Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Is determination brute force? The root “de” means ‘completely,’ and -termination means ‘to get rid of.’ That means eradicate. Eradicate is late Middle English, in the sense, ‘pull up by the roots’ or Latin, ‘torn up by the roots.’
Determination then means to completely terminate something. What will you tear up? I thought determination meant to go after, to stop at nothing, to tear into, to get aggressive, and to dominate. But that only seems to keep it away. Determination, by way of aggression, terminates what you want. How do you get what you want?
You become truer. Applied aggression gets you further from results. The more forceful you become, the more force is applied in keeping it away. You simply become. Old English becuman ‘come to a place,’ related to Dutch bekomen and German bekommen ‘get, receive’. You become determined.
Terminate what? Force, anxiety, impatience, and desire for results, which seems antithetical. Determination now means openness. No blockage, no resistance, and no confusion with how. It’s a total surrender to ease. It’s a “reduction” to humility and grace. It’s about becoming easy, effortless, and joyful. That’s what “produces” results – grace.
To eradicate, pulled up by the roots, is to let your softness be exposed. To be torn up by the roots means to be overcome by Truth. Remain in that ease and watch. Be determined to eradicate aggression, unease, and force; but in a loving way. You’ll expose the roots and realize that you are that. What’s torn up is the illusion that you are not both cause and the effect. Once you become The Root, why aggression? Brute force is not root force. One achieves by becoming an expositor of Root Source.