Becoming Defenseless in Difficult Times

. . . notes on the illusion of control

Over what do you have control?

Don't make it a metaphysical question about free will or what is a self. Don't worry about being right or wrong. Keep it simple and be honest: over what do you have control?

To have control means to be the dominating influence with respect to circumstances such that what happens is what you intended happen. Over what do you have control?

Can you control the media? Can you control the actions of national politicians? Can you control the cost of food or gas? Can you make it rain? Can you turn water into wine?

Often when I ask those questions, the answer takes the form of "no, but . . . " Like, no, I don't control Donald Trump or Joe Biden but I do control my vote.

Okay, then. Do you control the printer that will print the ballots, ensuring your preferred candidate's name will appear? Do you control the building in which you will vote, such that it will be open on the day of voting? Do you control the actions of folks who might not want you to vote? Who are willing to use violence to stop you from voting?

It's the same problem, right? Everything we do is contingent on other stuff happening over which we don't have even a semblance of control. It's disconcerting. It's more than disconcerting.

One way to see ego clearly - and, by extention, separation - is to realize in a clear, sustainable and non-dramatic way that control, as defined above, is an illusion.

Ego is our resistance to that fact, and separation is the effect of that resistance.

So what do we do?

In his book Focusing, Eugene Gendlin makes a very ACIM-friendly observation: the truth does not need anybody's help to be true.

What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it (162).

Gendlin is saying that denial and ignorance are the actual problem. Reality just is. It is our efforts to make reality different - or pretend that it's different - that brings us to grief.

Note especially Gendlin's use of the word "interacted." Whatever is going on in reality, it does not mean the end of relationship. Rather, it invites relationship.

That, too, is a very ACIM-friendly observation (e.g., T-15.XI.9:5, T-16.I.7:9, T-19.IV.2:5-6).

In The Voice that Precedes Thought, Tara Singh says something similar.

Thought projects choices.
Choice personalizes life.
Do you not see that at the moment of choice
you isolate yourself?
What else but choice deviates from God? (242)

Choice and control are related. My "choice" to drink coffee includes an assumption that it's up to me whether drinking coffee is possible or not. Same with the choice to vote or buy kale instead of potato chips.

But if I question that assumption I will see that it rests on an illusion and therefore cannot be sustained. Choice and control are illusions that separate me from the peace of God (Singh) and the happiness of relationship (Gendlin).

Hence the all-important - the Thetfordian - question: is there a better way?

There is - thank Christ there is - a better way. It begins with recognizing our tendency to "interpret" - to run everything through a personal lens. This is happening to me; it's up to me to decide what this means or doesn't mean.

You but mistake interpretation for the truth. And you are wrong. But a mistake is not a sin, nor has reality been taken from its throne by your mistakes. God reigns forever, and His laws alone prevail upon you and upon the world. His Love remains the only thing there is. Fear is illusion, for you are like Him (M-18.3:7-12).

Healing is letting our errors - like, say, the error of believing we are in control of anything - be corrected for us (M-18.4:1). We don't do the correcting! We "let" correction happen.

But what does that mean - we "let" correction happen? Doesn't it imply that we have control over whether and when correction happens?

Think of "letting" here as a form of giving attention to what is. You don't "let" rain fall but there is a way of relating to rain that is not fueled by either resistance or indifference. It is gentle and natural. It is not driven by judgment; its lodestone is not survival.

When we let go of the illusion of control, the truth naturally reveals itself. We step out of the ego's endless addiction to conflict and rest in the Holy Spirit's assurance that we are not alien to God or Creation.

Indeed, A Course in Miracles says that our separated self in its war against truth is like "the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean" trying to stand on its own. Yet "without the sun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable" (T-18.VIII.3:3, T-18.VIII.4:6).

We try so hard! And all our effort - all our effort - merely obstructs the peace that is given now, the happiness that is shared now.

The world is scary lately. Scary and getting scarier. I get this. I feel it too. But it's an old story! Two thousand years ago Jesus asked a simple question: how many of you by worrying can add even an hour to your life? Do you think his followers weren’t stressed about taxation, starvation and Roman violence?

Worrying is a symptom - perhaps the symptom - of our investment in control. We are all afraid of what happens if we let go. It's the human condition. But all that happens next is what always happens next: relationship with our brothers and sisters. Honestly, there is nothing else.

You have been called, together with your brother, to the most holy function this world contains. It is the only one that has no limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort (T-18.I.13:1-2).

When we realize the illusion of control we naturally become defenseless. When we are defensless all our relationships become holy because we no longer view the other in terms of what we can get from them or what we might lose to them. Instead, we see their perfection and know it is an extension of our own.

Thank you, always, for lighting the way for me.

~ Sean