Dear friend and spiritual seeker,
I would like to assume that, by now, you are quite advanced in your spiritual awakening endeavour, so as to be quite familiar with what I am about to cover here.
This has to do with looking for the answer to an extremely serious and critical question:
What are the things in your life that you are actually in control of?
Spoiler alert:
They are not that many.
In fact, it’s only one thing.
But let’s approach the whole issue from the “negative path” – a.k.a. via negativa - and establish together (don’t forget: your collaboration is ALWAYS required) what are the things that you are NOT in control of…
… which - again: spoiler alert - is almost everything.
Almost…
Here we go:
You are evidently not in control of anything that transpires in your external environment.
That is, whatever appears to be happening outside what you have grown accustomed to defining as the perimeter of “yourself” – in other words, your body and your mind.
(As usual, please pay careful attention to the exact words I am using).
Sorry, but you truly have no option other than agreeing with the fact that…
… you have no say over any action or event that is initiated by any other human being (individually or collectively) or by the impersonal forces of nature.
What about your ability to react to the impact such “external” events may have upon you?
Or your prerogative to set in motion, yourself, any action or event?
Here, again, we must stress that these are very deep waters which we are navigating in this blog post series.
Therefore, what we stumble upon as we carefully make our way through them is in principle not appropriate - even forbidden - for the novice or even intermediate spiritual seeker.
This is because by encountering such deliberations as the ones we unfold here – and especially by drawing arbitrary conclusions out of them - one who has not progressed enough in the Self-realisation path may get hooked on a potentially very dangerous idea:
That they - attention: who they conventionally think they are - can get away with anything.
But you are already beyond that stage, aren’t you?
We will have to assume you indeed are.
So, then, you are also mature enough to understand and truly accept that none of the actions or reactions that seem to stem from within you - on the physical, as well as on the emotional and on the intellectual plane - are within the sphere of your control.
First of all - and no matter whether your mind insists to tell you otherwise - your bodily functions, urges and stimuli are definitely not under your command.
In fact, whenever you act as if they were, you usually tend to create new or additional problems on top of the ones you set out with an intention to address.
If you are skeptical about it, just try to exert your control over your breath…
Or try to orchestrate the intricate choreography of your cardiovascular or digestive system.
You must be getting the idea…
What about your own actions or initiatives, then?
Well, all of them ultimately originate in an emotion or an idea.
Both of which trace their inception back in an inception-like thought formed (or forged) inside your mind.
But tell us, dearest friend, in all honesty:
Do you control your thoughts any more than you control your heartbeats?
Be frank with yourself or even better…
… see the truth as it is, in its bluntest form:
You cannot initiate any thought whatsoever.
Thoughts, instead, are the ones that come and find you from…
… who knows where?
So, then, having shattered pretty much every illusion of control you may have still entertained up to now, the (one and only) question is:
- Is there anything at all that you can control?
And the answer is:
- Yes, of course, there is one (and only) thing!
But we will cover this in our upcoming communication, which should reach you in one of the next days.
In the meantime, if you truly can’t wait for it…
Who knows – do you feel you already know? - this might be just what you need…
In any case, and until we talk again…
… I invite you to toy with the idea of you having absolutely no control over a single thing in your life.
Might prove to be a much more liberating idea than what you’d expect…