Namaste and welcome. Some years ago, a friend told me about an
interfaith conference and it was quite diverse group of people and they began the conference
by… with a gathering that wanted to decide on some languaging and and the particular
question is: How do we collectively refer to really the Divine, or what… what it is that all human hearts most deeply
cherish? What is the language for that going to be? And the first person said, “Well, shall
we call it God?” And a female wiccan said, “ Uh-uh, No way!” And then, “What about Goddess?” And then a Buddhist… no a Baptist Minister kind of thumbs downed
that one and then, “How about spirit?” Atheists kind of shook their head and it went
on and on for a while and then, finally, it was a Native American who suggested: “How
about the great mystery?” And everybody agreed. They all agreed; each present sensed the mystery
behind any spiritual or religious idea. And I am wondering, for you listening right
now, how… how many find that resonant? Just that word mystery as kind of “Yeah,
well…? Yeah. I do. I do. I mean, really when we start asking the real
questions, you know, like, “What is love?” Or, “How did this universe get created? And these black holes that are everywhere? The new spring leaves that we are beholding? Or that vacancy when a loved one has gone?” You know, it is like, “How do we talk about
that?” So it is… There is some wisdom in us that bows to what
is beyond that our cognitive minds know is the mystery. And I think this is in all paths, this realization
that it is there yet, you know, how often do we actually in the midst of our day stand
in awe? You know, Einstein wrote, he said: “Once
you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes
with plaid comes easy.” And yet we go around in our daily lives - and
we are usually rushing around - on our way somewhere, doing something, being somebody
and acting with a certain kind of certainty, like we know what we are doing. And our view is in some way… we are the
kind of protagonist of our drama. And we have these ideas of rights and wrongs. And it actually closes us off to apprehending
this mystery that we are… we are living in. I think William James described it really
well when he said that the beginning of all religions is the cry “Help”. Because we mortals perceive the shakiness
of our predicament, so it is the cry help. And then religions come in with all these
views to kind of explain everything and, as Joseph Campbell puts it, religions create
a kind of “inoculation against the divine.” You know, these… these minds… these human minds have a very hard time just
hanging out with groundlessness, with this impermanent changing world of ours. We want to make meanings. And we really have a hard time with the fact
that these existences are temporary. And that is the resistance. We are all really eager to live and not so
eager to go, you know. I think it was George Carlin that is… I think this was his, and he said, “I went
hitchhiking the other day and a hearse stopped. And I said, ‘No, thanks, I am not going
that far.’.”, you know. And then of course, for Patrick Henry, you
know, death was his second choice, you know. I was not… it is not where we want to go. So basically, rather than just living in that
open acceptance to this changing, living-dying world, we kind of clamp down and we are rigged
to try to control things with our mind kind of creating set views and with our behaviors. So we try to hold on to what is pleasant and
push away what is unpleasant. And in moments of controlling we can’t really
experience what is here. I think John O’Donohue said it the best,
he said, “We are so busy managing our life as to cover over this great mystery we are
involved with.” So how do we do that? Because I want to be speaking about the ways
we control, you know. We do it through tightening in our body. Chogyam Trungpa talked about how we are a
bunch of tense muscles tensing against our existence, you know, trying to hold it all
together. And we do it… we kind of create an illusion
of control by our… our just thinking, thinking, thinking, like if we stayed busy and we are
doing a lot we have some… It is an illusion that we are taking charge
of things. And then we worry and we obsess and we grasp
on to things. We try to hold on to our possessions, it gives
us more of a sense of… of ground, even though you can’t take it with you. I heard a story of a man who wrote to the
IRS and he said: “I have been unable to sleep knowing that I cheated on my income
tax. I understated my taxable income and I have
enclosed a cheque for one-hundred-fifty Dollars. If I still can’t sleep, I will send the
rest.” All right. So we have covered death and taxes tonight
so far. So what I would like to do is a two-part series
because I… I tried to write this into one talk and I
just couldn’t fit it in – and I am going to call it “Relaxing the Over-Controller.” Okay? And you might start beginning to sense like,
