122: Kute Blackson | The Magic of Surrender: Ego, Intuition, and the Power of Trust

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Jesper Conrad: 0:10

Today we're together with Kute Blackson. But first of all I would like to welcome you to our podcast, and if I seem a little rushed, it's because we ran the last 500 meters to set up everything, as we needed to pet a dog on the Charles Bridge.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:29

And we met a friend and that was not part of our logistics plan today. So anyway, we're babbling on Welcome.

Kute Blackson: 0:37

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:39

It's nice to meet you. We haven't met before at all.

Jesper Conrad: 0:43

No, so this will be exploration. Yes, and my plan is if we could dive into some of the subjects you often talk about. One of them is ego, and I don't know if we should start by defining what we mean about ego. How do you define it when you talk about it?

Kute Blackson: 1:07

I think there's a lot of negative connotations when people typically talk about ego, connotations when people typically talk about ego. Right, you've got to kill the ego, you've got to annihilate the ego. The ego is your enemy. The ego is bad, but I think this kind of sets up a dualistic, contentious relationship with oneself that keeps oneself in a state of separation and conflict. I think, as human beings, in this sort of 3D world that we all live in and have incarnated in, we all have an ego. I have an ego, you have an ego, dalai Lama has an ego, everyone has an ego, and I see ego as not good or bad. It's just a vessel or vehicle that maybe you could say our soul uses to navigate this human experience. And so, to me, ego isn't even a thing like an object. So here is a pen and here is a water bottle, and here's my ego, you know. And so ego is not really a thing.

Kute Blackson: 2:13

I would say that ego is a process. Ego is a process of identification, identifying with oneself or the way in which we have learned a pattern, a set pattern, a condition pattern in which we have identified ourselves as name, mind, body, belief systems, memories, the degree to which we are identified as. That we could say, I think, is ego. And so ego is the process of identification. So I think the thing with ego is not ego itself, but is your relationship with ego. I think that's the key. I mean, if we met the Dalai Lama and we said, hey, dalai Lama, likely he would turn around and say yes, and so in order to have that interaction, you have to have an ego.

Kute Blackson: 3:08

But one's relationship, one's sense of identification, the degree to which you are holding and gripping to your labels and your thoughts and your beliefs and your identity, I would say that is ego. So, in a sense, ego is identification, not good or bad, just a construct and a set of patterns and conditionings that we hold on to and identify ourselves as. And I think the degree to which we have a tendency to hold tightly and grip tightly and hold on to ego I'm this, I'm that, I'm not this, I'm not that is the degree to which we might suffer or the degree to which we might find, you know, I'm a CEO, I'm a, you know, good person, a bad person, a mother, a father, a Christian, a Buddhist, a new age person I think the degree to which we hold on to those labels. Ego is the degree to which we will suffer or the degree to which we will limit or inhibit our freedom.

Jesper Conrad: 4:12

You know it leads me to a question where I maybe need to walk a little around to come to it. In my life I earlier had an idea of what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a movie director and I did different stuff and I ended up creating an amateur feature film and animation film and different things. So when I look back at it, I saw it as some kind of ego driven and it can be that I use the word wrong, but it was an idea of what I wanted to become and do. But I could be in doubt of if I did it because I wanted the dream. But at the same time I could also see that having the dream led me towards it in maybe a bigger fashion that I would have if I didn't have it.

Jesper Conrad: 5:10

And where I can be in doubt, what was good and bad is I never became this international movie director. That was my dream and there was some sadness in me around that. But there's a lot of joy also when I look back at my life and see the things I accomplished due to that dream. And I don't know if that is ego driven. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, and I don't know if that is ego driven. What are?

Kute Blackson: 5:34

your thoughts on that. Yeah, look, certain dreams can be ego driven from the standpoint. It kind of arises from pain, it arises from, let's say, an unmet need, it arises from a wound. So we think, oh, if I can just be famous, you know, be the next Tom Cruise and have a zillion dollars and drive that Lamborghini, then I'm going to be happy, then I'm going to be fulfilled, then I'm going to be worthy and valuable and I'll prove my father wrong about how he didn't believe in me, right? And so I think, when our dreams are driven by pain and wounds, then you could say, yeah, then they're rooted in ego in a certain sense. And even those dreams, I would say, are not bad, right, they're just part of the human experience and journey and the journey that we, as human beings, we have to go on. That journey we are incarnated into this human experience. So, even if they are ego-driven, dreams from wounds and pain, those dreams have and will take you on a journey, a journey of healing, a journey of evolution, a journey of growing, a journey of learning, a journey of evolving right. And who you become in the process of that pursuit of that goal is kind of like the university for your soul's evolution to learn, to grow, to evolve, to expand and the real goal isn't simply the attainment of that goal became the movie director. The real goal is the degree to which you learn the lessons that your soul needed to learn and the degree to which you evolved and became the more authentic version of yourself. Right, and so I would say, yes, some of it might be ego-driven, and even when the ego does drive us, you might attain everything you thought you wanted, only to realize that what you thought you wanted was not really it, even when you attained it. You know. And so I do think there is a way to, as we heal more and more, as we evolve more and more, as we connect to our souls more and more, to really clear the blockages and feel the deeper truth of what is seeking to happen, the deeper truth of what life is seeking to express who we are authentically meant to be in this maybe incarnation, but many times that only happens once we've healed, or that only happens once we have gone through the journey of exhausting certain lessons and learnings.

