How Much do You Try to Control?

Spirituality is about, in part, allowing the ebbs and flows of your journey in life to pass through you with ease, joy, and beauty and being your own guide through this path you call life. Allowing the natural order of the universe to propel you in the right direction whether it be an event seemingly choreographed by the universe in and of itself or by the universe using your human self as a vehicle in this natural order.  There is good, happy, and bright.  There is also sad, bad, and dark.  Dark cannot exist without light and light cannot exist without dark. The light is joyous, we love those moments. The dark on the other hand, not so much. But what if I told you that this dark does not have to seem so bad?  After all, there is always good with the bad right?  

We hate this darkness so much that we start to try and control our lives, and we sometimes believe that we have absolute control. Like a teenager holding the remote of his or her favorite video game.  We are the teenager and the game is our life. Absolute control.  But this isn’t the case is it?  Although we tend to act at times like we do have absolute control we, at some level, do have the recognition that this control is not absolute as in our video game example. So why do we continue to do it?  Our minds think that we have control.  

When we do certain things to prevent something from happening, like the purchase of a security system to prevent a break in, we are attempting to control a situation. In that case, we are trying to control whether or not someone breaks into our store, or home.  Even with this exertion of control, we do often still have the realization that there is a possibility that we may still have a break in.  Others may gain an expectation of never having a break in. 

Our wonderful store or humble abode, security system and all, gets broken into. OH NO!!  What now?  What kinds of thoughts will be roaming around in our noggin now?  Probably some negative ones, I suppose.  I mean, what good could come out of this right?  I can tell you. Maybe your security camera caught the face of someone who was on the run for a more serious crime and ended up being caught because of your break in?  Maybe this break in caused you to move your store or your home to a different area and your life was happier after the fact, maybe business was booming due to the move. You know what they say, location, location, location!  Seldomly do we see the good in the bad. Seldomly do we ever see the experiences that we have in our life each make up it’s own puzzle piece in our journey that fit perfectly together and make a beautiful picture.  Expand your perceptions. 

Deeper than this kind of control is mind control.  Not the kind of mind control you see in sci-fi movies with the head contraption and all.  Do we have control of our thoughts, sure, but that control over our thoughts is a part of nature, and therefore makes it out of our control.  I could tell myself that I am going to tell 3 people each day that I love them in order to help me make me feel better. I have direct control of the thought and any actions I take, but the fact that I have the thought in the first place is out of my control. Even a thought about the thought is out of my control!

This is not to say that we should all take ultimate risks. But it is to say that if you are floating on a river, no matter which direction you try and swim (control), the river (aka life, nature) will always end up eventually taking you exactly where you need to be and when you need to be there. 

Even what we control is out of our control. Control in itself is a part of the natural order of the universe. Every thought you think or don’t think, every action that you take or don’t take, in the end, nature/god/the universe controls control. 

In each and every imperfectly perfect moment of your life you are always, and will forever be, in the right place at the right time.  Flow with the river of life, not against it.