am I talking to you? And it is to all of us. Truly. In fact, I wrote this talk during a very stressed
period and the day that I was… the Wednesday that I was come in and give it – two weeks
ago, Wednesday – by the mid-afternoon, just as I was kind of doing the final touches on
the talk, I got a back spasm and couldn’t come in and talk about the over-controller. So that is a bit of confession. But the theme, to me, is a critical one because
it is such a fundamental part of our ego-identity. You know, if we really shine a light on who
we are taking ourselves to be, there are so many moments that, in some way, we are the
one trying to manage things. We are the one trying to make it through the
day, trying to take care of the problem, trying to navigate. So you might be thinking, “Yeah, but don’t
we have to control some? Don’t we have to make a living and have
shelter and have our children go to school and take care of ourselves when we get sick
and protect ourselves from threatening people and so on?” And, of course we do. You know, this isn’t about not trying to
manage things where we can, this is about over-control. And the way I think about it – and I have
shared often in my talks, it is just a metaphor that works for me – is that, you know, we… we get born and we create this kind of spacesuit
to navigate a difficult atmosphere. You know? And our spacesuit is our egoic efforts at
presenting a self that will be well received by others and protecting ourselves when we
detect danger and trying to improve our life by having more pleasure and more gratification
and so on, by promoting ourselves. And it is part of evolution. We are designed to develop this egoic spacesuit
self. It comes out of loving life and wanting to
protect life. The suffering comes when our controlling strategies,
our… our spacesuit activities, are on full time or a whole lot of the time and we forget
who is looking through the mask. You know, we forget the tender heart-space
that is here, consciousness. In other words: when we are identified as
the human doing and not the being – to say a phrase you have heard before - when we identify
with the spacesuit – with the controller - then we are always preparing for what is
next, you know, we are… we are always having an agenda and we are not living it. We need pauses where we are not operating
the spacesuit all the time. There is a… an author, Elmore Leonard, and
in one of his novels, he has a character that is speaking who has been shot and realizes
he might be dying. And I want to read you what the character… what he says: “He had finally made it.” He is talking about the guy who is dying. “It had taken him fifty years to learn that
being was the important thing. Not being something. Just being. Looking around you knowing you are just being,
not preparing for anything. That was a long time to learn something. He should have known about it when he was
seven, but nobody had told him. The only thing they told him was that he had
to be something. See, if he had been told then, he would have
had all that time to enjoy being. Except it doesn’t have to do with time,
he thought, being is an hour or a minute or a moment.” So we will take a moment now to pause, because
maybe the spacesuit self was thinking it was listening to a talk to teach it something
about meditation so it could get through tomorrow better. And what happens if we close our eyes for
a moment and just relax out of that spacesuit self
– but even with a good intention, we are still doing something –
and just be? When our intention is just to be, to inhabit
being, we start noticing how quickly we pull into an idea or a thought, and yet, in the
space between the thoughts, when we are not activated in doings, in that resting—in
that pause—the light of the universe begins to shine through. Being. That is really the source of all vitality
and creativity, love, wisdom. Our suffering is that we miss out on being. When we are caught in the over-controller,
we don’t get that nourishment, that soul-nourishment. So I am going to speak a little bit about
how that expresses, how we know we are caught in the suffering of the over-controller. And one of the ways is that we find we are
exhausted. Because if we are hooked up in the spacesuit
self and we are always on and there is none of that breathing-room, where the light of
the universe shines through, no resting, it is exhausting. It is tiring to be always managing. I think one of the best descriptions of it
was Kelly McGonagal in her book The Will-Power Effect – very, very good book. She describes will-power and it is also self-control,
this controlling ego, as kind of a muscle. And that when you use the muscle it gets tired. Every moment that you are in some way using
that muscle you are tiring it, it needs to rest. And you can run into exhaustion. And of course, the doer – when we are over-doing,
