Take responsibility, Take control. Building a strong ego is only one side of the coin. To experience the fullness of human experience, we need passivity and receptivity as well as assertion. We need a sense of mystical wonder as well as rational problem solving. Masochistic submission, in centering on lack, inadequacy and weakness, puts us in touch with the entirety of our humanity.
Full humanity requires surrender to the down side of life as well as the upside.
Religious penitents knew of the soul's need for suffering. They knew that it keeps us from having hubris, or the pride that keeps us in the limited perspective of having too much faith in our competence and abilities. The Christian and Eastern mystics knew that. A scene strips the ego of its defenses, ambitions, self-consciousness and successes. The ego become subservient to the master, the dominant, the soul, or God.