Stepping Beyond Control

The Union Path Podcast - Stepping Beyond Control - Video
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Control. I have a funny relationship with control. For a lot of my life, it was my go to. It was the thing I used to get everything done.

It was my main tool, my main means of getting through life in any particular way. I wanted something? Take control.

Something isn't working? Take control. All of the things that I wanted, seemed to be a factor, seemed to be reliant, on my ability to control them.

And it seems like it worked. See, that's a problem I've always had with ideas like control is an illusion.

One way of looking at it, sure. No one's in complete control of everything that happens in their life, but that is an all or nothing sort of idea.

That's also not how life works if we're paying even a little bit of attention, I believe it's actually quite obvious that control does work.

It works a lot of the time. We literally can make things happen. We literally can make things not happen.

All of us in various sectors of our life can have pretty profound control over what happens and what doesn't happen.

But its, the thing is there's a catch. And I think that's where that idea of control is an illusion really comes from,

is this idea that there's unintended consequences, there are side effects to our use and reliance on control.

That we're not really looking at the whole picture, we're not really looking at what's really happening.

Because when we apply our control to only make a certain subset of things happen, we're also preventing a lot of other things from happening.

We are limiting our possibilities. We're collapsing our potential down to a very fixed set of options, sometimes only one.

So there's a paradox in here, right? That the more we control our lives, the smaller our lives get. But that's by design, right? That's the whole idea, that the more control we exert, the more things we try to eliminate.

But when we look at our lives through this lens of trying to artificially limit possibilities, artificially limit options, we're artificially limiting ourselves.

Because I think the other idea that control is an illusion, touches on, points to, is what do we know? We think we know, we think we know a lot. Some of us think we know everything, but do we though?

I think for most of us, we can look back at our lives, look at some of the most amazing things that have happened to us,

and realize those things happened in a complete absence of control. They seemed accidental. They seemed random. They seemed serendipitous. They seemed to come from something outside of ourselves.

Because that's the thing with control, right? It only exists within us. These are only ideas we hold. All control is exerted internally.

Even if we think we're exerting control externally, we're just doing that through our own behavior, our own thinking, our own action and being in this world.

Because ultimately, everything that's external in our lives flows out, in one way or another, of who and what we are, who and what we're being internally.

But more than that, the biggest issue with control is how often it fails. How often we make every effort to make something happen. We make every effort to keep something from happening, and it goes haywire anyway.

So what do we do then? What do we do then when our control has failed us? Well, I think most of the time, what we end up doing is applying more control.

The calamity, the crisis, the disappointment in our lives isn't from the illusory nature of control itself, it's from control not being applied, enough.

Control not being applied correctly. That's really the problem. , it isn't control that's failed us, it's our wielding of the control that's failed us, and so on it goes.

But one of the things that I think is a gift of mid-age is having a lot of these ideas that we carried with us in the first half of life, start to break down, start to erode, start to actually present themselves truthfully.

Where we can see a lot of these things that we thought worked, don't really work, and a lot of these things that we thought worked one way, worked completely differently or at least seemed to.

That it really puts the onus on us to challenge, to confront, to really critically look the way we live, the way we behave, the way we act on any given day, and ask ourselves, is this what I want? Is this actually serving me? Is this actually leading to where I want to go? Is this actually good?

And then the step beyond that is to have the self-awareness and the courage to actually reckon with the answers that come from these questions.

OK, let's say we accept the premise that maybe control's not all it's cracked up to be, what are we supposed to do?

Are we supposed to just acquiesce to you the random chaos of life of atoms bouncing into each other and energy flowing this way and that?

And, this is just what's happening? Are we supposed to, in every given moment, just become completely passive to whatever's happening and just absorb and accept everything?

I don't think so. That sounds like a fallacy. That sounds like presenting a solution that's always the opposite of the problem.

That doesn't really work. If our problem is control, the solution isn't just zero control. If we have a problem, the solution isn't just doing the opposite.

If we have a problem, the solution is consciousness, is awareness, is growth, is learning, is absorbing truth, absorbing reality, and actually listening to and integrating what is trying to tell us.