when we are over-controlling – it is not just exhaustion, there is a whole spiral of
somatic illnesses that … are serious and can be life-threatening that… that come,
including stroke and heart-failure. So the over-controller doesn’t get nourished
by being. It is addicted to doing. And I think so often of the myth of Sisyphus,
right? We’re… pushing that boulder up the hill,
just watching it roll down, just doomed to doing it over and over and over again. And even though our doing, controlling self
would say, “Oh yeah! But I have to do this! And I have to do that! And this needs to get done!”, the over-controller
is way over-doing it, it pushes boulders it does not need to push. Okay, so one of the sufferings of the over-controller
is exhaustion, just always on. Another is being cut off from creativity. Have you noticed that if you are in controlling
mode, it is just not a creative time? And the way I think about it I… this, again,
Greek mythology…the Titans, and they are the ones who created the world, came out of
chaos, okay? The Titans came out of chaos, it wasn’t
a controlled state. They emerged from chaos. Creativity comes from chaos. And Keats – many of you might know about
this – he describes true achievement, real creative achievement, as a… what he calls
“a negative capacity” which means that we can tolerate uncertainty—rather than
living in a controlled, boundaries way, we can tolerate that groundlessness and uncertainty. So think of your creative moments—moments
when, in some way, you felt spontaneous . . . or art, writing, music—including receiving
that—those creativities . . . dancing. It is not when we are busy being somebody,
okay. So exhaustion, non-creativity. When we are in the over-controller, we are
cut off from other people. Because when we are in the over-controller,
we have an agenda. The over-controller, in some way, feels like
we need to be doing something when we are with others in order for them to like us or
respect us. Does that resonate for you? This feeling that when you are with somebody
else, when you are in over-control mode that, unless you are performing or you are interesting
or entertaining or somebody, they are not going to be liking you. So it disconnects because: Can you really
feel intimate with somebody else if you are in control-mode? Similarly, when the over-controller is on,
we can’t be intimate with our own life. I mean, when the over-controller is on, we
are basically judging, okay? We are trying to manipulate ourselves into
being some way different so we can’t feel our own loneliness or our own yearnings. We are pushing boulders. And then the over-controller is not connected
to the present moment. I mean, think about it. When you are filled with worries and plans
and you are trying to manage things, how much are you feeling, you know, the life that is
right here? I got an email from one person who said: “If
I can’t experience the new green of spring in my veins, the song of birds in my heart,
what is the purpose?” So really the… the beginning of this reflection
is that the over-controller cuts us off. This is the way Chogyam Trungpa put it, he
says: “As long as we are trying to figure out how we can escape from our present situation,
we can’t notice much about it. Only when we feel that this is it, this is
how it is right now, without any clutching toward something different, will our intelligence
really come alive.” In other words, we have to put down the controlling
and just be with what is here to see reality. I want to name that on a societal level, this
over-controlling ego when it bec…, when it expresses through the collective psyche,
wreaks havoc. It is… It is very, very… It is a shadow-side. When the over-controller is big in our public
domain, what does it do? Well, it destroys the earth, because the over-controller
dominates the earth versus being in intimate relationship with the earth. Violence to the earth or those who are most
vulnerable. See, the… the over-controller is driven
by fear. The over-controller is afraid that something
is going to go wrong, needs to protect, driven by the greed, the grasping on because of the
fear of losing, and therefore is cut off from empathy. So the over-controller, on a societal level,
generates wars, generates walls, you understand. So how do we wake up? Let’s kind of say “Okay, we get it.” The first thing is to know that in order to
wake up from the over-controller, we have to intentionally recognize: “Oh that is
the over-controller in action!” In other words: We can’t wake up from a
part of our persona or ego that we are not aware of. And I often talk about, you know, that circle
of awareness. Again this is Joseph Campbell, he describes
the line that goes through, anything below the line is what is out of consciousness. Well, if we are moving through the day and
we are always trying to manage things, we are trying to control other people to get
