience from the limitation of the ego mind. It's like, this is the worst thing,

this is this, this is that, rather than actually stepping back and saying, okay,

I don't actually know what this means.

And so if you're in a situation, I invite people to step back and actually not project a meaning onto the current experience.

Because many times the meaning that we project onto the current experience is limited based on our current, you know, experience of our own ego. And the ego projects fear into the unknown.

Into the unknown. And so I think if we can step back and simply say, okay, this is happening and I don't know what this is.

I don't know. But I'm willing, also based on things I've seen, I'm willing to allow life to show me.

And so I think if we're able just to step back and be available, to step back and be open, to also step back and look at all of the circumstances and situations where things did unfold, when things did work out, when things worked out better than you could have imagined, which we often forget.

And so I think

just

bringing our attention there is really helpful.

I heard a story recently where somebody had passed and he was doing a life review with God where he said, you know, I saw on the footprints of the sand that you were walking beside me the whole time, except for the times where I was in a lot of pain.

There was only one pair of footsteps. He said, where were you, God? Where were you when I was going through those experiences? And God said, I was holding you.

And so to really just surrender the fear-based mind of this shouldn't be happening. I think I know what should be happening, that deeper trust, I think opens us to more grace, opens us to more.

You know, I also, when people say let go, I think that can be some of the worst advice because

thought and feeling speak a different dialect.

So if you're telling yourself to let go and there's this part of you that's really scared, holding on, offering ourselves the safety that we need in that moment, the letting go is a natural byproduct.

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And so I know that you grew up with a really interesting childhood where you saw miracles happen all of the time.

Can you share with us what some of those miracles were and how that opened your mind to stay awake to more possibility? Growing up, I didn't really know that my childhood was that interesting.

I just thought,

this is everyone's life. And so I think part of the blessing was thinking what I was experiencing was ordinary and not thinking anything special of it.
So it was just matter of fact.

And like my first memories, like my father's from Ghana, my mother's Japanese. I grew up in London.
And my first memories as a young boy were seeing a crippled woman crawling on the floor.

She picks up the gravel, the sand that this man walks on, wipes it on her face and stands up. And I was this shubby kid lost in the crowd.
And I didn't think anything of it.

It was just, oh, this is happening. And so week after week, I grew up seeing blind people have their sight restored.

people come in in wheelchairs and stand up, someone come in with crutches, and they would throw their crutches away and walk. This man, whose sand she picked up, was my father.

And so he would look at a person in a wheelchair. And I remember being like this tall and seeing this whole scene happen.
He would look at a person in a wheelchair and say, why

are you in this wheelchair?

And she would say, I haven't walked in, you know, 10 years. And he would say, do you believe?

Well, yeah. I mean, it was a Christian church, kind of Christ-based.
So do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in the word of God? Yes.

So why the hell are you sitting down?

If you really believe, then exercise that belief and stand up. And this kind of standoff would go on for about five minutes.

And the person would stand up, like literally just like that. And this was, you know, people would often say to me, Cool.

Were you imagining things? Was this real? I mean, this is before social media and YouTube and Instagram.

And I grew up seeing this stuff week in, week out, someone come in with crutches and they couldn't walk properly. And he would say, throw your crutches away and they would start walking.

And so this was my normal experience, you know, in terms of, I didn't think it was miraculous. I think part of the blessing was because I thought it was ordinary,

it was normal. I thought it was just a natural state of things,

you know, this sense of possibility. So I grew up with a sense of possibility.
And as I grew older, though, I realized, okay, this is a bit different. But as I grew older, for me,

the fact that people were able to stand up out of wheelchairs was no longer the miracle.

The fact that someone was able to

throw crutches away was no longer miraculous. For me, just somebody who was able to love themselves a bit more.
To me,

that became more miraculous. You know, the fact that someone was able to forgive

something that happened to them in their childhood with their parents. For me, that became as miraculous.
And so I think the truth is, the miraculous is all around us.

So I tell people: if you want to see miracles, just

look in the mirror. If you want to see miracles, just reflect on your breath.

If you want to see miracles, just look into the eyes of your child.

If you want to see the miracles, just look into the eyes of your husband or your boyfriend or whoever.

Because we often take the ordinary

for granted. And so I think every dimension of life is so special, is so sacred, is so miraculous.
We just

don't realize it, you know. And so I think the real miracle is recognizing the miracle that is inherent in life in each moment.

When I get to spend time with my two-year-old son and look into his eyes and see him looking at me, and I get to see a living expression of God right there, just an ordinary moment with Him doing nothing that is miraculous.

You know, life is miraculous. This human incarnation is miraculous.
Yet, somehow, we go through this human incarnation, like, oh, yeah, it's just another day, it's just shit, this is happening.