It's the meaning making from our experience that guides us. And that meaning of course is filtered through our ideas of ourselves, of how life works,

which are fluid, which are changing, at the least, are extremely malleable, because again, these beliefs only exist internally. These are just things we've decided to believe one way or another.

So if we look at our lives and look at all the ways that control has let us down, I think there are very particular patterns that emerge, at least there have been for me.

One of the main ones, that I see repeated over and over again, is that things that come into my life tend to have the tenor,

tend to have the energy, tend to have the qualities of whatever state I was in to bring them in in the first place.

To put it more simply from a manifesting or expression perspective, things tend to have the energy in our lives that corresponds to the energy they were created with or from.

So, I'll give an example. Let's say there's something we really want. Let's say we really want a certain outcome, whatever it is, and let's say we decide to work as hard as we possibly can to make that outcome happen.

We are gonna do everything in our power to make this a reality, to bring this into our existence. We're gonna do everything we possibly can to not only manifest this, but occupy it. And so we do exactly that.

We work as hard as we can. We bring that frantic, manic energy to everything we do to make this happen. We're obsessed. We're focused. We're like a laser beam on this thing, and if we persist long enough, it happens.

We actually achieve our goal. We bring it into our life, but then, that's where these ideas kick in. If this outcome was created from a certain energy, it will take that same energy to maintain it.

If it took frantic striving to bring it into our life, it will take frantic striving to keep it on our life. The energy it comes in on is the same energy it maintains.

As it's created, so is it to live with. But then we have to ask ourselves, is that what I really want? Was I doing all of this frantic, maniacal effort so that I could just get something done and it could just relax and be okay?

Well, in this case, now I've got a whole new set of problems. Now it's not just a creation problem, now I've give myself an infinite maintenance problem.

That's not what I want, but of course it works this way, right? Because why else would we make such a Herculean effort in the first place?

Well, I think is because we don't really believe that we deserve this outcome. We don't really believe this is a natural progression of our life. We believe we're one place, this outcome is another, and through our effort, through our endeavoring, we will force congruence.

We will force this thing into our life. But if force brings it in, force will be required to keep it in. This is a tough thing to look at because this goes counter to most of the things we're taught.

This goes counter to a lot of the books we read. A lot of the teachers we have, a lot of the things we listen to. A lot of the role models we have will preach this doctrine of force, hustling, hard work, obsession.

But like everything else, if we've tried this, if we've lived this way, it's important to ask ourselves, is this what I want?

Is this what I want the flavor of my life to be? Is this the existence I want, to just maniacally jump from day to day to day,

doing more and more and more trying to achieve some sort of outcome that never really seems to happen, or it never really seems to happen in a way that we actually want?

Life just keeps demanding more, it never ends. But it never ends because we're not meeting life where it is.

We are forcing life to be a certain way. We are not accepting of what's happening, and instead we're trying to recreate life and our own image.

Which obviously sets us up to fail. Because, what do we know? Is that what we really want? How do we know?

And, what are we really looking for? What are we really trying to achieve with all this striving? I've made the argument, most of the time, it's a feeling.

No matter what we're going for, pick any possession, relationship, circumstance, anything. What do we really, what do we really get out of that, ultimately?

It's a feeling. It's a feeling of gratification. It's a feeling of sensory pleasure. It's a feeling of superiority, a feeling of admiration, of respect, of importance,

of calm, of peace, of comfort. Why do we want anything? I'd argue, we want things because we want to feel a certain way.

But then this gets to the most important, most interesting, part of the equation. Why do we want to feel this way? Because we don't.

Because for some reason, perhaps, we believe we can't. We don't deserve it. We haven't earned it.

It doesn't make any sense. I can't be happy. Look around. Have you seen all this? No one could be happy in these circumstances. Look at all these ways I'm victimized.

Look at all these things that aren't happening. Look at all this failure. Look at all. Look at all of this. I'm not happy. This isn't what I want.

While that all could be true, it doesn't mean it's real. It also doesn't mean that these feelings that we want, that we actually know how to achieve them.