them to cooperate, or we are trying to judge and manage ourself, if the controller is in
action and we don’t recognize, “Oh that is… the over-controller is in action!”,
then we are identified with it. We are identified with anything we are not
aware of, that is below the line. But once we can begin to see it, it comes
above the line and then we have choice. So the trick is when you run into the over-controller,
how are you relating to it? And if you judge the over-controller, you
are just bringing more controlling to your life. You are… it is another kind of the over-controller
coming around again. So the trick is to relate to the over-controller
not from the over-controller. In other words: relate to it from a larger
space of compassion and presence. I’m going to come back to that again because,
even as you were listening already, thus far… I suspect for many of you you are thinking
“Oh God, this is a bad part of me and I have got to work on it!”, you know, it is
kind of that sinking feeling of “Oh I am a controlling person, I know that.” More than most people here probably, you know. If we are going around feeling like “I am
a control-freak and it is really ugly and bad” or, you know, “This is a pathology”
or whatever—and even the words I am using over-controller makes it sound like it is
bad. I want to see if we can step out of that—because
that is another controlling reaction—and get this: that it is universal. We are designed through evolution to have
an ego that is going to try to control itself and its environment for its furtherance, okay? That is universal, every one of us. And the more fear, the more wounding we have
experienced in a lifetime or genetically or whatever, the more activated that controller
is going to be. It is not our fault. If you have a well-developed over-controller,
it is just the result of past conditioning. And if you can behold it, witness it, with
kindness, then you can loosen the identity. So let us take a pause here again. Just invite you to close your eyes for a moment. And sense even thus far how you are detecting
“Ah okay, there is some conditioning here towards controlling that plays in my life
that actually can cause suffering, there is that conditioning to try to manage, and that
this is a universal part of my humanity, that the people sitting on either side of me also
have this conditioning to control. And right here from the start of this exploration,
sense your aspiration to relate to the over-controller with kindness, with patience, with humor,
with appreciation. It is trying to help you. It is just not doing it in the most strategically
wise way. To relate to the over-controller not from
makes it possible, eventually, if you imagine that over-controller like Sisyphus rolling
the boulder, just really pushing, trying hard – imagine Sisyphus just deciding to let
the boulder go. and just imagine the space that opens up,
the possibilities of enjoying the view, going home and dipping… dipping in a stream and showering off and
all that sweat and just relaxing, enjoying the life that is here. We don’t have to keep pushing so much. That is what is possible when we begin to
witness the over-controller without judgment, with just kindness. So we are going to continue to explore. But I am inviting you to explore from this
kind of witnessing perspective. How… Now you can begin to look more closely at
your life and if you want to find the part… the expressions of the over-controller that
are actually causing the most suffering, you look to the places in your life where you
are stressed. Because that is where the over-controller
jumps out in most vivid form. So you might, as you are listening right now
consider first “Okay, what is a… a stressful situation where I know I go into intense control-mode”. And as you get one in mind, here are some
of the signs that will help you as you are moving through the day to go “Yep, here
it is! This is… I am doing the Sisyphus thing! I am being the over-controller!” The main tool of the over-controller’s thinking… The over-controller basically has a lot of
obsessive thinking – when you notice that, that is like a flag. The underlying assumption of the over-controller
is “There is a problem here”, “We got a problem”, okay, you know, that is… it’s
the problem-mentality. The assumption is “Things should be different”. And “should” is a word that the over-controller
loves, lives on. Just… It just surrounds everything. “Should be different”, “I should be
different”, “You should be different”, “Life should be different”. You see, whenever there is a “should”,
it is an argument with reality, okay? Because reality is reality. And it is just our addition that it should
be different. No matter how right we think we are, it is
still an argument. And that is what the controller does. The controller generally has some certainty
about their opinions about reality. And the more fear, the more there is that