Kute Blackson: 8:18

I remember many years ago when I first came to the US similar to you, but a bit different I wanted to launch a talk show. This is when Oprah was super popular and I thought, oh, I want to be the next Oprah, right? The vision was I wanted to help people and inspire people and I felt it was coming from an authentic place. I tried everything, kind of like you, I threw everything at it and it never happened. But looking back I realized that it was almost like in the pursuit of that dream and vision which some of it was coming from my ego, my need to be seen, my need to be validated, my need to prove my worth and value, et cetera, et cetera In the pursuit of that goal it was almost as though I also burnt out some of my ego.

Kute Blackson: 9:08

And the pursuit of that goal was part of the necessary burning of my ego so that I could move through the illusions and the drive and the pain, so that I could come to the other side of like letting go, you know.

Kute Blackson: 9:23

And it was only through the burning out and pursuit of that sort of ego drive that I reached the end of my own ego's capacity to make things happen, my own, the end of my ego's drive, to the point where I came to a point of saying I don't know, I really don't know really what I'm here to do, what's meant for me. And that's when I really started to surrender and just ask the universe, ask the divine, like, okay, I've tried it, I've done everything I can, but show me. Show me what life is seeking to express to me, show me what God is seeking to manifest through me. And that's when I think there was a shift from the sort of ego focus to an expanded openness, surrender and willingness. And then I think, when we can truly open to that focus, to an expanded openness, surrender and willingness, you know, and then I think, when we can truly open to that, then we can bring ourselves more into alignment with our highest path, our highest destiny, our soul's highest intention.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:29

Beautiful. Yeah, to me I have this thing. I had an epiphany, or actually I had a friend help me at some point and he said just remember that the ego will always get in the way, and it's a very good line for me to hold on to. Sometimes I feel if things are clotting a little or they, it's as if I'm fumbling, I can't figure out. So if I stop and I'm like, okay, sweet, little, cute, nice ego, I mean it's there, we all have it. As you said, you may be on the playground, but you're not the only kid here in the sandbox. Can we have a little space? Can we maybe unfocus a little bit? You know, you've got the stage light. It doesn't have to be ego in the center of it all the time. Could we maybe? And if I take that step back in my life and I, just as you say, surrender, I did many, many years ago when I realized that the things that are really, really, truly important in this life I have no control.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:42

So all of this planning and all of this I want and what can I contribute, all this I-based thing, I might take up a lot of space and have strong opinions and speak loud, and all these things live a very radical life, but I also do know that I'm just a little yeah, I'm just a little drop of the ocean and I surrender to it yeah and I think what goes wrong and why people talk about ego and that you have to kill the ego because the ego for many people, if you don't have a meditation or prayer practice, if you don't have insights of that sort and that's completely normal, good and fine then the experience of ego can be very close to the experience of everything that you don't have a habit of understanding that this ego process is just one part of the process yeah one color in the spectrum.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:38

You know it's not everything. That helps me a lot to take that step back and be yeah, you're a player. I mean, ego keeps us alive, yeah, we have ego.

Kute Blackson: 12:52

It's the vehicle that we use to just navigate this human experience. And I think when we can realize that we're not it, it's not what we are essentially in our totality it's, as you said eloquently, just one sliver of the spectrum, of the totality, is just a piece then I think our relationship with it shifts completely, and then it's not really an issue anymore, it's not really a problem anymore, it's just, it's just there. And when I think our relationship with ego shifts, it frees us. It's not like it dies or it goes away, it's not even real to die, it's not even really real to be able to die. And so when I, when our relationship with ego shifts, I think it frees us to actually like live life even more freely and more fully.

Kute Blackson: 13:43

Not, I think some people have decided, oh, and I let my ego, then I'm gonna live in the Himalayas and just give up everything and just become ascetic. But I think, in the realization of the deeper reality of what you're not, it frees you up to enjoy life even more, to experience life even more, to play the movie even more, and I think that's the beautiful freedom. But yeah, we all have ego, we all need ego, we all can use ego versus ego using us, and it's there. It's just part of the background of what we really are.

Jesper Conrad: 14:20

I would like to ask you a little about your backstory, okay, you a little about your backstory. Okay, if we first give you a perspective of who we are, we are family. We have four kids. We wow, full time now on the seventh year with your four kids only three of them. One of them is an adult, but then instead we have two small dogs as well to fill up this as an adult, but then instead we have two small dogs as well to fill up, that's an adventure.

