Do you need to 'control' anything?

Image from Lucy's album

You know, the original meaning of ‘control’ back in the 14^th Century was ‘check’, ‘verify’ or ‘regulate’ (as related to account keeping).  It was only in the 15^th Century that this word took on the more restrictive meanings of ‘restraint’, ‘prevent’ and even ‘eliminate’.

I like paying attention to words, how they are used, the impact they have and importantly, the inner (mental and emotional) realities that give rise to them and the outer realities (situations and events) that they help create.

Take for instance the words ‘Just do it’.  Three simple, everyday words with which Nike has successfully seared into the consciousness of a few generations the very positive and desirable association with their primary product – shoes!

On the face of it, what on earth has ‘Just do it’ got to do with shoes???  Yet, you’ll agree, I’m sure, that it’s hard to either say or hear those words without also thinking of that blockbuster brand or one or more of its famous poster boys/girls (Michael Jordan springs to my mind).

‘Just do it’ was inspired by the words, “Let’s do it”, which Gary Gilmore stoutly said when asked by the prison chaplain for any last words minutes before his execution in 1977!  Who would’ve thought that those words would spearhead a marketing strategy that still brings in the bucks!

The success that Nike gained through this inspiration was phenomenal.  With its evocative advertisements, ‘Just do it’ took on unprecedented meanings for millions of people whether or not they purchased Nike shoes. 

It fueled a spirit of daring and freedom by throwing down the gauntlet with those three simple words ‘Just do it!’.  And if you did decide to take the challenge seriously, well, all you’d be ‘competing’ with was... a pair of shoes. Too easy? You bet J.

Although Nike was advertising shoes (or so you’d think), it was in fact very deliberately (and cleverly, I might add), creating a new reality – one in which everyday people like you and I could feel the towers of greatness rise within us and smell the delights of success by ‘just doing it’, ‘it’ suggesting whatever it was you wanted to achieve in life!  Clever or what?

Now, it may seem like I’m doing a mini analysis of a marketing strategy but I can assure you that it is incidental to my main point, that being the power of words to create our reality.

Of course we know that the words in themselves have no power.  It is the meaning that is intended and the meaning that is interpreted that has that power. 

Those meanings are often drawn from a deep and long history over which words have been shaped and reshaped by collective and individual meaning making.

A word is a symbol pointing to a story, sometimes so vast and rich in its dramas, characters and unexpected twists and turns. 

A one letter word like ‘I’ or a three letter word like ‘you’, for instance, points to unfinished stories, dripping in possibilities yet also carrying what might appear to be well-defined and irreversible ‘pasts’.

All this to say that words, numerous and readily available as they often are, are important and to be used with care, or as I prefer to say, mindfully.

And this brings me to the word I set out to tackle at the start of this post.  The word ‘control’.

How often have you heard someone say, or said or thought the following yourself?

‘I lost control’

‘I feel I have no control over the situation’

‘I hate not being in control’

‘I need to be in control of…’

‘S/he is such a control freak’

In his book, The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield writes about ‘control dramas’ in reference to the way people relate to one another.  Those who feel the need to ‘control’ others find a myriad of ways to do so both overtly and covertly.

Often when we speak of control, we speak from a basis of power and powerlessness where there is an uneasy tension between the two.  One person/party seems to have more power and can therefore ‘control’ i.e. restrain or curb or prevent the behavior and actions of another person/party.

Consequently, when we speak of wanting to regain control or maintain control or even have control, we are seeking to impose on our immediate sphere of influence, some holds or restrictions by which we can feel safe and protected.

Sometimes, these holds or restrictions are imposed upon other people such as objecting to a person speaking their mind or limiting their use of space to a certain area within a shared dwelling place or criticizing their work. 

Sometimes, these holds or restrictions i.e. forms of control are imposed in an overt manner, written or spoken, or they may be done more covertly through silent withdrawals, refusing to comment or even acceding to another’s demands no matter how unreasonable or undesirable they may be to us.

But trying to ‘control’ yourself, or another person or situation is really an act of restriction and constriction.  Whether you do it overtly or covertly, your motivation is to protect yourself and self—protection is always a restrictive and constrictive action fueled by fear which is in turn driven by the illusion of separation.

Now I have written about the illusion of separation and its effects in previous posts such as this and this. 

What I’d like to invite us all to consider here is an alternative.  In particular, a LOVE based alternative.

Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge that we all feel threatened and powerless (and more often than we are aware of).  Once again, I’ve already explained why we feel this way in previous posts such as this and this.

Some of us like to explain our need for self-protection and consequently our feelings of fear in terms of our evolution as a human species.  Certainly most scientists do.

But, as you may have noticed, alongside this aspect of our evolution which we are told is hardwired into the limbic part of our brain, the prefrontal part of our brain has also evolved. 

