You Are Not a Problem to Be Solved

I want to say something about control.

Because I've watched students go through this work and they think they've dealt with their control issues.

And then I watched them try to control their spiritual practice.

I have to do my breathing today,

Otherwise I'm going to be disconnected.

I can't miss my journaling or everything is going to fall apart.

I need to make sure that I'm doing enough work.

The impulse to control doesn't care about the content.

It'll take your spiritual practice and turn it into another thing to manage,

Another way to keep yourself safe,

Another form of staying.

Securely away from the truth of you.

And here's the deeper trap,

The one that really gets people doing this work.

It's the ego trying to control the ego.

I'm going to use willpower to eliminate my ego.

I'm going to monitor my thoughts and catch the negative ones.

I'm going to be vigilant about my vibrations.

All of which is just the ego in a spiritual costume trying to manage the ego in a Sri costume.

Same driver.

Different outfits.

You cannot use the instrument of the problem to solve the problem.

Albert Einstein said it.

He said it perfectly.

You cannot solve a problem at the level at which the problem was created.

The Ego Trying to fix the ego is exactly that.

It's the same level,

Same instrument,

And it's the same problem.

Which brings me to something that I say to my students that really helps them and stops them.

I say,

You are not a problem to be solved.

The entire control impulse is rooted in the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you.

And it needs to be fixed,

That you're broken and the work is really to unbreak you.

But what if the premise is false?

What if there is nothing wrong with you?

And there never was.

A Course in Miracles says it perfectly.

It says,

Your problem is you think you have a problem and that's your problem.

That sentence dismantles the whole self-improvement industry in just one breath.

The difference between controlling your practice and genuinely practicing is the difference between fear and love.

When you do your breathing time because you're afraid of what'll happen if you don't,

That's control.

When you do it because it feels like coming home,

Because you genuinely want to,

That is love.

It's the same action,

Completely different energy,

Completely different results.

Everyone is a control freak on some level.

I mean,

Everyone.

That sweet,

Easygoing person who insists they're not controlling anything.

Ask them what happens inside when someone loads the dishwasher wrong.

Ask them what they feel like when a conversation doesn't go the way they expected.

And I include myself in this.

I'm one of the most easygoing characters you will ever meet.

Until Mayenna Vrgov shows up.

And Virgo,

If you don't know,

Is the most controlling of the signs.

And it's really just dressed up as the most helpful.

I'm not even a particularly neat or tidy person,

But when things are in order,

When there's a clear direction,

When the plan is the plan,

Something in my character relaxes in a way that tells me exactly how much my character loves being in control.

The control is there.

It's always in there.

It's in all of us.

The work isn't to eliminate it.

The work is to see it,

Name it,

And choose differently in that moment.

That's it.

It's all you have to do.

Just catch it and choose differently over and over and over again until the new choice starts to just become the natural one.

Until you've become it rather than doing it.