Jesper Conrad: 14:49

Yeah, and a lot of this, because one of our kids didn't want to start schooling and we started homeschooling and it turned into unschooling and it shifted our perspective of having a life where you're based on one address, because in the end, it was only me going to work that kept us in that place and now seven years we have been traveling and have been in many different places and it puts us in a perspective to look at the world kind of differently, where I asked myself how would my path have been if I've stayed in this one place?

Jesper Conrad: 15:23

what would have happened? And I can feel I'm still on this exploration of what is it I want to do, because you can always earn money, but the time together is very important for me. But there's something more, something I want to explore. I have some curiosities among reasons why we make this podcast. So I think our path also came because Cecilia had cancer and almost died. So we have had this kind of we want to have as much as possible out of life. That's beautiful, thank you. But what happened in your life since you have walked down this road of exploration about ego, surrender and all these things you talk about?

Kute Blackson: 16:52

I think I was kind of born into a bit of an interesting situation. You know, my father's from Ghana, my mother's Japanese. I grew up in London so as a kid I felt like I was. I didn't know where the hell I belonged and where the hell I was from. You know, in Africa I was a foreigner. In Japan I was a foreigner. In London, I was a foreigner, and so that created as a young child a lot of pain and not feeling like I belonged anywhere and feeling rejected from every direction. And so I think I was a sensitive kid. So that really started driving me inward to question like where am I from? Where is home? Who am I? Where do I belong? And I remember asking myself these questions from a young age because it felt like everyone was very much in their own one-dimensional tribe of this is who I am, this is where I belong. And I never felt any of that.

Kute Blackson: 17:49

And so my first memories as a young boy I remember being age six, eight, seven, being lost in the crowd in Ghana, West Africa, and I remember seeing and this is kind of indicative of how I grew up I remember seeing a crippled woman crawling on the floor, couldn't walk, she picks up the sand that this man walks on. He didn't see this happening. He was just walking and she picks up the sand and wipes it on her face and stands up. And so, week after week, I grew up seeing like with my own eyes. No social media, and this is before that time. Blind people see and deaf people hear, and people stand up out of wheelchairs. The same man, who's since she picked up, would look at a person in a wheelchair and say why are you in this wheelchair? Stand up, but I haven't walked in five years, Do you believe? Yes, and he put his hands on them and they'd be healed. And so this man happened to be my father and I grew up witnessing with my own eyes, really every day, these kind of miraculous occurrences.

Kute Blackson: 18:51

Seemingly, anyway, miraculous occurrences happen, but I think for me as a seven, eight-year-old and then throughout my teens, one of the blessings was I really didn't think anything extraordinary about it. I didn't think it was anything it. I didn't think it was anything special, it was just normal. You brush your teeth, go to work, you put your socks on. Oh yeah, someone stood up out of a wheelchair. It was like nothing, and I would tell my friends about it. They thought I was completely crazy. My teachers thought I was completely crazy until they came and saw what was happening.

Kute Blackson: 19:22

And so my father built 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa, had hundreds of thousands of followers and he had a huge church in London. The blessing for me was, by the time I was born, he went to India and kind of had what some would call a spiritual awakening, enlightenment experience. So he became very mystical, very metaphysical in nature versus a dogmatic Christian kind of religion, and so I was born into a very mystical teaching on Christianity, even though he had these churches and my father, my mother being Buddhist, meditating with her. So I grew up in this eclectic environment, going to church on Sundays with 3000 people and meditating with my mother, and everything was mixed up and it was just.

Kute Blackson: 20:04

This was normal, you know, and so that was my upbringing. And when I was age eight, I started speaking in my father's churches and he just threw me on stage to speak. No training, no conversation, no preparation, just like speak Right. And something came through me that I didn't understand, and then I began taking some time to try to understand what was happening to me, because I honestly did not understand it. It didn't make sense. No one trained me for it. But just something opened and I would sneak into my father's office. We had thousands of spiritual books, from Krishnamurti and Osho and Ramakrishna, ramana, maharishi to Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay and Chopra, and I began reading these books, just trying to understand life. And so, when I was 14, a pivotal moment is my father announces to his people that my son is going to be my successor. My son is taking over my ministry. And I'm like what the hell? No one told me about this. You know my father's old school. He didn't really have a conversation with you. Just this is what it's going to be, and my heart sank because, as much as I felt a calling to help people, I just knew that this religious path was not my path, this structure of religion and church, even though he was very spiritual. It just it was not my path. My life was already being preset and programmed and it was like this. My soul felt too confined so I did not have the courage for four years to confront my father. I did not have the courage, maybe, like your kid didn't want to be schooled. I just didn't say anything and so I allowed fear to kind of hijack me, because my father was a very iconic figure and I wanted to make him happy and for him to be proud of me, and so the thought of speaking up was terrifying, was a death. So you could say one of my first initiations really happened when I was 17. And I felt my soul calling me very clearly in a different direction. It said go to America. I wanted to go into this field of spirituality and personal growth, and all of the authors I'd read happened to live in California and so I was going to move to India or Los Angeles. And something said go to LA. And that's when I knew what I had to do.

