Letting Go Of Control

This is one of my 'Spiritually Drunk' podcast episodes released back at the beginning of Covid. 'Spiritually Drunk' is my term for spiritual bypass. In this episode, Beau reads from the section 'I Need do Nothing' from 'A Course in Miracles.' What does it mean to do nothing? How do we truly let go of control? Do we trust enough to let go? Beau discusses how we are being called to let go of the metaphorical wheel of life and let God/The Divine do the driving.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my third offering here on this beautiful platform,

Insight Timer.

Thank you Insight Timer.

So glad to have you.

This is the first time you're making it to my Insight Timer page.

These first few offerings of mine are from an old podcast I did called Spiritually Drunk.

I thought it'd be a nice kind of playful way to introduce some of my offerings in the world from a more playful standpoint.

The Spiritually Drunk podcast,

Which is my term for spiritual bypass,

Was my first kind of way of getting my voice out in the world.

And this episode is still very relevant today.

I released it right when the pandemic hit in March of 2020.

And it's really around pausing and stopping.

That's been my experience during the pandemic or just in my life that sometimes I can be busy in my doing,

Just busy,

Busy doing,

Even in my spiritual seeking.

And I can really be lost in the way my spiritual ego can hook me into really making a lot of decisions that are still based from fear and I can't even see it.

And sometimes it's hard for me to believe,

It's hard for us to believe that maybe much less is required of us.

And really Spirit has almost all of it in their hands.

And sometimes I still can struggle.

We can struggle with just,

Oh maybe a lot less is required of me than I think.

And I just need to do nothing.

So that's kind of the premise of this episode.

I hope you enjoy.

Welcome back to another episode of Spiritually Drunk,

It is your host,

Beau Baker,

Laurel Canyon coronavirus social distancing 11th day in a row.

How's everyone doing?

Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

What's been coming forward for me is it's really brought forward.

I think I shared this on my last podcast.

I wrote a blog recently,

But for me,

I really feel that what's going on in the world right now,

Which is the world is basically the spiritual realm is saying,

Hey guys,

It's time to address what I call the spiritual drunkenness,

This divide,

This disconnect,

This emotional unrest that's buried deep within the individual and collective consciousness of humanity.

That it's time to stop and go inside and really look and change.

We're at that point,

That precipice where it's time to address everything that we've done and how we've done it.

There's a saying that I like to mention that I heard that everything in my outside life is a outer projection of my inner reality.

There's a lot of teachers that talk about this.

What does that mean?

Well,

That means,

Let's give you a good example.

Some of my spiritual drunkenness this week that's going to tie into my topic is I've been triggered by people this week.

We all know what it likes to be triggered.

We get angry,

We get emotional,

We get irritated,

We react instead of having a wise response,

That reactionary state.

Sometimes when we get into that reaction,

We just can't put it down.

I don't know about you,

But for a lot of my life,

I've stuffed my emotions.

I've learned to eat.

I've learned to shop.

I've learned to use drugs and alcohol,

Which you guys know by now that I don't do really anything anymore.

But I learned ways to anesthetize my emotions.

Even though I've done lots of years of work,

It's only been in the past couple of years I've really started to give myself permission to feel my emotion,

To let it be,

To honor that aspect of my humanness.

But it's not let me honor it so that I can continue to justify more of it.

Well,

I'm just human,

So I'm just going to be angry and irritable and out of control all the time.

And when it comes,

You know,

Hahaha,

Laugh it off.

And you know,

No,

It's like I want to really do the inner work to heal it,

To let it go.

And when I get triggered,

As I did this week by somebody,

You know,

I was looking into what's going on here.

There's something I need to do.

Usually when I get angry,

My inner self,

It has to do something,

Meaning it needs to fire an email back.

It needs to fire a text.

It needs to call somebody else to download to so they can basically justify me and me being right about my anger.

But there's something I need to do.

I think we're also being asked in society right now to let go of control.

Because if we're trying to be in control and we're in a place of reaction,

Isn't it really at a spiritual level,

If that's what's occurring on the surface,

Doesn't that speak that I'm not trusting the divine?

That I for that moment decided I got to go back to my old familiar comfortable place of controlling,

Grabbing on the wheel.