The government, the person, it's like you are freaking alive. We are alive, we have incarnated into this human experience.

And we get to breathe, we get to taste, we get to feel, we get to eat ice cream, we get to drink matcha, we get to make love, we get to, you know, cry, we get to get mad and angry and be betrayed.

The whole experience without any limitations is a miraculous, crazy, wild adventure. And if we really sit with, whoa, what is, what is this trip called life?

It's like how I can sit here and you're over there and we come from, you know, two different backgrounds, seemingly, and yet we have this conversation and we can understand each other.

And it's like life is happening. So for me, this whole existence is like

it's divine art.

Divine art.

It's a wild, co-creative,

spontaneous, improvised artistic expression exploded out of the mind of God. And we walk around in this like, oh,

I'm not happy. It's like, what the hell?

You know, how is it that we are more curious and interested to go to a museum with art that doesn't change, yet in front of us is like God is walking in front of us in the form of you and me and, you know, your lover and your child.

It's like, wow. And so if you really sit with

what this moment is, what this incarnation is, what this existence is, if you really sit with the sheer magic but simplicity of it.

I mean, for me,

and I don't do it enough, but when I do, it brings me to my knees. It's like, wow.

Just the gratitude

and the miracle of every moment. Yeah.
Every moment. Every moment.
And I think that sometimes we can tap into that in our human experience and sometimes we forget very often. Yes.

And I love this concept of freedom to versus freedom from. My meditation teacher says that freedom from life is escapism.

Essentially, let me move away from something so that I'm free versus freedom to is to say yes to your full human experience, like you're saying.

Where, and I think because if you are willing to face the things you're afraid of, you find a deeper freedom. It doesn't have power over you anymore.

And I think sometimes people use manifestation to avoid spiritually bypassing by thinking positively, thinking that something's bad, something's good, and I'm going to try and manipulate my life so that I don't feel the bad

control. And underneath control is just fear.

And so I think when people start to get that what you avoid, you're actually creating, they do it less.

So for example, if I am afraid of abandonment and I get insecure, I try to grab a partner to make me feel secure.

I'm going to hold on to them and that clinging is going to have them move away and I feel abandoned. So you literally create what you avoid.

And there's something I think we both align with, which is facing your fears to experience a deeper level of freedom, which then helps open to the miracle of life and to be delighted by the full range of our human experience.

But talk to us about any of your own experience or the research that you found around the power of true freedom by meeting life exactly as it is. So much of life is really not in our control.

We think it is, but I think control is

really an illusion in many ways.

Because I think if you really see like...

Each of us, we're born into a human experience.

We're born into a location. we're born into a place, we're born into a country,

we're just born into a sort of preset energetic momentum that has been flowing for generations.

We don't have control over that.

You know, if my parents lived in Afghanistan and I was born into it, there's a whole set of circumstances that have conditioned me that I don't really have control over. They're just happening.

The financial situation that I'm born into.

So we have to realize that so much of who we are

has been impacted, whether we are conscious or not

by our parents, by our grandparents, by our ancestors. And so much of the

unresolved patterns, pain, traumas, addictions, hurt, secrets, shames.

So much of that that has not been resolved flows to generation to generation to generation. And we are now born into a stream of that energy that we don't have control over.
Epigenetic.

So I think we have to realize that, shall we say, karmic flow that we're born into. Some might say it's karma.
Some might say, well, it's your destiny. We're born into that.

No control. But the part that we do have control over is just because you're born into something doesn't mean you are simply stuck there.

That might be like 33% of your life, so to speak, but maybe another 33% of your life is

your intention and your will and the degree to which you do your inner healing work and your commitment and the effort with which you apply yourself.

So there are certain elements that we do have control over, but there's so much that we don't have control over that I think we have to acknowledge and realize and understand, you know?

But I think if we

truly apply ourselves with intention, with focus, with dedication, focusing on what we can control, which is our response to things, focusing on what we can control, which is the thoughts we choose to think and where we choose to place our attention, then I do believe that we can shift elements of our reality.

Maybe not everything, but elements

of our experience.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you one of these questions, which is essentially about if you believe in soul contracts and if there are certain life situations that get set up for us that we can't create, we can't attract our way or change our way and reality around.

I do believe that as a soul, we incarnate into this human experience because either there's lessons we're here to learn and/or there are certain

unresolved

agreements, agreements,

dynamics, or contracts we are here to

work through and resolve with our parents, with certain people, certain relationships. And so

we attract those people into our lives for sure.

And I think there are certain relationships.

You can think positively all you want. You can practice manifestation all you want.
You can do all the affirmations you want.

But there are certain souls that I think we have contracts with that are absolutely unavoidable.