Kute Blackson: 22:29

And I think sometimes when your soul guides you, it doesn't make sense to your mind. When your soul guides you, it doesn't make sense to your logic. People don't understand it. You might even think you're crazy, and I think many of us. We talk ourselves out of our own deep soul's intuition and knowing because it doesn't make sense. But I say your deep intuition is not meant to make sense to your mind because it's not coming from the conditioned ego which is rooted in the known and the past. It's arising from the unconditioned dimension of your being, which is not limited to what you've been before. And I just felt everything in my soul saying go to America.

Kute Blackson: 23:09

My heart sank again. Oh shit, what do I do now? I now I know what I have to basically speak to my father, renounce everything. I was terrified, but what I have found through my life is when you follow your soul, when you are obedient to your soul, when you surrender to the ocean, that is life. You will always be guided in the right place, at the right time, in the right way, with the right people, even though the path that you take may not be the one that you most expect. And so, long story short, I had the conversation with my father.

Kute Blackson: 23:38

We didn't speak for two years, which was heartbreaking for me as a 17-year-old kid. But then that's when I felt grace unfold and you talk about Cecile like you can't plan, like life is bigger than our goals and our journals and our little strategies. Life is an intelligence that has been around from the beginning of life itself and it knows what we need. This innate intelligence knows if we're willing to surrender and trust it. And so I remember.

Kute Blackson: 24:08

In that moment I said a prayer, I said God, I have followed the guidance of my soul. Like what the hell now? And then you know, it just felt like I was thrown in the void of the abyss of the ocean. It's like I can't go back, but I don't know where I'm going. And that void is scary. It's terrifying because you can't see your heads from your tails.

Kute Blackson: 24:31

It's the void and I think a lot of people get terrified in the void. Sometimes the void can feel like a punishment, but it's not a punishment. It's just the necessary, shall we say, gestation in the womb of life that we need to go through to allow the entire universe to unfold its magic. And long story short, someone hands me a magazine called the economist. I look in the back it says the american government's giving away 55 000 green cards in the green card lottery and I ended up winning a green card in the green card lottery that enabled me, legally, with a green card, to come to the US at 18, two suitcases, $800 in my pocket and just following a kid, following a dream, a kid following my soul, and so if there's anything I've done, for better or worse, is I've been naive enough, stupid enough, crazy enough, regardless, and it's guided me in magical ways that I could not have planned. Honestly.

Jesper Conrad: 25:29

That leads me to a question which is I just want to applaud it. Yes, first.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:34

Beautiful story.

Jesper Conrad: 25:36

Wonderful, just following it, very, very powerful. Often, when I talk with people, some of the questions they ask me is about parenting, it's about the food traveling, it's about unschooling and having your kids live this very free life.

Jesper Conrad: 25:59

We let them live, and then I actually have this battle in my mind sometimes, and it's the battle of the speaking my truth versus how I live my reality. I think that sometimes, as people have a very clear sense of what is the right thing to do, we can advise better than we can live. So sometimes, when I talk with people, I start out by saying to them you know, this is me speaking from my ideal. I would love to be able to live like that. But it also cripples me sometimes in speaking my truth, in saying what I believe, because I sometimes feel like a fraud, maybe because I don't live. What I can see would be even better. So you, who talk a lot about surrendering and the thing we talked about with the ego, do you sometimes have this battle where you're looking at well, this is what I'm talking about, but, yeah, I'm not doing it all the time. And maybe that's okay that we have a true light inside of us we share, but we cannot live it constantly.

Kute Blackson: 27:59

Yeah, I mean I'm far from perfect. I just talked to my wife. I mean she'll tell you, you know my stuff, and so I don't pretend to be perfect, but I think all we can do as human beings is do the best we can. I didn't want to write a book on surrender. By the way, I tried to write every other book, but the guidance was like this is the book that you are going to write. And so I had to surrender to the book about surrender.

Kute Blackson: 28:25

And when I started writing the book on surrender, I saw that for the most part, it's how I had been living my life. I mean, obviously there's moments when I resist and there's moments when I don't, and there's moments when I may not attune, clearly for sure. But I remember when I started writing the book on surrender. This is when the universe is that when you write a book on surrender, be careful, because the universe will make you, you know, sort of like experience deeper levels of it, to make sure that you're not bullshitting. You know, and, and, yeah, to make sure, and, and so it was almost I started writing the book on surrender freaking covid hit. It's really. Universe is like how much more COVID hit.