I got to grab the wheel because if I don't grab the wheel,

I'm going to go off the cliff.

I have to grab the wheel.

I must grab the wheel.

And I don't know about you guys,

But there's been so much evidence in my life that I don't need to grab the wheel,

That I can let go and I will be held.

I will be shown.

I will be directed.

The text will come through.

I don't have to do anything.

I was looking at a picture of myself earlier,

A small picture of my small self when I was like two years old.

And I had this idea of,

I wrote it down,

I said looking at this picture of my younger self I remember I played.

I laughed.

I cried.

I was just in the moment.

I was present.

I wasn't,

I didn't have this sense of like a separated will.

There were no thoughts as a one year old,

Like I need to do something.

I was still in a human body.

I still had a consciousness,

But I didn't have this part of my consciousness that needs to control and drive the car and do something.

I was just in that container of trust,

Of nowness,

Of presence,

Of right here.

I'm safe and the universe seems to give me what I need,

Food,

And I get picked up and held when I need to be held.

The person comes in the room.

It all shows up.

I don't have to do anything.

But what happens is I layer all of these beliefs and ideas in separation in this self will that builds and all the fears and all the pain,

All the undealt with anger,

All the stuff that I stuff down and I become this individualized robotic control freak just trying to control the car because I have forgotten that I'm held.

Somehow I've misplaced that I'm held in a container of God.

And what happens is I forget that present moment trust.

It fades away that innocence.

I lose that innocence.

And when I lose that innocence,

I forget that joyful expression and I'm lost and I'm angry and I'm irritated,

But I'm just so stuck in the doing and there's nothing I need to do.

There's nothing I need to do.

And I want to read from A Course in Miracles.

It's been on my spirit to do this.

It's so powerful and I think it's so present for right now because again,

I really think we're being asked to stop and remember that we are held in a container and also address individually and collectively how we got here.

We.

How did we get here?

Is it because we've been gripping the wheel individually and collectively forgetting that we're held in a divine flow?

That there is something greater at work here that knows an intelligence that I've forgotten to trust,

That I'm afraid to trust.

Because what if I become the hole in the donut?

What if I'm lost and alone and I try to trust in this energy and I'm just afraid?

And so I'm going to read a section in A Course in Miracles called I Need Do Nothing.

You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength.

What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way?

This makes it an end,

Not a means in your interpretation.

And this always means you still find sin attractive.

And I'll clarify what sin is in here is basically the Latin root word is to miss the mark,

To make a mistake.

It's not the old biblical,

You're a bad evil person.

Sin is basically the idea of that you find choices and decisions that are outside the realm of God and love and the divine more attractive.

The individualized self will without the divine container,

Me,

Mine,

Greed,

Lust,

You find that more attractive.

No one accepts atonement for himself who still accepts sin as a goal.

You have thus not met your one responsibility.

Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.

You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more.

But there is one thing you have never done,

Not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body.

It has faded at times from your sight,

But it has not yet completely disappeared.

You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant,

But it is in this instant that the miracle of atonement happens.

Afterwards,

You will see the body again,

But never quite the same.

And every instant that you spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.

At no single instant does the body exist at all.

It is always remembered or anticipated,

But never experienced just now.

Only its past and future make it seem real.

Time controls it entirely,

For sin is never present.

In any single instant the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else,

And would be avoided.

It has no attraction in the now.

Its whole attraction is imaginary,

And therefore must be thought of from the past or in the future.

It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation.

Unless just for an instant you are willing to see no past or future,

You cannot prepare for it without placing it in the future.

Release has given you the instant you desire it.

Many have spent a lifetime in preparation and have indeed achieved their instance of success.

This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time,

But it does aim at saving time.

You are attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted.

It is extremely difficult to reach atonement by fighting against sin.

Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised.

Enormer is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary.

All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose,

But the means are tedious and very time-consuming,

For all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

Your way will be different,

Not in purpose but in means.

A holy relationship is a means of saving time.

One instance spent together restores the universe to both of you.

You are prepared.

Now you need but remember you need do nothing.

It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you should do.

When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against giving in to sin,

Mistakes,

Ego,

When the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation,

Or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone,

It always comes with just one happy realization.

I need do nothing.

Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way,

At his own time.

