Sovereignty through surrender.
It’s an old dance, but a powerful one—a sacred rhythm of the heart.
Sovereignty awakens the primal agency, the position of being and deliverance. Incorporating sovereignty, we are empowered to our freedom of choice and self-determination, having the ability to decide what is best at any given moment.
However, the fierce independence and autonomy in the modern understanding of sovereignty are only a tiny part of its fuller and ancient spectrum. The primal potency of sovereignty is also in recovering connection through free agency in deep and responsible intimacy. On the other hand, surrender is felt like a defeat in this modern narrative — the loss of power, the failure to achieve, the error of the downfall.
Sovereignty and surrender may seem opposites in the reductionist gaze of modernity, the latter an outcome of the forced coercion to subdue our power, the incarceration of dependence.
But what if they were notes from the same melody? Ingredients of the same recipe? Wings of the same bird?
What if we could tend to sovereignty through surrender, capitulating in ceremony? Offering sacrifice and libations to the sovereignty of yielding.
Because this sense of “the state of being free from the control or power of another” is never to live in a void, separated from everything else, for we are always in deep relationship to the multitude of contexts that embrace us; this is sanctuary, this is wild-life itself.
The awakened primal agency of sovereignty is mysteriously interdependent on the expanding and contracting of life. It is not a permanent position; instead, a flow of intentionally bowing to the seasonal shades of the land, for power is not about control. Streaming within the changes and knowing when to let go, restoring and reclaiming the humbleness. These two wings work together, complementing each other’s force and powerful movement.
When reclaiming sovereignty, we do not become superior or important. However, we find our soul’s place, humble and present, able and responsible, attuned to what is, hearing and surrendering to what emerges from the land and community.
We become guardians of life.
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[Disclaimer: all these words and weaved concepts are birthed through my lived, biased, and always limited perception of things, not supposing to bring any absolute truth.]
By Sofia Batalha
Mammal, author, woman-mother, question weaver and dismantling global-colonial-technological-capitalism one day at a time. Awkward prose-poet with no grammatical knowledge. Pilgrim through inner and outer landscapes, remembering ancient earth practices, in radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art, ecstasy, and writing. Author of seven books, editor of the free online magazine, Wind and Water, Re-member the Bones Podcast, and Beyond the Sea Conversations — all in Portuguese.
More information: sofiabatalha.com