fundamentalist kind of certainty. Okay. So these are just… I am just giving you some signs to watch out
for that if you are… if you know you are stressed you find you kind of kind of lock
in and there is “We got a problem” and there is a lot of “shoulds” and so on. Very little tolerance for uncertainty. Karl Popper writes: “I believe it is worthwhile
trying to discover more about the world. Even if this only teaches us how little we
know. It might do us good to remember from time
to time that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite
ignorance, we are all equals.” So that is a sign of the over-controller,
this certainty and beliefs. I am right. Things should be a certain way. And generally a need for others to agree. Okay. Behaviors. When you are stressed, what are the behaviors
that are signs? Well, the over-controller is generally trying
to control inner affect, inner experience, because it is, you know… to make it as tolerable
as possible. So often there is a… a… the use… the
abuse of substance, either over-eating food or depriving of food, they are both part of
the over-controller, medication, recreational drugs, alcohol, etc. But also tight routines and not liking change,
wanting to… things to stay a certain way. Now again you might be starting to get a sinking
feeling. So I want to invite you to come back to that
aspiration. This is universal. The more fear we have in our system, the more
we are trying to manage things so we can cope. To respond by relating to not from the over-controller
– If there is more judgment, there is more controlling. How does the over-controller behave with other
people? Well, there is the flight way of controlling
by pulling away, creating distance, having a lot of boundaries. Then there is the aggressive control way that
we think of more often, where we are pretty regularly trying to fix people, judging them,
threatening them, having an agenda. With our partners a lot of rules and expectations. Parents that… that are over-controlling
use a lot of threats and guilt. I like the story of one young girl who…
she noticed that her mother had some white hair coming through on her brunette head and
she looked at her mother and just curious she said, “Why are some of your hairs white
mom?” And her mother said, “Well, every time you
do something wrong or make me cry or unhappy one of my hairs turns white.” Little girl thought about this revelation
for a while and then she said, “Mama, how come all grandma’s hairs are white?” Sometimes control strategies don’t work. A lot of our over-controlling is a way to
manipulate what other people think of us. That is a big one. You can just sense somebody you were with
recently where there was some anxiety, you had some worry about how they were going to
perceive you and just notice how much of the time your behavior was an effort to get a
certain response from them. Again, remember that is when we cut off from
our spontaneity and our creativity and how exhausting it is to be with people when you
are trying to elicit a certain reaction. Does that resonate? So we do things, we act in ways that aren’t
ourselves because we want to look a certain way. I read about one guy who was… he found that
someone had scraped his car in a parking lot… a crowded parking lot. And there was a note on the windshield and
here is what the note said: “Yo, I hit your car, I am leaving this note because someone
is watching. They are still looking. Okay, I am good, my bad, peace, out.” I loved it. They are still looking. Okay, I am good. So then we look at… in the domain of our
spiritual practice and how does the… because the over-controller kind of a wriggles a way
into everything, it is not just, you know, how we are in some situations. And when the over-controller is dominating
in our spiritual practice, we have… in our own mind a lot of rules, expectations and
judgments swirling around what is going on, okay. So we are really pushing the boulder there. It is like… “Don’t just sit, do something!”, you
know, it is… We are striving for a certain state, and we
have an idea about how meditation should be, and mostly we are evaluating it and if it
doesn’t meet the idea, and we feel like we are falling short because we are trying
to get somewhere. That is when the over-doing is coming in. And we try to use – when we are over-controlling
– our ideas about spirituality and they kind of interfere with our direct experience. One of the classic stories in the tra… in
the Zen tradition is of a… a young monk who goes to the abbot, or the master, you
know, and he says, “So what… what happens after we die?” And the abbot said, “I don’t know.” And the… the young novice is very, very
upset and he goes, “What do you mean you don’t know?”, you know, “You are a Zen
priest.” And the abbot nods and says, “I am. But not a dead one.” But what I am getting at is: when we are in
over-control mode, we substitute our ideas about what is going to happen for our direct
