Control is an Illusion

My life is about control. I think yours is too. Most of us put it in different terms security, happiness, peace of mind, goals. But it really means control. Sometimes we don't even notice how we need control. We fear the unknown: places, people different from us. We dislike things that we feel we can't control: animals, weather. We harbor in cities and comfortable neighborhoods. We sacrifice freedoms to gain a semblance of security, control.

In my case, I fear people most of all. I can't control them at all. I don't understand them. Where some fear wild animals, weather, oceans, wilderness, I am actually more comfortable there because in those situations what I can't control is obvious and the elements I can't control make sense. They behave according to laws or principles. Granted many don't understand this, but it's true. A shark isn't being deceitful. It is what it is. It behaves a certain way. We can interact, or avoid interaction based on those rules. And behind it all, these things submit to my God. They are loyal to his order. But people are not. They cheat and deceive, change on a whim, hide, manipulate, and even randomly act without sense. They are not bound to follow God's order...ultimately they are of course, but they have a choice to act against God where elements and wildlife do not, or at least very very rarely ever choose to go against that order.

But in all honesty, whatever ways we strive for control, it is always an illusion. We had no say in when, where, or how we were born, the conditions of our life, the state of our health. We have very little control over these things in our ongoing lives. We can manage risk factors, but even this is no guarantee. Any doctor, philosopher, warrior, gambler, or statistician would say so. I do not pay my bills by my own strength. I simply push out that buffer of security as far as I am able; to the limit of reasonable risk. But this is hollow. It could all end at any moment. I have no guarantees and could do nothing about it anyway.

Perhaps this is what bothers me so much about a life that seems blind to this reality. Perhaps this is why I feel so much at ease in the wild where others find even less control. There, I am free to let myself be out of control. To focus on the next moment only. The next breath, the next stroke, the next hand-hold. At any slip I could die. There I am fully in the hands of my God.

The trick is, I am never less in His hands. Not at work, or among the crowd of riotous partiers, not lying on my futon. I do not need to fear even there. I have no more control in these situations. I only have more illusion of it. I have no less control in the others, only less illusion of it. That's why I hate this work-a-day life so much. It is a lie, a blinding fluffy down of comfort that smothers all objections and dulls all senses back to sleep. I will get out of it. I don't know how or when, but it is coming.

Perhaps I have more to learn before that can become a reality for me. Perhaps I need to learn to trust in each moment. To live in that freedom that comes knowing I have nothing to do for my life. I need to learn to trust Him that fully. In that trust, I'll be able to enjoy each moment the fullest. Savoring each good thing, caring not a lick for the maybe, and enduring the bad with patience and resilience.

We often hear that this is possible in our regular lives. God doesn't require us to move or change anything really. Only to change our attitude. And that is true in a way. But it is often taken too far out of context. So far that it becomes an excuse for perpetuating the life-sucking institutions that feed the illusions we are so addicted to.

Not Our World

I was recently struck by this idea. It started with a Head song and lingered in the humus of my mind for a long time, several weeks, until it finally sprouted. It is a simple idea, but one that changes perspective on so many things.

As usual, it has a lot to do with the death of the self. Our own pride, self-serving is the biggest problem we face as individuals and in groups, I think. The great I is always vying for control, and it gets it very easily. One of the surest ways to quiet a troubled mind is to get it occupied on someone else...serving someone else. There can be self-centeredness that comes off arrogant and snooty and there can also be self-centeredness that simply focuses on oneself too much. That is, even focusing on changing ourselves is still a form of self-centeredness.

Anyway, when I meditate on the phrase, "His world" it changes so much of my desire and perspective. His sky, His water, His land, His food, His air, His electrons, His life force. What if, just what if, everything was truly and literally God's. He didn't make it and give it to us, or walk away from it. It's all His. I know this sounds like a truism on the surface, but that's the case with most contemplative revelations. But let it sink and and mull it over so that you think it about everything you look at, everything you do. Every breath you take.

I realized, like really felt it become a reality for me, that I am not in the least in control of any moment of my life. My air could stop, my body can break down, illness can overtake me, rocks can fall from the sky, the air I suck in can poison me, my very cells can lose cohesion and my body disintegrate. I no more make the air I suck in replenish the oxygen in my body than I make the sun come up or go down. There is a universe of complex interactions going on around me all the time. I see this as an ecologist. And we humans have nothing to do with it. We take it for granted. There are places that do not even exist for us. Places in this physical world where humans cannot go... yet they exist. For who? Not for us, certainly. For other beings? Perhaps. ('They just do', is not an answer it's a cop out, so quit thinking it. And no good scientist will accept it either. Only the hacks are satisfied with answers like that. A good scientist would answer, "I don't know." There's a big difference.)

As someone who has experienced evidence of the living God, I can say with certainty that they exists ultimately for God. For His pleasure. Sure, He often has other purposes that we can come to know, but that doesn't negate the root reason, even if some secondary reason serves us.

We delude ourselves into thinking we control anything. We plan and when things go our way, we think we've managed risk well. Bull! We didn't control anything. We just pretended to like the kid who thinks that he has special powers when something he desires actually occurs. If things went well it was pure grace, nothing more.

This leads us into a very submissive frame of mind. I control nothing. I am essentially a toy. I feel sophisticated, but that is simply because I couldn't make me. I may very well be more the complexity of a clay figure than an AI robot. How would I know? Yet for all this, I am given special provision. I am touched by the living God. He talks to me. He feeds me. He cares for me better than wildlife, better than livestock, better than a pet. He treats me like a son, and He even sets me over things He's made. He even merged me into Himself, imparted some of His reality, His prime generating powerful self to me.

The Bible clearly confirms this in verses I have read over many times. For His pleasure we were created...fearfully and wonderfully made...we are God's workmanship...in Him we live and move and have our being...through Him all things were made that have been made...yet not even one (sparrow) falls to the ground apart from Him...

It is humbling and liberating. I am not responsible for my own survival, or the survival of others. My family's welfare does not hinge on me. The fate of society and even the world does not hinge on me. I couldn't destroy it if I wanted to. What I do I do not do out of necessity for survival or responsibility, but out of gratitude and service and fun, as the case may be.