On Control

08/15/2010 00:30:00

Last week, the day after losing my spiritual mentor of ten years Zev Ben- Yakov, I went to Knott's Berry farm with a girlfriend. We went to the park with one pursuit: enjoy those rollercoasters. If you haven't been to Knott's in some time, it's Knott, I mean 'not', the same innocent park it once was. These rollercoasters are monstrous.

I found myself carrying a lot of grief with me that day, naturally I was still processing the shock and grief of unexpected bereavement. Zev had been so kind, so gentle, so full of love, I felt the best way I could honor him was to keep my plans that day to go to Knott's Berry Farm, and to return to a childlike state of the zest for life derived from letting go and having fun.

There are no words to describe the monstrosity of some of these beasts, I mean rollercoasters. Perhaps you wonder why a spiritual psychologists sits here blogging about an amusement park and rollercoasters. These rides became *great* teachers, lessons, and inspirations that I have found myself referencing multiple times a day for the past week.

I observed how my body held the fear. We knew what we were in for each time we sat down for a ride. On a particular ride, it was clear we were gonna be knocked all around, upside down, twist and turns in circles and all around. As we took off at way too many miles per hour, I found my hands clutching the harness as if somehow I clutched it hard it enough I could will the ride to stop. Everytime was a meditation on control: "Sara, relax. Let go. Trust. Release. Let life take it's course". This was the meditation on each and every ride: how to surrender my desire to control, how to trust that it was all alright.

What happens when we want to control? Who do we become? I have learned since Knott's, that when I feel a loss of control due to perceived environmental threats my body tightens and contracts. It is truly and clearly an instinctive response, and I am curious about it's efficacy. In yoga, my 19 years on and off practice, the mat and teachers around the world have had one continuous theme, soften into the pain, release the control.

In life we can harden against the pain as protection, and we can also soften into it. It's not to say either way is better, but as a psychologist and spiritual healer, I typically endorse the latter: finding ways to soften, rather than harden into our hardships.

What if..... we can surrender to the pain, the loss of control, the invariable hardships. What does it even mean or look like to surrender? How is this even done?!

I believe it starts by humbling ourselves. In our own quiet time, finding ways to be honest with ourselves: "I am really acting this way towards this person because I am terrified of X, Y and Z". What if we can sink into the heart, into the truth of ourselves... by being honest with our motives- even if they are not always pretty. In fact, they probably will not be.

Socially, we are given a myriad of messages about how and who we "should" be, what is proper, what is appropriate. And who we really are inside is not always congruent with what is presented by the media. We may have greedy motives, mounds of fear that we never identified, deep insecurities, or significant judgment on others.

And all of this returns us to one concept: control. How and why do we attempt to control ourselves, our bodies, our lives, the people around us? What are we seeking by wanting to control, and what happens when we stop, relax our compositions, and let life be. Aren't those our greatest moments?

My Blog

On Control