You can't think your way out of it. You can't meditate your way out of it.
The only way through is to go through it. And you might know that this person is wrong for you.

You might know that this person is not the right person you should be with. But based on the energy of the soul agreement or what you've come here to teach each other,

you won't be able to help

be drawn into a situation or a relationship with that person,

not because you're not manifesting correctly, but because you and that soul have an agreement to serve each other and support each other in a kind of soul school together and that you have to go through it.

Yeah. And like you said, you can know somebody's not good for you, but you're that attraction.
Usually it's like the stronger the attraction, the deeper the wound.

As you honor what it is, I don't really believe in the wrong person because everyone's here to teach us a lesson.

If I'm attracted to them, obviously I'm not promoting or consenting to violence in any way and abuse, but there's something that I need to heal or look at within me to evolve beyond that.

And sometimes it's karma. You know, it's just you and that person have certain things to work out.

And I think everyone we attract into our lives, we attract them into our lives because we are a vibrational match on some level, energetically.

There's certain lessons we have to teach each other. And

you have to go through it. And I think part of the surrender is recognizing that, oh, me and this person have something to work out.
Nothing is wrong. Nothing is bad.
I didn't do anything wrong.

But there's no way out of this dynamic with this situation.

And rather than trying to make the relationship into something that is not like, this is my soulmate who I'm going to be with forever, recognizing this, it may not be my soulmate, but it definitely is a soul lesson and a karmic lesson that I need to work through and go through.

And I think if we can surrender to that understanding of

what it is,

then we can let go and allow ourselves to

not resist the connection, to not resist what we're needing to go through and learn through so that we can

learn the lesson more quickly. Yeah, exactly.
Essentially, yeah. Yeah.
I think, you know, when I met my husband, I just kept saying, this is out of my control. This is what life wants.
Yes.

And it wasn't what I thought it would be in my mind. Yes.
But I kept letting myself, I was even moving without meaning and on the dance floor and I kept ending up next to him.

And I was like, this is what life wants.

So I do think that there's something about the surrender and relationship that allows it to blossom into what it wants to be rather than what I think it should be.

And it doesn't, we may pray for something or we may want to manifest something. And it doesn't always come up in the way that we think it's going to look.

But I think part of what made it really easy for me to call my husband in was because I wasn't looking for him to give me something I didn't think I already had access to within myself.

So waking up to the love that I am and projecting that onto him, I could surrender in that relationship because I was awake to what I thought the relationship would have given me.

I wasn't playing to the fantasy of happily ever after was like happily ever now.

And then it was mirrored and reflected. So can you speak a little bit to surrender in relationship? Because I think people,

I know you spoke a little bit, but I think people really get caught up here yeah i think we have many ideas of what we think our partner should look like

and many of those projections are based on our wounds based on our pain based on our fantasies based on what i didn't get from my parents and as a result i'm gonna i create a fantasy idea of the person i think is going to give me that and then we we create a frame and get attached to that idea and we try to impose that onto life and we affirm it and we pray for it and put that on our vision vision board.

And we kind of project that onto life and then we project that onto people and then we try to control. And we don't realize that we're limiting the infinite intelligence.

And I think that, you know, also everything that happens to us, I think, gets stored in our body, gets stored in our nervous system.

And so, let's say dad was mean, you know, and so there's an association with love is pain,

Love is aloof. Love is hurtful.
And that association of love and hurt gets wired into our body, somatically, our nervous system.

And now we move into life attracted to a certain type of person.

And now we think that that type of person is our type. But many times we don't realize that our type is really our conditioning.

And so

based on that, now we're projecting of who we think we want in relationship, someone who actually feels familiar to the sense of our association of what love was growing up.

And often our type, what we think of as our type, isn't necessarily

healthy for us.

Isn't necessarily what we truly, truly want deep down and need.

And so when we get attached to that idea, then I think

we can miss real love.

We can miss what real love is, because often I think what is truly aligned for us in our soul

is often not what we think,

is often not what we're energetically used to.

And because of that projection,

we're not available to it. You know, we go into a room and the person we think is the one, we want to be the one, is really the worst one for us.

And the person that actually is right for us was it, no, no, no, no, I don't have any chemistry with that person. They're boring.
Yeah, they're boring. I'm not attracted.

There's no this, there's no that. But what we don't realize is, I think many times what we mistake of

as chemistry is our conditioning. I call it shit history.
You know, it's like my shit matches your shit and it attracts each other. And so I think when people feel that explosive, like,

this is my person, this is what I want, I think we have to be a bit careful.

I think we should slow down a bit and just breathe and just rest. Because often our conditioning is being pulled, our unresolved stuff is being pulled.

Those wounds are being pulled and attracted into a certain dynamic because unconsciously, there's a part of us that is seeking the person that we can complete our incomplete issues with.