experience. It is very hard to just let go and be in contact
with reality. We cover it over. We inoculate ourselves. It is such a great expression. So, to wrap this piece up – because we are
really looking at wh… how do we find that… that character of the over-controller? How does it appear in our.. in our own lives? – just to remember that this is really the
survival brain trying to make it, okay? When we are in over-control mode, it is the
survival brain trying to make it. And whether we are trying to out-trick the,
you know,IRS, you know, or whether it is we are trying to outwit other people and give
a certain impression, what we are really trying to outwit is our mortality. The survival brain just is uncomfortable with
the that we are not going to be around so long. So we are trying to outwit death in some way. I remember Victor Yalom has a wonderful cartoon
with the Grim Reaper lying on the couch and he is with a psychiatrist and the Grim Reaper
is saying, “No Doc. I am afraid, it is your time that is up.” There is a really limited domain we can control. This is now down to reality. You know, there is a limited domain. And it is totally appropriate for our ego
spacesuit self to try to control in a… in that way. But we can’t control aging and sickness
and death and we can’t control the inner weather-systems, you know, all the emotions,
you know, they just happen. And we definitely, definitely can’t control
each other. We just can’t. Just… It just goes on. So how do we get that if we go beyond the
areas we can control and are in constant management mode, that we are going to cover over the
mystery, cover over that spontaneity and love and capacity to see truth? Mary Oliver has a very beautiful poem that
addresses some of the questions that come up about… about controlling and really some
of the misunderstandings. Because when I talk about not over-controlling,
I don’t mean being inactive or passive. It is our nature to engage and to engage passionately,
to take care of ourselves as well as we can and take care of each other. And to be happy and free we need to know how
to let go. Here is… Here is Mary Oliver, she says: “…everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation… …To live in this world you must be able
to do three things: to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.” To love what is mortal, to hold it to our
bones—dear, totally engaged, connected with this life, serving this life—and when it
is time to let go, to let go. Now when I listen to this, this is talking
about in the broad sweeps, it’s you know, when we really get it “Oh… Oh, I am dying, okay, I have got to let go
of this life” there is some… there is a possibility of grace. But it is not just in our incarnation like
that, it is in our moments. That we engage fully. We manage what we can manage. We hold it to our bones. And, in the moments, we learn how to let go
and be, to stop being so busy, stop holding so much. Our inquiry – and this… we are going to
be extending this into the second class – is: How do we relax the over-controller when the
on-button is jammed? Okay? Because that is the deal for so many of us. You know, especially when we are most activated
and stressed. How do we move and shift from being inside
that identity of the stressed, controlling, wanting, fearing self into that… that compassionate
witness that can see it is going on and that knows how to rest some and just be. How do we make that shift? A metaphor that may be helpful for some is
to imagine that you are in a row boat and there is currents and winds and you are rowing
desperately and are exhausted against, you know, the intensity of what is going on and
you are feeling both like the victim of all the winds, and you are also the controller
trying to make it through, and to compare that to putting aside the oars, allowing that
sail of presence to unfurl and letting the winds carry you some. Because, ultimately, we can’t control the
winds. But they carry us. When we awaken to what really matters – and
this is coming back to the beginning of when I shared that essay of the man who realized
he was dying and that why hadn’t he realized earlier that the gem is being. The gem is resting in being—in this awake,
tender, open presence. When we awaken and remember that preciousness
of being, when we sense how these lives are fleeting, we rest more in that. I have seen it over and over again. I saw it with my mom as she was dying how,
you know, when she was younger I… she was as neurotic as anybody else and very… you
know, had her control stuff and her anxiety and this and that, but it was so distinctive… this is not just when she was dying… as
she got older, but then when she was dying how so much dropped away and the amount of
pleasure she got from the moments and the amount that she was able to kind of create
a space that other people enjoyed themselves in because there was no demand, expectation