You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means that have served others well,

Neglecting what was made for you.

Save time for me by only this one preparation and practice doing nothing else.

I need do nothing.

Is a statement of allegiance a truly undivided loyalty?

Believe it for just one instant and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation or of struggle against temptation.

To do anything involves the body.

Let me say that again.

To do anything involves the body.

And if you recognize you need do nothing,

You have withdrawn the body's value from your mind.

Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort and escape from time.

This is the way in which sin loses all attraction right now.

For here is time denied and past and future gone.

Who need do nothing has no need for time.

To do nothing is to rest and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention.

Into this place the Holy Spirit comes and there abides.

The Spirit will remain when you forget and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind.

But there will always be this place of rest to which you can return.

And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity.

This quiet center in which you do nothing will remain with you,

Giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent.

For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly,

Sinlessly meaning used correctly,

Used from love,

Used from peace,

Used from the highest service.

It is this center from which the body is absent that will keep it so in your awareness of it.

I'm so caught up sometimes in thinking there must be something I need to do.

I've got to act.

I need to go make that call.

I need to call it and then I need to fix this.

I should buy this.

This is what I need.

Buying something,

Replacing something,

Throwing away something,

Scheduling something for six months,

Two month plan,

Five month plan,

Nine month plan.

I'm not saying we don't have ideas in our mind but they come in the now moment.

And I can turn that idea,

Thought in my mind over to the Spirit and literally just pause and wait.

I have an old teacher who used to say I wake up in the morning,

I spend five minutes in the silence,

The timeless now and the pause as we were just reading.

And I meditate and I ask Spirit to direct my day.

And then I open my eyes and I wait for the phone to go off.

Invariably every day the text comes through,

The phone call comes through,

Somebody asks me to be of service,

Somebody calls and says they have a car for me because my car broke down and I didn't make the call,

Like it all shows up.

It literally just shows up but I've always been directed where I'm supposed to go next.

Or when I was driving around looking for a new place to live,

When it's always shown up effortlessly in my life but the last time I was driving around more frantically and I had lived in Laurel Canyon and wanted to be back here and after a week of driving around and searching more frantically than I ever had,

I literally heard a voice for a second just be like,

Has it ever been this hard and then that moment the phone rang and it was my old landlord in Laurel Canyon saying,

Hey the house across from ours,

Somebody's renting the whole bottom half,

Do you still want to live in Laurel Canyon?

And what I'm getting at is in this moment I think we're really being asked and really being called to really surrender to what's holding us.

I know that it's scary right now in the world and there's a lot of people freaked out,

Money,

Family,

There's disease,

Sickness,

Old people,

The weakened immune systems,

I understand that.

But I think we're being asked to go within and really surrender this frantic mind that wants to go into past or future and really pause and really notice that I'm held and that in this now moment I'm held,

I'm safe in this moment and trust and go deeper into that trust and really let go,

Just let go of it all.

Try not calling anybody for 24 hours,

See what happens.

Try not getting on social media and messaging anyone,

See what happens if you were to just stop and close your eyes and say Divine Spirit,

Holy Spirit,

God,

Buddha,

Energy,

Creative intelligence,

Please show me what's next.

Please let me remember that I need do nothing,

That you direct my every step,

My every thought,

My every word,

Decide for me.

And I think that we as humans struggle so much with letting go of the wheel and just letting go and trusting that there is a God.

I'll be directed when I have these ideas of like this,

When it's frantic,

It's frantic doing.

And what this is asking us is I need do nothing.

And so what my call to action is for anybody on this podcast is just stop and really go inside and maybe it's time to do a little soul searching.

Are there some barriers?

Is there some undealt with emotions and trauma?

If you're being triggered,

And I'm going to go into my spiritual drunkenness for the week,

But what can we look at that might be getting in the way of my ability to surrender that trust?

And I think this is an individual and collective task that we're being asked to look at in this moment.

My spiritual drunk example of the week,

Which I talked about a little bit in the beginning and I'm going to wrap the episode.

To me,

There are people that you might notice in the world and the example of people that just don't know how to let go because they are doers,

Baby.

These people are,

They're not I need do nothing,

They're I need to do everything.

I need to do everything.