And so I think that when we pray for the one or we pray for a relationship to not get attached to our idea of what we think we want

because often the real one will not fit your limited idea of what you think you want.

And so I think if we can just be open and available more than anything, you know, we've been talking about surrender, but just being, it's like saying, God, show, like, bring to me the person.

that is in perfect alignment with my soul.

I think when we pray that prayer, we're not putting limitations of, you know, please make him six foot one and this and that, and he's going to have a Harvard degree, which is all great.

I mean, I mean, okay, set those intentions, but definitely don't be

attached to it. Because for me, relationship and true love is not simply about fulfilling your ego.
True love is about growth and evolution. True love is about serving your soul's

expansion so that you can realize more of the true essence of who you are.

And I think the real one is the person that may not fit your ego's idea, but will fit your soul's essence, your soul's vibration. And I think real love will stretch you.
Real love will expand you.

Real love will break you open to more. Real love will force you to grow.
Real love will force you to face yourself, you know, and it might not fit your time.

When I met my wife, who is the freaking love of my life, you know,

I was kind of sure she wasn't it.

Yeah, I had a similar thing. I was pretty sure she wasn't.

Not because you're not beautiful and amazing and all these things, but it was just she didn't fit my prototype of the kind of woman that I could save.

You know, I was used to being the savior to my mother. And because your dad is the savior.
My dad, well, my dad was not around. And that's a whole nother dynamic between my parents.

Oh, so you were the savior to to so I was the emotional husband and savior, wiping my mother's tears when she was crying because my dad was gone doing his thing and he wasn't around, and it wasn't censored, it wasn't all of these things.

So, I became the emotional caretaker and husband to my mother, fixing and saving my mother. So, you bring me a woman that I could fix and save.
Now,

I'm incredibly attractive, like she's hot, right? And so, something about the vibration and the energy of my wife when I first met her, she didn't fit

the resonance of this energy and so i was pretty sure that she wasn't it

i was pretty sure she wasn't it and i remember the first time

that we spent like an extended time together it was like five days in in tulum

and everything was so smooth and everything was so honestly easy and everything was so graceful and we didn't really argue and it was like what the hell is going on and i remember feeling a bit off like i should have been happy and i just felt like something's not connecting in the way i'm used to connecting uh

and i spoke to her about this and she looked at me and this is when the lightning bolt went off in my heart she said why does love need to be hard

because i was used to love being hard based on my mother and the connection of my mother and my father and me and my mother and this whole energetic imprint in my nervous system love needs to be hard and i need to be saving her and there needs to be a lot of drama And there wasn't.

It was just smooth.

And it was a real kind of shift.

So I think healthy love is, it tends to be different than what we're used to. And so I think when we can just set the intention of saying, you know, universe, I am open to my highest good.

Whatever my highest good is, whatever the perfect person that is aligned with my soul is, I am completely open to that and only that.

Then you are invoking the highest vibrational possibility for your life. And even if you can't see it with your mind, your focus is on what is truly aligned, you know.

And I think that is, that is the, I think that's the key.

And, and sometimes it needs to come through having a partner that brings up our stuff so that we can heal that to be able to evolve to a higher octave or tone of that love.

And it could be the same person once we've done our work, or it may gracefully complete because you learned whatever soul contract and lesson you were meant to learn from that other person.

Because the love can be there, but the expiration date can be gone. But I want to highlight something that you've shared.
I think is so powerful and important for people to really get.

And I used to work as a psychotherapist, and it still surprises me that most of our relationship with money, relationships, health, life experiences comes from the imprint of our caregivers, mom and dad.

And And so if I felt like I needed to abandon myself to get my mom's love, I'm going to think I need to abandon myself to make money or I need to abandon myself to get love. For sure.

And so really getting, here's the core operating system, the conditioning that I got brought into, and how is that being mirrored in the current relationship that I am in or the non-relationship that I'm in?

So I can use that as a mirror to help me heal those parts of myself, not outsource it. You can have a relationship that heals together, but you don't need to.

And to be able to look in the mirror, even if that person doesn't feel like that highest vibration at first, I think doing the healing work with whoever you're in front of, whether it's a friend or a lover or whomever, so that you can then clean the mirror and see the true reflection and allow what is healthy to feel good in your nervous system and to surrender, to trust, like, oh, wow, maybe this.

Because I had the same thing with my husband after one of our first dates. I said, I sent him an email.
It was an incredible night. And I was like, this is a for now thing.

16 years later, I'm like, it's still a for now thing.

But even, even in the relationship I have now, it's like, I am able to let him go every single day.

Not like I would be heartbroken, but there's no holding thinking that he's giving me something I don't already have.

And that's where I feel like love gets to, that's true love, to really blossom in reflection of who and what we already are.