This part of our brain, which is the last part of the brain to mature, is responsible (and that itself is a wonderful word – response + able) for handling the more complex aspects of our thinking and behavior. 

In other words, we have the capacity to override some of the more primal instincts that we have acquired. 

More importantly, we have the ability to self-reflect and self-observe.  And this ability to self-reflect and self-observe gives us the powerful ability to change our thinking and consequently, create new realities!

When we self-observe, something we do in meditation, we become self-aware. 

Awareness is a remarkable experience.  It is the experience of our ultimate reality and this is how we experience our interconnectedness, our formless reality, our limitlessness and our creative nature.

Awareness is the experience of what some may call the ‘unified field of consciousness’ in which ‘energy’ (yes, a word, a symbol that we use) flows freely when it is unimpeded by the vibrations of THOUGHT, and more powerfully, by FEELING.

Yes, thought and feeling!

Energy is directed to thoughts and feelings and to their strongest vibrations which result in the physical and external manifestations of those vibrations.

When fear is the strongest vibration that we hold, energy will be drawn to it and will result in its restrictive and constrictive physical/external manifestations, first in our bodies and then in our words and actions. 

You find yourself getting tense, the muscles in your body, in your face constrict.  Your words are uncreative, reflecting the internal dialogues you’ve been rehearsing.  Your actions are self-protective, causing you to either attack or retreat. 

When we seek to control, we place our thought and feeling vibrations of fear in the naturally free-flowing energy field.  We are then destined to experience the less than satisfactory and often painful outcomes of this restriction and constriction of our naturally free flowing energy.

So, what is the LOVING ALTERNATIVE?

Well, first I think we need to ask the question:

Do we need to control?

Is there another way of moving from a state of powerlessness to a state of power, bearing in mind that our NATURAL STATE is one of true power.

Yes, of course there is!

It is the choice of LOVE – the ultimate and insurmountable energy state! 

Well, then, what might be the response of love?

Quite simple.  It is the response that fills you with joy, with peace, with a feeling of freedom and expansiveness, a feeling of deep power and poise J 

Now, exactly what is that response?

Ah huh, I wish I could tell you but that is something that you will have to allow your inner wisdom, your free, unconditioned, natural, clear-water mind to guide you in J

You see, there are many possible responses of love.  Well, of course there are, for love is the infinite field of possibilities!

In one instance, it may be to move yourself physically into a place of joy or openness like your garden or your favorite room.

In another instance, it might be to make a joke. 

In another, write or cook or work on some craft. 

Oh, but wait!  Wouldn’t these be forms of withdrawal and/or denial?

ONLY IF THAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION. 

Withdrawal and denial are ways by which the fearful mind seeks to impose control. 

But if your motivation is to RETURN TO YOUR NATURAL STATE OF PEACE AND JOY AND POWER AND LOVE, now that THOUGHT and that FEELING have completely different vibrations to the feelings of withdrawal and denial!

Consequently, energy gets drawn and reorganized in different ways in your body, in your words and in your actions.

You smile. The muscles in your face and body relax.  You feel light.  You engage in something creative rather than in addictive behaviors.  You have no ill-feelings towards the other person/party.  You don’t set out to fight anyone or anything.  Instead, you become more acutely aware of your oneness, your interbeingness, your natural state of harmony and wellbeing!

Try it and let me know if it doesn’t make a major difference to the way you deal with your feelings of powerlessness!

In my next post, I shall talk about other words that we frequently use and which may either hinder or help our ability to create our desired realities.  If you like, you may wish to reflect on some of them:

Reality

I, You

Love

Can’t/Can

Want/Need

Success

Fail

Lazy

Bored

Earn

Deserve

Justice

Freedom

Happiness

Honesty

In love, Lucy

My Three Priceless Reminders

Image from Lucy's album

Believe it or not, there was a time when I could quite easily and rapidly free fall into the bottomless pit of despair or disappointment or frustration or rage…

During those times, a relentless cycle of thoughts and feelings would keep me helplessly trapped within its paralyzing grip. 

So consumed was I with my thoughts and feelings, I was completely oblivious of the fact that I was trapped and that I was cycling through the same disempowering state interminably.

Oh my, what a state that was! 

And all through it, I would be consumed with the injustices, the unkindness, the insensitivities, the bloody-mindedness, the arrogance, the callousness, the dishonesty, the insincerity, the ill-intent of the other party. 

I would be thinking and rethinking AND JUDGING for the thousandth and tenth time, what had been said, done, projected, alleged, not said, not done, not defended, not justified by the other party. 

I would be raging or despairing with my response at the time and feverishly rehearsing my better, more bold, more ‘I’ll show them!’ future response. 