Kute Blackson: 29:11

You know, this relationship that I thought was the one soared in the stars fell apart, you know, threw me to my knees. It's like all of this shit started happening, that it forced me to go to a deeper level of surrender within myself. It forced me to live it. It forced me to go to a deeper level of surrender within myself. It forced me to live it, it forced me to feel it, it forced me to understand it. It forced me to look at all the places in my life where I was maybe holding on to something that was not aligned and let go. And so it's been a process I would say it's still a continual process in evolution, you know, because at every next level there's another level. You know, every end is a new beginning, every beginning is an ending, and so at every level there's a bigger level of surrender. Like last year, I was guided to let go of an entire piece of my business and my work and my events. I was guided to no longer do these events in Bali. It sounded crazy, but it just felt like time and it just felt like it was complete.

Kute Blackson: 30:19

And so, listening to that, so what I will say is I do my absolute best and that's all we can do, is to do the best that we can do with the most sincerest intention and heart to live the truth in our heart. And so that's, I think, the best we can do, more than anything, and that's what I endeavor to do. And being a father both of you know as parents, it's like being a father. My son is two and so I'm a newer father on the newer spectrum, and it is humbling because if there's anywhere that I'm out of alignment, if there's anywhere that I'm not living, it, I see it in my son, because everything I do, he copies, everything I do. He mimics my son, because everything I do, he copies, everything I do, he mimics.

Kute Blackson: 31:11

So if I'm speaking a certain way, acting a certain way that I'm not maybe feeling great about, I see him maybe watching me and doing it, and he keeps me very honest, and sometimes I fail, but I do my best to be compassionate with myself, because I think we're humans. I think if you have a dream and a goal, be compassionate with myself, because I think we're humans. I think if you have a dream and a goal, right Ideal version of yourself, even a goal in the world, many times those goals are evolutionary in nature, because those goals they force you to grow, they force you to stretch, they force you to become more, they force you to expand into the next version of yourself. And I think it's okay so long as we're doing our best and coming from our heart and coming from sincerity and being truthful about who we are, versus like if someone is broke but they're teaching classes on or teaching people how to invest their money and be millionaires right, that would be out of integrity. But I think, so long as we are in a genuine inquiry oh, where am I blocked? Where am I stuck? Oh, I see that there's a higher potential. Ah, what do I need to let go of?

Kute Blackson: 32:22

I think that that process and the sincere engaging in the process of our evolution is really what it's about, rather than trying to fit some idealized version of ourselves, because the truth is in the human realm, in this 3D realm, there is no such thing as perfection. No matter how much therapy we do, how much meditation we do, how much past life regression, how much Reiki, how much edit, we're never going to be perfect. The personality, right, jesper Kuh, never going to be perfect. We're always going to have kind of little patterns, and this is just the 3D. There's no perfection at the level of the personality. I think the true perfection is at the level of our beingness, the level of our soul. Our true essence is perfect, but our personalities they're, you know, imperfect. I think the best we can do is do our work, spiritual work, therapeutic work, to sort of loosen some of the patterns of conditioning, not to make it perfect, but just to create space, so that more and more of the true light of our souls can shine through the patterns and the cracks.

Cecilie Conrad: 33:41

There is another perspective that could be said about perfection, and that is to trust that it always is as it should be yeah even when we do things that could be considered failing or creating obstacles or to me, that's a big part of my journey to, I say, trust the process very often to be to let go a little bit. Maybe I can feel slightly annoyed or I can feel that there is a lack of resources of some sort, or people in my face or whatever, but if I truly believe that it is perfect because I'm in the situation I'm supposed to be in and things are unfolding the way they should. It might not look like a fairy tale, it might not feel perfect, but it probably is exactly as it should be. We always say in Danish all is well, maybe in English.

Kute Blackson: 35:20

All is well, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:22

Because it is On the deep level, it is well. Maybe in English All is well. Yeah, because it is On the deep level, it is well. Even when it looks like trouble, it probably is well. Well, good.

Jesper Conrad: 35:30

I think my questioning to myself is, when I'm being asked by people and it's giving them an advice, I want to point in the direction I can see is the good way and at the same time sometimes I'm like I'm not walking there yet myself, but I can see the path.

Kute Blackson: 35:48

I think, so long as you're honest about that, right, I think that's the key. Just so long as you can be honest, as hey, here's the good way that I sense. But this is where I'm at. I'm a work in progress. I think that's integrity, right, the honesty.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:04

So you say listening to guidance and following your goal, and of course, you shared that you grew up in a context where that would be part of an everyday routine, but not that everyone grew up like you. So do you want to share? How do you do that? What do you listen what? How do you tune in?

Kute Blackson: 36:22

Wow, that's also a big question. I think that we all have a knowing. Every one of us have a knowing. We all know it doesn't matter if you're spiritual or not spiritual, we all have a knowing. And on one level there's nothing special because we all have it.

