How Control Kills Inner Peace

How Control of any kind Kills the inner experience of “the Peace that passes Understanding”

This subject is one that has taken center stage for me recently. It’s always been a subject of importance. Early on my journey toward “Enlightenment” (that mythical perfect state of Consciousness, when I will finally be complete), I had certainly read about how control needs to be given up in order to make “progress” on the path toward “higher consciousness”. I had also had many experiences, tastes you could say, of what I would describe as Enlightened states. And there was no judgement, no feeling of needing to control the experience, no doubt and no feeling that anything was wrong or out of place. And that experience is addictive. It's like heroin (I'd imagine...I've been lucky to never have to opportunity to try it, but I've read descriptions of what if feels like, and it sounds basically the same - however, heroin has some pretty unsavory side-effects).

The reason this subject has taken such a prominent place in my awareness, is because I have seen, repeatedly, how extremely vital it is to let go of all apparent control that I once thought I had (I wasn't fully aware that I even thought this - and yet my experience showed me that I did). Or that played out beyond my conscious awareness. Control of my inner experience is primarily what has limited the experience. In a nut shell. It has been my “inner hands”, grabbing at preferred experiences, like peace and stillness, and pushing away uncomfortable experiences, like feelings that I learned to reject very early in life (as we all do). Those “inner hands” are grabbing and pushing away experiences, all day, every day…it gets ever so subtle. I have been forced (so to speak) to become more aware of these habits of control. I have begged for help over the years…yearning to complete my mission of becoming totally Free in this lifetime. So, I warn you, be careful what you wish for…you just might get it!

I didn’t take the easy route this time around. I had many challenging experiences in my early life, which I won’t go into detail about here. As I have talked about before, I also had many, many extraordinary experiences, both supernatural and beyond any awareness of phenomenon - being at the point of Origin, before Creation is created, at the point of potency, where the Universe and all Creation originates from. These were “experiences” that generally have “happened” during meditation, though sometimes it has happened when my eyes were open and I was just talking to someone. It’s an experienced that is beyond experience, and can’t be described with words. But it was so profound that when “I” (the ego) returned to the body and to the creation, there was instantly an overwhelming terror that swept through my system and the tears flooded my eyes. The ego could not handle knowing it was nothing in comparison to That which Creates All. The ego was shown it’s place, which is simply to allow God to peek through these eyes and play the temporary part of a human being, until the time comes when this human being will be no more, and will become a lifeless lump of matter to be disposed of.

Now, in more recent years, I had been dealing with the karmas of this life. I was just trying to cope with circumstances that were not really to my likening, that kept me feeling stuck, especially emotionally, but I felt I just had to accept the situation and stay in it, even though I wanted out. I’m not specifying exactly what the situation was intentionally…so for now it will remain vague. In any case, with the help of my beautiful daughter, I became aware of how shut down I was in certain ways. Like I said, emotionally. I had learned to cope with the situation I was in (also as a child and in my early life) by dissociating. I was not really grounded in my body and in my experiencing, because I was rejecting it. I wasn’t aware that I was doing this. It may have been blaringly obvious to others, but for me, I was used to it. I was used to being numb much of the time, and not fully allowing my feelings to be felt and allowed to be. I pushed the emotional movements with my inner hands, pushed them back down to where they had been hiding in the shadows for much of my life, limiting my experience, by causing blocks to the flow of energy that was trying to flow freely through my nervous system. But my precious daughter got brave enough to start pointing things out to me…that I wasn’t as present for her as she would like. And I hadn’t been for most of her life. So I started to come to, to snap out of this subtle dissociation from all of my experience. And the emotions began to flow more and more freely. And I quickly learned to grab them (with my inner controlling hands) less and less. To not push them back down, to pause the judgement, and to not control them in any way. And, boy, has that made a massive difference in my every day experience.

I had gone from learning to repress my feelings and true expression as a child, because that’s what we all learn to do, to lesser or greater degrees depending on our personal family situation. And from there I got involved in a meditation group, because all of the emotional blocks I had developed by the time I was in my late teens was excruciating. And then having the extreme experiences of expansion that I had throughout my childhood and early adulthood made it clear that a state rarely talked about by most people is not only possible, but is even natural, so I pursued techniques to give me more of that. But, unfortunately I learned to control my experience in that group, because there was no one who really understood how not to apply control to their inner experience. Only “Stillness” and Bliss were acceptable to many of the people in this group. So, I kept controlling and pushing the flow of energy back down.

This control wasn’t part of the original teachings of this group, but it started to get misinterpreted and misapplied.

Now, I am at a place where I don’t give a rats ass about “getting Enlightened”. I don’t need it now, to feel comfortable in my skin. And I continue to allow all the movements and once judged and repressed feelings to flow…and you know what? It doesn’t hurt anymore. When control is not applied to the inner experience, no feeling can hurt you. Only control and avoidance hurts.