Dialogues fueled by outrage or self-pity or condemnation or righteousness or fear would play in my mind almost unceasingly, only briefly leaving me alone if and when my attention was forcefully drawn elsewhere.

Needless to say, my responses to these troubling situations and events were never fulfilling and the outcomes that they generated were never satisfying.  On the contrary, they kept the ground fertile for future and almost inevitable conflict. 

Not all of these conflicts were overt and dramatic, out there in the open.  No, most, I would say, were of the stealthy type – understated, expressed often in silence, withdrawal, ignoring, avoidance, sulking, and a kind of saintly accedence. 

As you can imagine, none of these responses resulted in lasting peace. 

True, they did provide temporary relief and given the degree of mental and emotional (and physical – my stomach used to churn, I’d feel nauseous, throw up, be more prone to illness and injuries etc) turmoil I was in, the relief was vital, life-saving almost!

But, worst of all, despite all the mental, emotional and physical effort I would have invested in these situations/events, I never felt good about myself no matter how hard or how eloquently I defended my response while condemning the actions of the other party. 

Most of this prosecution and defense happened in my head, of course, though I would share some of its story with sympathetic friends. 

I kept telling the story over and over again as if repetition would make it -BECOME and FEEL true according to how I had construed it, of course. 

The thing is, it never FELT true although it may have sounded reasoned and convincing intellectually.

It was only when I took the time to observe and study the nature of the mind that I began to realize that in all these conflicts, these undesirable situations, these *injustices*,

·       I was the common link.  In other words, I was always present.  Without me, there was no story, no event, no disturbance, no turmoil

·       My thoughts and feelings, my outrage, disappointment, sense of injustice etc were learned and habitual, resulting from associations that I’d made from a long time ago, perhaps even while in my mother’s womb!

·       I was trying to protect a *me* that didn’t really exist in the way I believed it to be i.e. separate, finite, unchanging, condemned forever to its beliefs, habits of thoughts, words and actions

Whoa!  What a realization that was!  What liberation it offered! 

I knew I was onto a good thing.  I was going to continue to observe and study.  I was after PEACE, JOY and FREEDOM and I was going to find them and I did!

But it’s not over.  It’s an ongoing thing, a never-ending journey.  I am still discovering more and more about the mind, and experiencing greater peace, joy and freedom along the way.

Each time I experience a situation in which the old, disempowering habits of the mind arise yet again, I am better able to bring my mind into the light of truth, into its clear water mind state where its thoughts and behaviors are seen for what they truly are – passing clouds, mud that has been disturbed,

These thoughts, feelings, words, actions are not *ME*.  They arise in the field of consciousness but they are not *ME*.  They arise and, if I let them be, they just fall away. 

I do not attach to them nor avoid them.  I am no longer under their disempowering grip.  I simply see them as passing events and I let them pass. 

When we think and say, “This too shall pass”, often we miss the deeper truth underlying these words. 

It’s not that some mysterious, more powerful force, causes them to pass.  Rather, it’s we, you and I, who can and must choose to let them pass, seeing them as events, no more and no less than any other and which, when there is neither attachment to or avoidance from, will dissipate like clouds.

In other words, we ALWAYS have control over our response. 

Now, so many of us pay lip service to this idea, this assertion.  We will often readily say, ‘Oh yes, we can choose our response’. 

But as long as that response comes from a place of powerlessness, anger, frustration, indignation, retribution etc, in other words, as long as we respond from FEAR, we have not chosen FREELY.  Instead, we have merely responded from habit, from disempowering beliefs and associations also known as conditioning.

It is an unnatural response.

You need to understand that the response from fear is a self-protecting and separating response, reinforcing the ILLUSION of a separate, incomplete and un-whole self.

The response from peace, joy, power, freedom and love, on the other hand, is a natural response.  It is free, open, expansive and aligned with the TRUTH of a unified, complete, unconditioned and whole SELF in which there is no separation and no need for self-protection.

So, all that said, what are my Three, Priceless Reminders that help me quickly illuminate the habituated/conditioned mind and its beliefs, thoughts and behaviors with the pure light of Truth/Love?

My Three Priceless Reminders:

1.   This is an event/situation that my unnatural, conditioned, muddy water mind has construed as a result of long established beliefs and associations

2.   I am by nature Peaceful, Joyous, Powerful and Free

3.   When I respond from my natural state, I remain in the natural flow of Peace, Joy, Power and Freedom

How did I come up with these reminders that, by the way, I can apply to ANY situation? 

Through familiarization.  

And how did I familiarize myself with them?

By observing and studying my mind which I sometimes describe as the practice of meditation J

That’s right.  Not affirmation, not indoctrination, not acceptance of someone else’s realization or familiarization but MY OWN real-time observation. 

Wouldn’t you like to do the same?  I hope so J