Kute Blackson: 36:43

I think, because of our conditioning pain, trauma, hurt, conditioning, et cetera many times that the clarity of the connection, the clarity of the tuning, the clarity of the listening there's sometimes static that gets in the way of us really tuning in or listening or hearing clearly. And so, just on one level, I would say, when we do the work, you know the healing, the work to clear away those blockages, whether it's therapy, whether it's breath work, whether it's whatever modality we might choose when we do the work, breath work, whether it's whatever modality we might choose when we do the work we can clear away the pain, the hurt, the shame, the stuck energy, Then I think we can connect more deeply with that part of us that knows. So that's kind of one level is the willingness to do the inner work so that we can connect and hear more clearly. So, with that said, I think part of why we sometimes also don't tune in is because we're so distracted and busy with the world out here. If you look at the nature of the world, there are so many distractions in this matrix of life trying to sell us from your parents, from grandparents, from siblings, from education system that really doesn't teach us to connect with who we truly are. The typical education system is a factory that tends to be designed to brainwash us, to sort of memorize facts and figures rather than help us connect. And so education system, religion, media, social media there is a war for our attention, and so I think part of the problem is many of us our focus is so externalized just out here and the news and the president and the prime minister and the stock market, out here, social media, instagram that we don't look inside, we don't create spaces and stillness to just listen, to be able to tune in, and so, just to kind of simplify, I would encourage, and what I've learned to do in my life is create space and time out of busyness and movement. Just to sit and to listen Sounds simple, but if we don't sit and we don't listen because we're running around so busy, focused externally, how will we hear? How will we tune in?

Kute Blackson: 39:17

Many of us, we sense things and we feel things, but because we don't sit still to really attune and listen, we don't really connect to it. And I think sometimes we are afraid to sit and listen. We're afraid that, oh shit, if I actually sit and listen I might actually hear the truth that I can kind of feel poking through my psyche and I'm afraid of what that means, which means leave your job, which means the marriage isn't right, which means launch this thing and because that's scary, I distract and keep myself busy. So I think if we can just start creating spaces in our days for slowness, for stillness, to just listen, we will begin to hear and I will say that's a beginning. I think many of us we hear and we sense, but we're afraid. We're afraid of the consequences, we're afraid of the impact, we're afraid of what that will mean, and so we keep ourselves busy. So stillness, listening, stillness, listening. I think many times our sensing, the tuning, can come to us in different ways. You have to want to hear the truth, but many times we want what we want. So you have to listen without agenda, I'll listen, but I want to hear that this person is right for me. No, no, If you listen without agendas like, okay, show me the truth, show me the truth of what I need to know, without any agenda. Then we're going to be more receptive and open rather than sort of predisposing ourselves in a certain direction.

Kute Blackson: 40:51

Many times your guidance and intuition will arise in a few ways. Number one sometimes a subtle sense. It's not always this loud call of like, move to Bali, sometimes it's just a very subtle like you could almost miss it, like hmm, like a, like a wind, like a sense, like huh, I wonder what if? And if you're not just present, paying attention, you won't even realize the feeling. Like a breeze, just move through. And that is your intuition speaking through the subtle sense. Sometimes it can be a loud voice that says, hey, go, do that. Sometimes it can be a very strong feeling. Sometimes the intuition or the guidance can come to you through a dream, maybe through your unconscious, when you're sleeping, comes to you in a metaphor, an image or direct clarity. Sometimes that sense and intuition is rooted in our body as well. The body has an intelligence. And that sense can be the feeling in your gut that something doesn't feel right in this meeting with this person, in this business dealing. It's just something in my gut is clenched.

Kute Blackson: 42:09

But I think many times we over, because we've learned to disconnect from our bodies, go into our mind and analyze everything. We often aren't in tune with the sensation in our body and so what I encourage and what I've learned to do is do my best to sort of scan my body and feel what do I feel in my body? How does this feel in my body? My mind might be telling me this is scary, but there've been moments where in my body something just, it just felt right. I couldn't explain it and I was afraid up here what's going to happen if I don't do the thing. But it just felt right, it felt like a yes, and so I think if we can start tuning into the sensations in our body and noticing the sense in our body, that really helps.

Kute Blackson: 42:55

Sometimes, in a strange way, the intuition can come to you if you're paying attention, because we're totally connected with all of life and life is a reflection, and energetic kind of reflection of what we are.

Kute Blackson: 43:08

It can happen in signs and symbols. I was running in my backyard and I saw, literally 10 feet away from me, a deer and as I was sitting with that, you know, deers tend to mean something like a new beginning and symbolically, and so sometimes intuitive guidance can come through signs and symbols, or you might be, if you're paying attention many times we're not paying attention we will start observing life and observing ourselves and start feeling and sensing our intuition. And many times it is not loud, many times I found it's not always intense. Often your intuition, the deeper guidance, is quiet, is calm. It's like, yeah, notice, I was in a river the other day, like a lagoon, and what was beautiful was if you become still and you stand, the water flows in a direction. It just naturally flows very subtly and I think life tends to have a natural flow. This intelligent life has a flow and we can become still and and follow the flow. Then we're in sync and so the attunement you know, I think, is key we should talk a little about your book also.