or judgment. She was being. For another woman – younger woman – she
had a… a young son and she was an executive actually, very busy and stressed and she was
also often pushing him to hurry up, to, you know, “Eat your dinner! We have to get you to child care! We’ve got to shop really quickly! Now we get home! Now we…” Well, she got diagnosed with very serious
malignancy and she had a year to live. And she described the shift was that her mantra
became: “I have no time to rush.” I have no time to rush. It gets very, very clear when we are honest
and face the changing seasons of life and the… the true mortality of these… this…this temporary existence here that
being is where all the light of the universe shines through. So it becomes a deep longing to be able to
relax the controller. And it is completely, completely possible
as long as we are relating to the controller not from the controller. As long as we don’t judge ourselves for
it. And I am bringing this up – I hope enough
times – so that as you continue this reflection – and we can do it together over these few
weeks – that you will bring an interest and a curiosity and a humor to say: Oh, there
it is! There is that grasping! And that: There is that agenda! and not add
the judgment because then you will have some choice. So, it is in that spirit I would like to do
a closing meditation with you. Get a little bit of a taste of witnessing. So, as you allow yourself to come into stillness
— and I have asked you to already to maybe consider where there is stress, where you
are aware of going into over-control mode, where you are aware of the suffering around
it maybe — you might hone in a little, sense a situation perhaps when you are involved
with other people. Just notice and kind of tag that situation
so that you can come back to it, both in this meditation and also during your daily life. But before you spend too much time focusing
on it, take a moment to establish what we call the witness. And you might sense this witness, the vantage
point of this witness as your future self, that who you are when you are really most
awake and open-hearted. So you are really calling on your highest
self, the self you are evolving into, to be witness. You are going to look through the eyes of
your future self, the one who is more relaxed and open and clear and awake. And sensing yourself looking, through the
eyes of that more awake being and with the heart, at yourself during a stressed time. And just pick a time recently when you were
stressed and you were aware you went into that over-controller mode. And see if you can witness it through the
eyes of your future self. And just see that doing-self character, that
over-controlling self, as if you are watching a movie of yourself kind of pushing the boulder
in some way whether it is obsessive thinking, having “shoulds” going on in your mind
about how you should be or how others should be, the agenda that maybe you have with other
people, the ways of trying to either impress or get others to do things your way. And behind the lines sensing how that over-controlling
self has a sense of: There is a problem here. There is a problem. So you are looking at the over-controlling
self through the eyes of this witness — this compassionate future self — and sensing
how that controlling self is operating off the idea there is a problem here. And there is fear that is kind of driving
this part of your egoic self. And sense the suffering of it. Sense how that part of you is suffering. How squeezed it is. Anxious. Living in a small world. Disconnected. Probably tired, frustrated. Closed off. You might just sense what your heart wishes
— from that future self, from that witness — what your heart wishes for the part of
you that is caught. If there was a message you could send to that
part of you, what it might be. What might happen if that over-controlling
part put down the oars a bit? Just allow the sail of presence to unfurl,
to guide, let the winds guide in some way? Be open to the intelligence that is larger
than the ego’s intelligence, to rest a little? To listen? And just… even just bringing it right into
the present moment, inviting that over-controlling self right into the stillness that is right
here. It is as if your future self could say: “Just
be right now. Just be.” To sense the stillness that is aware of aliveness. To sense the silence that is listening to
sound. To sense if there is no problem: What is here? If there is no problem, what is here? Just being. Full with tenderness. At home. And you can sense, as we close right now,
your aspiration to notice, in the days and weeks to come, when you do that over-controller
through the eyes of compassion, just witnessing. Maybe sending a reminder to that place in
you inviting your being into beingness — into the stillness, the silence and aliveness,
the openheartedness that is always here. Namaste and thank you for your presence.