And so I love the surrender in relationship. I love that you bring that.
Yeah. And I can hear people saying, okay, so I'm going to do the healing work and I'm going to attract my partner.

When, and I can, and hearing them say, like, okay, when do I go out and do something like date or take action? And when do I allow it to come to me?

What do you say to people that get caught up around relationships or manifestation? I think what's important is that you really,

you feel what is most authentic, right?

What is most true? As you surrender and you let go of what you think you should be doing, you shouldn't be doing, you feel what is most true, what is most authentic.

And as you listen to that deeply inside of you,

what you're guided to do, and this is not just relationship here, but what you're guided to do,

it may not fit what your mind thought.

What you're guided to do, the depth of your own soul's intuition often doesn't fit the ego's paradigm or idea because your inner guidance of this is what you need to do is arising from a deeper dimension of your being.

That intuitive wisdom is arising from that unconditioned dimension of your being that is not limited to your past or your childhood or your personality. It's just, it's arising from pure essence.

And if you can tune into that and feel that and listen to that and then

feel the,

oh, this feels right.

I'm scared. That sounds crazy.
I wasn't sure. Do that.
But if you're honest,

this feels right. There's like a deeper knowing.
There's a resonance, there's a deeper knowing underneath the mind.

Your true guidance isn't even meant to make sense to your mind because it's not coming from your mind.

And most of us, we're living from our mind and our knowledge, which is in the ego, which is designed to keep you safe and protect you and reinforce its existence.

And so when you feel that, oh, this doesn't make sense. I think you're probably going in a right direction,

right?

And because it's beyond your mind. And And I think if you can feel the resonance of the rightness,

then you can start going in that direction. Even if it's a small step, you start moving in the direction of where the energy feels right, where the energy is flowing.

I think if you become still enough and you don't try to force life into a direction, you will feel life moving in a direction. And that movement is the intelligence moving.
That's the flow.

You're not trying to like, well, I want it to move this way. I want this person to be the one.
That's the wave in the ocean.

That's the way. If you look at a surfer, a surfer is on the board and

they're feeling for the wave. You don't see Laird Hamilton or Kelly Slater, there's no wave in this, just trying to balance on a wave and make a wave.
They're just feeling, oh, now there's a wave.

And so when you can feel the wave, then

you go into action. Then you actually give 100%.

Then you can align your mind, your planning, your ego, your goal setting, your marketing, your PR, your strategy, all of that stuff aligned with the flow.

The challenge is many times we're aligning all of that stuff with something that is not the flow. We're aligning the action with someone that is not the right person, right?

We're aligning all of that effort with a project that isn't it rather than, oh, this is the flow now i can start my goal setting and planning and creating and 100 i never heard anyone say that and i it makes sense with everything i've ever done that felt like it clicked yeah i loved that you just shared when you feel the click that's when you go into action most of us we don't feel the click and we try to convince ourselves

Was that little echo? Was that a click? You know, it was a click. And now we're trying to make something click that didn't actually click.

And then we wonder, like, why is this not, why am I losing motivation? Why am I procrastinating?

Many times our lack of motivation and our procrastination is the deeper intelligence telling us you're not aligned. You're not truly aligned.

And like, like my book, The Magic of Surrender, was not the book I planned to write. It was not the book I wanted to write.

I sat down one day after my first book, You Are the One, which we spoke about briefly, was a bestseller. And I thought, okay, I'm going to write a New York Times best-selling book.

And going to be, I'm going to be smart this time. I'm going to be intelligent.
I had an entire whiteboard of ideas.

I put literally a hundred ideas of books I thought would get me on the New York Times, books I thought my publisher would want, books I thought would be bestsellers.

I came up with crazy titles, the magical art of that, the

subtle. This, I mean, I tried to game the system and I had brilliant, brilliant ideas.

None of which, if I was honest, felt true. true.
I couldn't sit here and tell you that any of those ideas felt real.

They felt like intelligent, they felt smart, they felt strategic, but none of those felt authentic. Or I could look you in the eyes authentically and say, this is it.

Then I looked at this whiteboard and there was a small word at the bottom of the whiteboard that said surrender.

And I thought, oh shit.

I felt the click. It's like, that's it.

And I resisted it for weeks.

No, I don't want to write about surrender because I thought, oh, my God, I just, it's too hard. It's too this.
It's too that. All of the ideas that we have are the misconceptions.

But if I was honest and true to myself, what I felt deeply inside is this is the book that is seeking to be written. And it has a soul of its own.
And my job is to not write it. My job is to...

allow it to come through and to be a servant to the message of this book. And I had to surrender to the book about surrender.
And when I surrendered to the book about surrender, everything flowed.