Jesper Conrad: 44:35

We probably maybe have in many ways around yes, yes we at some point interviewed a wonderful woman who said when she writes for her, it's the journey where she is figuring out something for herself, and then she then also shares the book with other people. So if you look at your book, what clarity did you come to through writing it? If you look back at the book, what is it that you took away and what is it that people will take away when reading it? Many layered questions here, yeah.

Kute Blackson: 45:17

I wrote the book because I was guided to write the book. I wrote the book not because I wanted to write the book. I wrote the book. I resist to write the book. I wrote the book not because I wanted to write the book. I wrote the book. I resisted writing the book.

Kute Blackson: 45:27

I tried to strategize and be clever with all sorts of intelligent ideas of books I thought would get me on the bestsellers list and books I thought my publisher would want. But none of those made sense. None of those felt right in my body. And so when surrender came to me, it was the only topic that felt aligned. And when I really felt into it, my mind said, oh shit. My body said yes, and that's when I knew that the book had a soul of its own and that there was a book that was seeking to be written. And then, when I said yes to it and I reflected on my life, so much of my life, the way I'd lived, the way my parents had lived, the way my mother had lived, so much of my life made sense. It just made sense. And that's when it just everything clicked for me made sense. And that's when it just everything clicked for me and I'll be honest, it's been a wild ride since that moment of being taken through experience after experience after experience after experience after experience of surrendering and surrendering, and surrendering. And I really feel surrender.

Kute Blackson: 46:36

In our culture today there's a misconception that if you surrender. In our culture today there's a misconception that if you surrender it's weak, if you surrender it's passive. Surrender is giving up. If you surrender, you won't manifest your goals, dreams and desires. If you surrender, you're going to get less in life.

Kute Blackson: 47:06

And what I have experienced throughout my life, especially these last years, is from meeting my wife in the most unexpected, crazy, strange way, like a voice that said go to Brazil, what the hell Like? Why no reason? And meeting her in the way I did not expect to having a beautiful son, to leaving LA and moving to Houston, texas Again. All of these were unplanned and just unfoldings of following the flow of life and all of them were it was better than I could have made up, it was better than I could have planned, it was better than I could have imagined, it was beyond what I could have planned for myself. And so there's this feeling of if you surrender, you're going to get less. I'm actually saying no. What if you surrendered and you got more? Maybe not what you thought, or maybe not what you expected, but what if it was like better than that? And so this is why I call the book the Magic of Surrender. It's the magic. The magic is the more, the magic is the beyond, and we all want the magic.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:03

It's like who doesn't I?

Kute Blackson: 48:03

want more magic. Who doesn't want more magic? But I don't want to say. The formula is if you want magic, you have to surrender. Most of us we want the magic but we don't want to surrender. We want to hold on, we want to control, we want to analyze, but the only way is to truly surrender and is a letting go. And so I have seen and felt and experienced in my life the magic of surrender. I have seen and felt and feel that the most powerful thing we can do is to surrender. The most powerful manifestation technique or the real secret is to surrender. That surrender is really the true password. It's the password for freedom.

Kute Blackson: 48:47

And when you look at any one great childhood heroes of mine Bruce Lee, muhammad Ali, Jesus Gandhi, mandela, right Like if you look at Mandela's life, 26, 27 years in prison comes out and becomes this iconic, legendary guy. This is not a life you can plan. This is not a life you can go to a two-day seminar and set some goals to like, oh, I'm going to spend 27 years in prison. It's beyond the mind. And so for me, the invitation of what I've experienced, seen, witnessed and felt is when you surrender. It's beyond what you could plan. And if every one of us, if you look at the best things in your life that have happened to you, most of it you didn't plan Meeting your wife, right? I don't know if you plan to meet each other, but maybe it was planned on the soul level but like, yeah, I'm going to go to the coffee shop and at 7pm in Copenhagen I'm going to meet Cecile. Yeah, right, there, it just happens in the oh, I didn't expect that. And so if the best things in our life happen when we didn't plan it, why would we try to plan everything? And it doesn't mean we can't plan and have goals and intentions, but I'm saying we shouldn't be so attached from an ego level to it's got to be this way. And so surrender is a letting go of control, or I should say the illusion that we were even in control in the first place.

Kute Blackson: 50:18

Surrender is a letting go of who we think we should be and the life that we think we should be living, because many of us we don't realize that we, not the universe, we are the ones that have been putting limitations on life, because we get so attached to life's got to be this way, life's got to be this way, it's got to be this way, this person has to be the one. And then we don't realize we're actually blocking the flow of life. It's almost as though we see a peanut. We're like I have to have this peanut, this peanut, I got to have this peanut. This peanut is everything. I want to manifest this peanut, and we hold so tightly to this peanut but we don't realize that the universe is trying to give us a peanut farm. The universe is trying to give us a, but we're not willing to let go of this peanut.