A lot of times we're just following examples of people that we believe feel the way we want to feel, but no one knows how anyone else really feels.

A lot of us have gotten really good at not even knowing how we really feel, but that's the rub. We can't look at anyone, anything outside of ourselves to find our own path, to find our own true path,

to find our own union with whatever we're trying to be, with however we're trying to be. That can only come from within us.

Sure, we can look at other people, other experiences for clues, but ultimately the proof is in the pudding. Ultimately, our life is the experience of living.

Even if we think life is about thoughts and ideas, about standards, about achievements. All of those thoughts carry with them a feeling.

It's feeling underneath everything. So if all we want is a feeling, ultimately, does it really matter what creates that feeling for us? If the feeling that we want could be best described as freedom,

what's the difference between freedom created through an incredible abundance of resources to the freedom created through an incredible lack of burden?

What's the difference? What's the difference between joy created through a really complex interaction with a whole bunch of circumstances,

and joy created through the beautiful, empty simplicity of the present moment? What's the difference?

The problem is, I would say, that we've built so much confidence around our knowing of what will create certain feelings, that we in completely dismiss and ignore every other possibility to create those feelings.

And again, we collapse the possibilities in our lives, to live the life we actually want, down to very few. We take infinite possibility and whittle it down just to a handful of options.

So we can see the problem with this, right? When we limit our options, we create a much more fixed course of action.

When we need things to be a certain way, we can't just experience and respond to our life. We have to constantly be managing the track of our lives to make sure it stays within the bounds of our plan.

Everything has to be meticulously managed. But what does that sound like? Does that sound like playing God? Because it does to me.

And what if all of that effort to manage and control and wrangle our lives, to be a certain thing at a certain time and a certain place and a certain way,

what if all of that control is unnecessary? What if we actually have a deeper guidance system? What if we actually have an inborn permanent connection to all other living things?

And it's through this network that everything that happens to us travels through? What if that's true? How do we know?

Have we ever tried to relinquish our control, have ever really tried to surrender? And not surrender out of defeat, or some kind of stubborn willfulness,

but really let go, really encounter our lives on a daily basis, of just experiencing things how they are, and responding in a way that feels natural to us?

Have we really ever tried to let go and see where that get gets us, and see what that changes? It's just like we were talking about, massive control begets more control.

The same is true with ideas of calm allowing, because then we actually get to be a participant in our own life rather than merely the rigid manager, the overseer, the controller.

We actually get to live. We actually get to take part in what's happening, rather than feeling like we have to control and dictate and choreograph everything going on.

We actually get to occupy the experience through surrendering our control. And ultimately, isn't that what a lot of us want? Ultimately, is the main desire under all desires for freedom? It is for me.

That's a funny thing about freedom. It can't be granted from anything from the outside. It can't be dependent on any person, place or thing. It can't be dictated by circumstance. Freedom can only be claimed, and it must be claimed internally.

Because otherwise it's not really freedom. If some people place their thing can take it away, then it's not really yours and you're not really free.

So there it is. Control, as a tool, can really let us down. And when it does, as it always will, that's the perfect time to look for something new.

To look for, a new way to look for, a better way to grow, to adapt, and really learn to fully experience our own lives, instead of living purely through the conformity to a certain set of boundaries.

And when we fence our lives in to such a small space, we really have to ask ourselves, is the life I'm really looking for actually out there, actually beyond these bounds of rigid control of definition of what's right for me?

Well, the only way you'll know is to try. The only way you'll know is to do something different. Truth is self-evident. We don't need someone to tell us when something is true, when something isn't, we know it.

We feel it. And if it feels true for you, then maybe control isn't all it's cracked up to be? Well, you're the one with the power.

You're the one with the control to do something different. To come at life from a more relaxed, more at ease, more allowing, more aware, more curious, more open place.

And when we do that, perhaps we'll find that the life we really want. The life that actually suits who and what we really are isn't what we expected,

but we found it through dropping our expectations, and instead of living life as it should be, instead of striving to be what we're supposed to be, simply acquiescing and embracing what is.