Kathleen's Blog

The Surrender Of Strategy

‘There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.’…. Ralph Waldo Emerson

This post is an invitation.  It comes with an RSVP.

The invitation is to try something new – to leave behind an old, well-used methodology for a new option.  We’re generally pretty good at choosing.  We take choices for what we want.  Choice is explicit and finite, assuming preference between options.  Achievement is available through discernment and determination.  We’re presented with alternatives.  We make a definitive selection that results in one verdict over another.  One choice is NOT it.  The other choice IS it.

However it is that we come to it, consciously or unconsciously, we strategize choice.  We eliminate what doesn’t meet our criteria to focus on what does.

We are used to strategy.  It is our default way of being in the world.

Desire requires more presence.  It is gentler in its invitation, somewhat softer and a little more subtle in its initial calling.  Desire chooses us.  It is implicit and infinite, assuming affinity among variations.  Fulfillment is available through exploration and recognition.  Presented with opportunity, willingness and attention allow collaboration of complementary possibilities.  Desire is realized through a multitude of available choices or combination of choices.

Desire nudges us, grows in us and takes up residence in our being.  We cannot strategize desire.  It just is and in its presence, we don’t think about criteria.  We experience the all of it.

When true Desire is present, we lean into it.  We imagine, feel, and surrender to it.  It becomes a part of what we carry and embody.  This is not our default way of being in the world.  And we could have it be so.

Understanding that Desire creates our Choices, we could give our time and attention to desire.  We could soak in its fulfilled circumstances and in our rest, give it space to emerge the perfect choice.  All we have to give up is strategy.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  The path to fulfillment comes with an invitation to give up strategy in favour of surrender to desire.  In juxtaposition to what we have been taught, strategy and surrender change position.  We lead with surrender.  Strategy follows.  Surrender provides what is fresh and what we can’t know.  Choice in the right time and place calls for strategy.

We live in the tension between these two.  Desire is ever calling us to notice and acknowledge its invitation and fully engage its experience.  Choice lures us to determine and activate an option.  Both are necessary.  Trouble is we most often employ one without presence to the other.  We scan our options and make a choice, never fully experiencing, leaning in and surrendering to Desire.  If we gifted ourSelf this one adjustment, we could in turn, surrender strategy and rest fully into the choices emerged by desire.

Will you accept the invitation?  What will you RSVP?  Are you willing to give up strategy in favour of surrender to desire?  To what desire fulfilled will you surrender?

 

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