Kute Blackson: 51:05

And so what I have seen and felt and lived and cried through and grieved through and surrendered through is the next level of your life, requires the next level of you, which requires a letting go of everything and everyone that is not aligned in this moment. But most of us, we hold on to who we were, we hold on to what we know, we hold on to the past out of safety, familiarity, comfort, even though it no longer is in alignment. And so, yeah, I think surrender is the real key to unlock grace and blessings. And if we look at, if all of us we look at I'll give an example we all have those relationships that it may be from the past, like we thought it was the one. You know, this person is the one. We thought we met, the one. It's like, oh my God. And we saw entire lives with them and we couldn't imagine not being with them. And then it didn't work out and in that moment we were devastated, miserable, unhappy, heartbroken. But maybe from today's perspective, you look back and you think thank God that didn't happen. It was grace, you know.

Kute Blackson: 52:17

And so many times when things don't go according to plan, in the moment when we're locked in ego, it seems like the worst thing in that moment but it's really the best thing. We're just not able to see it because when we're in ego, we're locked into a very, very, very, very limited perspective in the totality of the unfolding of life. It's like looking at a painting and we're looking at the small corner of the painting but we don't realize that the little black dot is a speck in a field of flowers, in a country and a galaxy. We don't see like, oh, this is how it's unfolding. And often life doesn't make sense, either when you're in it or you're looking forward. Life often only makes them.

Kute Blackson: 53:04

You look back and you realize, oh, I see why that career needed to not happen For me. I see why I needed to not have that talk show happen. It was grace Sometimes not getting what you thought you wanted was grace of the universe. We're just not able to see it. In that moment I realized, had I gone on that talk show at 21 years old, it probably wouldn't have worked out, to be honest, and I wasn't ready and who knows what would have happened after that. But because it didn't happen, that set me on a path of such deep soul searching and healing and inquiry. It sent me to Spain to walk the Camino, then straight to India, which changed the complete trajectory of my life. That probably would not have happened, had what I wanted to have happen happen. And so, yeah, surrender the password to freedom. Perfect End of story. Man, yeah, I will quickly, before we round up share our surrendering surrender the password to freedom.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:03

Perfect End of story man.

Jesper Conrad: 54:03

Yeah, I will quickly, before we round up, share our surrendering One of many.

Kute Blackson: 54:08

Yeah, which one?

Jesper Conrad: 54:11

No, it's the. We were together when we were 14, 15, as kind of high school sweethearts. Oh, wow, we got out, met seven years later, didn't work out again. Seven years passed, we lived less out. Again Seven years passed, we lived less than two. Again Again, almost 15 years later, when we were around 29,. We imagine having lived three or four miles apart maximum, wow, three times in a week we met, and then the last, the fun story is we didn't meet. At all.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:42

At all we lived. Copenhagen is a pretty small city. It's a beautiful place.

Kute Blackson: 54:46

Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:47

It's beautiful. It's also not very big. We're the same age, so we're the same generation, same, not very big European capital. And we didn't meet, coincidentally, at all.

Jesper Conrad: 55:01

For seven years.

Cecilie Conrad: 55:03

At all yeah. For seven years, years, and then we met what three times.

Jesper Conrad: 55:15

First, we met at a restaurant. Yeah then we met in the street, in the street on a wednesday, and then we met where we met each other the first time, so it was almost like and the third time we both had a little bit of maybe, maybe we should listen. And now 21, 24 many years later, we are still here yeah, so amazing, could be wonderful if you could share with our listeners where they can get to know you better and the name of your book.

Cecilie Conrad: 55:43

again, and yeah, it's got called the magic of surrender yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 55:48

If you can share so they can find you, the people, just you will also do.

Kute Blackson: 55:54

People can get the book the magic of surrender on Amazon. Check it out there. It's very simple, easy read, but it's it's packed with some some nuggets of out there. It's very simple, easy read, but it's packed with some nuggets of wisdom there. I wrote it with a lot of love and I wanted a 10-year-old to be able to read it, so it's simplified in how it's delivered. So the Magic of Surrender on Amazon.

Kute Blackson: 56:14

I would also say I just released a free masterclass for those that just want to maybe receive more value. It's a masterclass on sort of living and manifesting in the world in alignment with soul. People can go to wwwmanifestationmasterclassonlinecom. At the beginning of the year, I also released a course called the Eight Levels of Gratitude and I gifted it to the world for three thousands of people have been taking this course. People can go to www.8levelsofgratitudecom. Just enter your name and your email and you can receive eight free video modules. And, yeah, I think it'll be very valuable for folks that feel inspired. My main website, kute K-U-T-E Cootblacksoncom. For the last years, I've done many transformational events around the world. We're launching some new ones in the second half of 2025. So people can stay connected there. Wwwcootblacksoncom. Say hi on Instagram. Just my name, coot Blackson, k-u-t-e.

Jesper Conrad: 57:20

Fantastic.

Cecilie Conrad: 57:22

Easy. It will all be in the slow slow notes slow slow show notes.

Jesper Conrad: 57:26

Yeah, show notes, show notes Perfect. Thank you, it was a pleasure having you today. Thank you for your time, thank you.