Letting Go of Control
How much of our lives do we spend “trying” to have control? I know I find myself thinking of situations in my life and ways that I can gain control. And I even think of other people’s lives and thoughts about how they should be handling a situation come to mind. What good does this kind of mind speak do in reality? Does it change the situation? Do I really have any control over the situation? Sometimes action needs to be taken, but sometimes there is no action to take. Sometimes I just need to allow things to work themselves out.
When it comes to attempting to have any control over other people’s lives, it is fruitless. Row your own boat, is the advice I’ve been given over and over again. And rowing my own boat does feel amazingly better than thinking of ways that other people “should” be running their lives. One of the principles that I am using every day fits this situation perfectly: “I have loving allowance for all things in their own time and place, starting with myself.” So, I allow myself to just row my own boat and I allow others to row their own boat, however they see fit, and with no judgement. The judgement part is where I try to exert control, and that is just another illusion.
Even thinking that I have any control of my own life is an illusion. The only control I really have is in my power of decision. Will I decide to respond or react to any given situation? What action will I decide to take, if there is even any action I can take? And most of the time, the situation I am thinking about hasn’t even happened yet. I’m living in a fantasy world of a future that hasn’t happened. And I’m imagining what action I’ll take, if it does happen. My only real choice is to live in the present and to stop putting myself in an imagined future or past. When I’m in the present, I have no worries, because I’m just present. Then, when a situation really arrises, I can choose to respond in an appropriate way.
Being present is my salvation and is really heaven on earth!