A new agent came. Penguin Random House, the publisher came.
You know, all of these things happened that I could not have planned and predicted just started to happen.

That's when I knew I was in the flow. And so, what I found is

the deeper, like, the deeper I go into surrender, or the more you sort of, like, the deeper you go,

the less choice you have,

the freer you are. The more you kind of try to create from your ego, the more choice you think you have.
I can do this and I could do that and I can do this and I can do that.

The more limited you are.

And there's the paradox, because the more you truly listen and attune to your soul, your soul will never, if you're truly following your soul, it will never guide you on the wrong path.

You'll always end up the right person in the right place at the right time, even though the path you take may not be the one that you you think you should be taking you you you'll always be guided i always say that if i tried to manifest my husband i would have messed it all up so it's like the deeper surrender supports us in and facing the fears that come up along the way supports the authentic surrender so that life can bring us something better than we could have ever planned to have happen and i love i love all of what you're sharing i think it's so beautiful and i also know that you you have a process that says there's a difference between a lot of people miss between acceptance and true surrender.

Can you walk us through that process?

So, yeah, many times we think that,

because we often hear acceptance, you know, accepting what is, accepting, I can accept what is,

but true acceptance is not real surrender.

It's a progression towards surrender. But I can accept what is, but still be pissed off, right? It's raining outside.
I accept that it's raining outside. I accept it.
I accept it. But I'm a bit mad.

I accept it, but I'm going to

pout a little bit. I accept it, but

so there can still be

a layer of

resistance inside.

Now, when I say surrender, surrender is the

open-hearted participation with the process of life that is happening.

It's raining outside. Beyond just, okay, it's raining outside.
I'll freaking deal with it. That's acceptance.
It's raining outside.

And how can we make this the best experience possible for our family? How can we make this the best date?

How do we use this experience? to have the most amazing experience. How do we use this experience for our highest growth?

How do we participate with the experience that is happening, trust that it's happening for a reason, and use it to the max?

To me, that is surrender, the full participation in the process of life that is happening. However, between acceptance

and surrender, there is a phase in the middle that I think most people miss. And that phase in the middle is grieving.

I think a lot of times we don't go from, okay, this is what is happening. And acceptance is an important phase.
Okay, this is what is happening. I'm not in denial anymore.
I'm not resisting.

This is what is happening. And you can even accept your non-acceptance.
Yes, you could, sometimes you have to accept that you're not accepting and just be with that. Right.

But then you can, if you really accept your non-acceptance, then you can move into the next phase, which is grieving. And the grieving is the, is, is the allowing yourself to feel

whatever arises from, wow.

Maybe I'm not going to win an Oscar at this stage of my life at 70 years old. You know, wow, I'm not 20 anymore.
Moving into my 40s. It's a different phase of my life.
And so I think as you, as you,

you know, even with COVID, many, many dreams that were

planned, that weren't fulfilled, there's grief there of dreams that didn't happen and things that didn't happen. And so I think...

To truly come into true surrender where you can open your heart to life, the next phase of your life, or that new relationship, whatever it is, you have to allow yourself to grieve, to grieve what was, to grieve what wasn't, to grieve what could have been, to grieve what you felt should have been, to grieve it all, so that you're not carrying that energy with you.

And when you carry that unprocessed grief, sadness, pain, and many of us, we're carrying layers, some of which are very subtle, subtle layers of grief in our hearts, past relationships, things that didn't work out, abortions, you know, disappointments.

We're carrying that with us, not even realizing that that's what we're carrying. And that, I think, clouds and blocks our ability to truly be open and excited to the news.
Why am I not excited?

Why am I not

when I met my wife and I realized, oh shit,

I'm not escaping this world.

There's only like there's only one direction because like this is it

and it moved from boyfriend and girlfriend to,

oh, she's this is my wife.

And we got engaged and the sort of trajectory to get married. It all happened very fast.
There was a moment of time

where I felt sad.

And I was like, why am I feeling sad?

And I realized that there was a part of me that had to die in the process

of love, the single identity, this

false independent identity. There's a parts of me that had to die so that I could truly open to this next phase of my life.

And it didn't make sense at first, like, well, I should just be happy. And so I think that grieving, whatever it is, grieving is an important phase to truly surrender.

Had I not truly allowed myself to feel the grief, Part of me would not be able to truly open to the love and surrender to the love, you know?

And I think many times in our culture, we're not taught how to grieve.

We're afraid that if I grieve, then the grief will last forever. Or I'll get drowned by it.

I'll be overwhelmed by the grief. My heart will be broken by the grief.

Or sometimes the ego plays a sneaky game of, like, if I don't really grieve the end of this relationship, as an example, then maybe I don't have to admit that it's actually over.