I need to respond to this email.

I do need to address this.

I do need to get involved in politics.

I do need to send that tweet.

I need to do it.

And these people,

Typically there's a lot of grasping and I was triggered by somebody who was a rules person this week.

They're a rules person and it's by the book and it's the rules and we got to follow them.

We got to keep order and we got to go by the book because this is the way we've been doing things and we need to go by the way we've been doing things.

And it's all chaos.

If we don't follow it,

If we don't follow the way we've been doing things,

It's all chaos.

And it's a grasping and you can feel it and you can hear it.

And what I realize is that in the recognition of that,

Even in the recognition of,

Oh right,

That grasping,

This kind of ties into my topic.

I mean,

We're being asked to maybe address,

We may be in a moment in human history where we're being collectively and individually also being asked to address,

How did I get here?

How did we get here?

Maybe the way we've been doing things is completely backwards.

And I'm being asked to maybe look at the way I speak,

The way I deal with my emotions and other people's,

The way I parent,

I'm not a parent,

But the way you parent,

The way you deal with people,

Everything,

Money,

All of it,

Politics,

The environment,

All of it that maybe are doing the way we've been doing things,

We need to surrender.

We need a new way and we need something to help us with that.

And in that recognition,

This is where I get lifted above this human battleground into a place of peace,

Because that's when I'm reminded,

Maybe this human doing I need to let go.

And I will say that if you have been triggered this week by anyone,

I will remind you lovingly,

Because I was triggered by somebody,

I was getting angry and my spiritual perfectionism took over because I don't want to be angry because I just don't think I'm supposed to be angry and I'm afraid that if I'm angry,

People won't want me around and I just so desperately want to be a part of this world and connected and whole.

But one of the things I want to remind everyone on this podcast is if you're triggered by someone,

If you're in a place in your mind anywhere,

Whether it's politicians,

Politics,

Government,

Individuals,

Any person,

Place or thing or situation,

If your mind is in a place or has been of blaming and a blaming is you're looking at them,

You're talking about them as if something they're doing is inaccurate and that's blame.

I was able to realize in some meditation this morning that they're not to blame.

They're my spiritual gatekeeper.

They're literally at that moment providing me the opportunity to see where I still have a button.

Now I want to make them wrong for pushing my button,

But if I really get honest and pause what I'm really angry about is why is that button there in the first place?

What am I not doing?

Why is it still there?

There's something wrong with me and I want to make them wrong for really an ultimate feeling that I feel that there's unworthiness in me that still exists,

That I'm not enough as I am.

And so,

Do some soul searching guys this week.

What's coming up for you?

I hope you enjoyed the I Need Do Nothing podcast and I just want to remind everyone on this podcast that you need do nothing.

Maybe you just need to do the day-to-day task of writing and meditation and excavating out the inner stuff that's in the way and just go be in nature and listen to the birds sing and listen to the bees buzzing and look at how green everything is and really be present to what's now.

And in that moment when you're listening to the sound of the birds,

When you're looking at the stunning gorgeous color of that beautiful green tree,

I guarantee you if you have the presence to really pause in that stillness,

You will see there is no fear.

There is no fear.

There is no thought of,

I got to do something.

You're just there and you're healthy and you're whole and the pain is not there and you're alive and for some reason,

Myself included,

We seem to struggle with the ability to continue that.

And that's the vigilance I think we're being asked to do right now.

So have a great rest of your week.

Stay safe,

Stay healthy.

See you next time.

I'll miss you again.

.

.

Reviews

Really helpful, needed to hear this and could relate totally…a good reminder for me

Very relevant information for today’s “gotta do everything world.” Absolutely loved this and will listen to again! 🙏 Thank you..

I really needed this reassurance of knowing I am always protected and will always be. Thank you🙏🏾🫶🏾❤️

Really enjoyed this one. Thank you 🙏🏼

I too am a ‘doer’. A list maker. Checking off boxes as I get things done. Thanks for bringing this talk to IT. It was perfect timing 🙏🤍

As I approach my 70th year, I am learning to let go of this control freak mentally! Thank you for this episode sharing that further affirms and gives language to my continued awakening! Blessed be!

Awesome 🙏🤍🙏

Thank you!

🌀💗🙏🏼