CONTROL & SURPRISE

As much as we might like to think so, Control is not at the core of human experience. Surely there have been enough catastrophic events -- natural and man-made -- for us to have realised long ago that, when the chips are really down, we are utterly powerless.

But old habits die hard. We have tried everything under the sun to manipulate, dominate and control people and circumstances so that things will go the way we want. Where we have felt powerless to directly influence things, we tried bribery. Since time immemorial our ancestors have been trying rituals of appeasement to get on the right side of  the "gods" who supposedly did have their hands on the joystick. Even our Western and some Eastern ideas of God are petitioned and prayed to in the assumptions that a) they have control; and b) they care. It is my jaundiced view that neither are true.

There is a world-wide industry of technologies to exercise physical, emotional, mental and cosmic control over the world we live in. Then a tsunami hits, we look skywards and bleat "Why?"  What do we expect? A booming voice proclaiming "Just trying to make a point!"?

The way of control has turned out NOT to be the way to a deeper realisation of our common humanity. At this plane of existence, we have no more control over life than a surfer has over the ocean. We never did have, nor will we ever have in the future. We can ride the waves of fortune and happenstance, and even have exhilarating fun while we're doing it, but ultimately the ocean has the last word. Always.

One purpose of this trip is to get that we don't have control and relinquish our need for it, so that we can move on to experience the most exquisite of all joys -- Surprise. And the sooner we get off the Control pottie, the better.

Control is the Promise and the Way of Logic -- the playground of the ego-mind. -- the Not-Me that "I" thinks is Me. Control is OK for incremental change, for winning something and for the illusion of Success.. But the exercise of Power and Control (even to create a "better" world) always leads to more conflict, repression, resentment and opposition. The journey of Power is a journey into the experience of Powerlessness.

Control is the way of Change:
Surrendering is the way of Transformation.
(By surrendering, I mean engaging creatively with What-Is, just as it is.)
In control we try to renovate and extend Me;
In surrender we step away from Me, and trust we'll fall beyond logic and reason into a new kind of reality.

But what now will sustain us? All the old sources and props are disappearing.  -- our religious convictions, our beliefs, our values and principles, careers, ambitions, achievements, enlightenments, relationships -- even our bodies, minds and hearts are slowly deserting us.

What now will sustain us?

Am I breathing now?
Am I fed now?
Is there anything missing in this very moment?
Ah! So now is not a problem. Why  then are we concerned? What are we afraid of? There is more -- but this a More that feels like Less.

What is this "something else" that we sense is always there, underlying the darks nights of life's deeper trials,
Through the grief of loss and the assault of infirmity?
It waits patiently, just out of sight.
Seductively humming a harmony so ancient and powerful
We will surrender everything to behold its glory.

That doesn't make it any less scary, though.