And I can kind of live in the fantasy that there's a possibility and I don't have to really face the reality.

And so sometimes the not grieving or the, or the denial is the ego strategy of trying to hold on.

And so I think to truly come into real surrender requires the willingness to feel, the willingness to grieve fully. And I tell people, look, you don't even have to call it grief.

Just take the label off of calling it grief and just let yourself feel

the sensation in your body, whatever you want to call it, but let's label it grief for a second. Just feel the sensation of what does that energy feel like in my body?

And I think if we can just be with it fully, be with it completely without judging, without resisting, without trying to get rid of it, then

that cycle of energy can dissolve, you know, and move through us. And then we can let go and move into openness.
It's like everything is a doorway to the divine if we fully allow it.

I remember I was in my relationship with my boyfriend at the time, now husband, we were three years in, and I had this wave of grief come up.

I was at USM, this master's program that we both went to a while ago. I went to this to volunteer at this week-long retreat, and then this wave of grief came up from an ex out of nowhere.

But with 300 people doing deep work over a week, it amplifies what I wasn't able to access. And I felt this deep wave of grief.

And I told my husband, he's like, let's go back to the room and just presence it because we knew.

But I was like, we have five minutes left to circle back with the volunteers he's like let's do it and just went to the room i put on a song of my ex and i dropped to my knees to feel this grief all the way through because it was a divine moment to say here's access in a way that you haven't been able to and the moment it took 90 seconds to feel the grief fully And I kid you not, I was in a relationship with my husband like this at the time.

And after those 90 seconds, I was 100% all in. I could love him deeper because I had presenced the grief that was in the way of a deeper level of intimacy with him.

And so everything you're sharing, I align with.

And I just want to remind people, even if it feels scary, it feels like something you don't want to feel, the somatic hack of just feeling it as a sensation, not a story, to really allow it fully opens you to a divine love, a divine experience that you were actually craving.

It was just hidden within the thing you were avoiding. And so it's all a gift.
And we don't want to indulge. We don't want to avoid.
You just want to fully allow it to be here.

And that becomes the gift that opens you to what you deeply desire i just love you i just there's so much alignment and i love your your just your energy your stories who you are and i know my audience is going to want to stay connected tell us what you're up to how do we stay connected wow um depending on people listen to this um

i was first i would say get the book the magic of surrender yeah uh not the book i wanted to write but the book that came through and it's it's it's it's a love of my life i put so much heart into that was inspired by my mother, who was really someone who lived, surrender.

Can I share a story about her?

When I was writing the book, I realized that everything in my life had prepared me to write this book in terms of how my parents met and agreed to get married,

having never seen each other or couldn't even speak the same language together. And so...
In 2016, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. And she was the person I I loved the most.

She was the person I was the closest with. I mean, I know love today because of my mother.
And so it really hit me hard.

And I was living in LA and I started flying back and forth between LA and London where she lived. My mother's this little Japanese woman, you know, and it just was heartbreaking.

And I had every intention. I was going to heal my mother.
I was going to... bring the best of what I knew about holistic everything and make her well.

And I soon realized she was not listening to half my advice and, you know, eating stuff that she shouldn't eat. And she was on her own path.

And so I just kind of surrendered and decided, you know what? I'm just going to love her exactly as she is.

And

I showed up going to chemo with her and sitting in chemo sessions with my mother, holding her hand and

talking about nothing and everything and all the stuff that like the only regret I have in my life was not spending more time with my mother because I thought I had more time.

Here I was like running around the world and writing books and saving the world. And I didn't make time for the ordinary moments in life.

And that's the moment when I realized these moments will never come again, you know.

And so as I sat just having a cup of tea with my mother, looking my mother in the eyes, realizing this could be the last time I ever have a cup of tea with my mother again, the doctors finally said to us,

hmm, they said to us, you got weeks or maybe months to live to my mother. And I just started crying.
You know, I hadn't cried in front of my mother in years. And I said, mom, are you afraid?

And my mother said to me, I'm not afraid because I know I'm not this body.

This little Japanese woman. Like, it's easy to understand that when everything is well.

But in the face of your mortality, when life is ticking, she looks me in the eyes and she says, I know I'm not this body. This body is a temporary vehicle for my soul.

And whatever happens, I will be with you from the other side. So don't worry.
I'll be guiding you every step of the way.

And

it's like, wow, okay, hugging my mother. And I realized, you know, I wanted to be a good son.
And even though we were so close, there was so much I wanted to do with her, so much I wanted to show her.

I realized she'd never seen my children. She would never, like, there were so many things.
I thought I had time, but I didn't. And so I said to my mother, what can I do for you? Where can I take you?

Where should we go? What do you want? And my mother looks me in the eyes and she says, there's nothing I want. Nothing.

