LETTER FROM THE FIELD: Control? What control? Whose control?
This is from, Gabriella, one of the students in the current Sunday Self-Realization Course. She’s pointing out that the idea of our character being in control of our unit has been proven false to most of us any number of times. I’ve had two incidents very similar to what Gabriella describes here. I bet you have too. We see the truth, but refuse to acknowledge or accept it.
Until we don’t.
Thanks, Fred. All sessions have been good, today’s was especially valuable. I seem to attract some interesting fortune cookie blurbs ~ I’m pretty sure I’ve read or heard the following elsewhere, yet it was in my cookie today ~ “Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”
I’m not sure if my observation of “astonishing things” would be helpful to others relayed through you. It has to do with the recognition that “something else” is in control, ever vigilant, ever there. This realization most often comes to me while I’m driving or outdoors in nature. Example: A few years ago a near car accident, the kind of occurrence when we say, “Whew, wow ,an angel was watching me, thank you thank you!” What transpired to avoid the accident could not possibly have been only been Gabriella driving. I recall seeing a car veering toward my car at a high rate of speed; in a split second I realized I had to enter the ramp to an Interstate and steered to car toward the ramp; only to see the speeding car coming diagonally toward the ramp. At that point I said, “Oh shit” and in that instant my car maneuvered between a light pole and a fire hydrant, up a slight embankment, across the ramp, turning down the ramp and back onto the road, heading in the direction I was supposed to be going. There is no way that “I” was in control of the car at that time. Other instances, being on an elevator that started a speedy, uncontrolled-feeling descent. I glanced at the passengers and saw panic on their faces. Yet, there was a sensation as if I was being held, felt totally safe and had no fear that anything was wrong.
Once one realizes and adjusts to not “running the show”, the show changes profoundly.
Thank you again for your straight talk, help and laughter!
With gratitude,
Gabriella
October 27, 2015 @ 5:20 pm
I had a very similar realisation lately about control and free will. All of a sudden it was completely clear that nothing in my direct experience could possibly have any choice or power over its existence or disappearance. Can a thought choose? Can a sensation choose? Can a perception choose? No. Yet they all arise and disappear spontaneously without any agent making the choice. So then all that is left (for me, at least) is to be vigilant about thought coming back in as the “me” and taking the credit for running the show! Easier said than done…
October 27, 2015 @ 10:01 pm
This is good, Mike. 🙂
November 13, 2015 @ 12:15 am
I’ll third this! I like randomly putting up my hand to my face and “thinking” “who and how did that get chosen”. And, like right now, wondering about the FEELING of how “I” feel like I’m choosing it, but I Know different. Alien Hand Syndrome people are probably having a more accurate experience of it being done To them!
Fred’s answer to me about “secret Mike”, versus just being the One “who is fully on board”, has been echoing in my head. Whether it’s about “affirmation practice” or “commitment” the answer was in reference to, or my hand experiment, where is this controller (or the one who thinks he’d be out of control if he convinced himself he didn’t exist!)?
(My computer power suspended (adapter died and battery was already dead) in the middle of writing the last paragraph last week, so I just finished writing this right now. Great practice to be awake to me still breathing life into puppet Mike – while I gauge how upset he is or how frustrated at what to do next.)
I’ll throw in one of my cool near-tragic experiences. While in Guatemala I was showering under one of their fixtures that heated the water as it came out – open electrical connections where the water came out of the pipe above! I went to rest by hanging some of my weight from that pipe. I started to get electrocuted and my hand stuck there. Instead of panic, I heard myself say in my head calmly, “if you lift your legs your weight will pull you away” – and it did. And to think of how in the rest of life, in much less direr circumstances, I haven’t “controlled” such a sane, calm response!