Where do you want to go? Nowhere I want to go. She says, the only thing I want for my life at this moment is what God wants for my life.

It's like, whoa, it just hit me. The only thing I want is what God wants for my life.
That's it. Nothing else.
That's the moment I I realized, without her saying,

that she was totally surrendered to life. She wasn't attached.
She wasn't attached to dying. She wasn't attached to living.
She was just open to the highest unfolding for her journey.

And for nine months or so,

I realized that this is why she was free. She was happy.
like every chemo session i mean dressed up with her makeup and just joyous and happy and never once feeling like a victim.

And so I saw that she had,

without trying, she had taught me the real essence of what surrender looks like, even in the most difficult situation of life, you know, in this moment. And so

that's what inspired the book.

That's what inspired the book. And then when my mother passed away, I asked my mother,

Because she's 10 years younger than my father. Like, it was assumed that my father would go first.

But to condense the story, I asked her

in a meditation,

why did you go first? And she looked at me in the eyes and she said, I went first to remove myself so that you could have the complete and total karmic healing with your father.

And that's the moment I knew. And my father, I had done a lot of work on my father and I had come to acceptance.
I love him. I'm not mad at him anymore.
We're cool.

But I certainly wasn't wide open in loving and surrender. And it's like, well, you know, it takes two to have a relationship.
He can call me two, you know, but I'm cool.

And so in that moment, I realized the assignment,

the real assignment. And I made a choice in that moment to surrender.
And I made a choice that I would love my father in a way.

that I had never loved him before. Regardless of what he had been, what he had not been, what he wasn't, none of that shit mattered anymore.
The only thing that mattered was the loving.

And I made a choice that I would call, my father was in Ghana, that I would call my father. My father and I, we didn't speak once a month, once every two months, once every three months, maybe.

I said, I'm going to call him every day until the day he dies.

And the truth is, he has not been a good father, but I have not been

a son I would be proud of. So that when he dies, I want to have peace in my heart, knowing that I loved him completely and we have completed our karma completely.

And so I started calling my father, inspired by my mother. I started calling her every day.

And every day I'd call my father. Hey, dad, how are you? We never spoke.
Hey, dad, how are you? Hey, Dad, I love you. Hey, Dad, did you take your protein powder? It wasn't anything deep.

It was just me showing up, meeting him where he was at.

And after months, healing started happening. My father, who did not even remember my birthdays, started calling me up.

And on my birthday started wishing me happy singing me happy birthday leaving me voicemails and there was such a healing healing that happened so i know that healing is possible for people we do have the ability and the power to do our part to heal ourselves to heal and when we heal ourselves we heal our generations we heal our lineage in such a profound way and there was so much healing that happened with my father over five years i flew to ghana every three months months, every three months to sit with my father in a room and just honor him.

And there was such a healing that happened. I fell in love with my father in five years.
And it was so interesting when I felt that something was complete. Met my wife, she got pregnant.

Something said, go see your father now.

Like now. I went to see my father and he was the first person I told that we were having a baby.
And he looked at me and said, I had a dream. And I have a feeling, it's a son.
I said, it's the son.

He said, yes.

And then I called my wife. I said, I told my dad.
And I said to my wife, My father will not be alive to see our son. She said, no, come on.
No, no.

Sure enough, a month later, my father died. And he saw him.

And he saw him in the spiritual realms, you know. And so I just felt like, through surrendering,

following the guidance,

the healing work,

so much has shifted in my life that I know that if people have the courage to just take one step, you know, and follow the nudging of the soul, whatever it is, small ways, big ways,

amazing things are possible. And when I see my son now,

I see that all the healing work I have done in 20 years has set him free. That's right.
And I think for all of us, the work that we do,

that we're afraid to do, those places we're afraid to go, those things we're afraid to face, those secrets we're afraid to deal with, those shames we've been carrying,

to have the courage to go there and face it and love it and love those parts of ourselves.

Because when we do that, we set ourselves free, but we shift the vibrational energetic karma, not only for our previous generations, but for our future generations.

And when I look at my son, It's like all those times I was afraid, all those times I didn't want to cry, all those times I didn't want to face and feel those things.

In doing that, I look at him and I realize I have freed him.

And I, and I'm now face to face with the work I've done every day in his eyes.

And so I just hope people have the courage to just take a step, you know, because I think when you surrender, this is when the magic happens. So anyway, that was a long way of saying

the magic of surrender book. Yeah.
The you are the one book. Beautiful.
Thank you so much for your

magic. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
What a gift.

Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself. It truly does make a difference.

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There is so much more magic ahead, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

But for now, I just want to say thank you for being a living example of what it means to walk through the world with an open heart and mind.

I am so grateful that you're here, and I cannot wait to see you in the next episode.