Tuesday 21 April 2009

The illusion....of control

Well, I'm back again! and once again I got the 'objectionable content' flag when I signed into write this. Yesterday I was shocked as no doubt was evident from what I wrote but I had a lovely relaxing massage in the evening and went home and did some meditation to get an intuition as to what I should do. The questions I asked myself were 'has this blog reached the end of the road, have I said everything that I want to say, have I made the difference that I so want to make and what came back to me was a resounding 'NO'. The one thing following a spiritual path demands is courage. Ghandhi once said 'do not approach the spiritual path if you are afraid', and it is this which sees me once more scribing an entry on this blog while awaiting my college tutorial.

Having the massage last night was so relaxing and during the consultation I saw that while I don't have too much physical stress I am quite stressed emotionally and yet paradoxically I am calm and everything continues to work. All of the turbulence is going on in my mind. Afterwards I received a call from a very good friend with the news that a four day week is going to be imposed from May. I was shocked because this person has been employed in the profession for many years and is well established. This news gave me the inspiration for the title of this blog entry. The deepest illusion all of us have as human beings is that we are in control of life and in control of events that happen in life. It is only when that control is taken that the realization dawns of how little control we actually have. As my friend said: 'I would rather have had the opportunity to choose, rather than have it imposed'.

And yet, times of shock like this are also times of great opportunity. When the consciousness is certain there is no growth. Confusion and uncertainty shifts the consciousness more rapidly than anything else. Enlightenment at its most simple level is letting go of the illusion of control together with a willingness to trust the benevolence of the universe. But the identity uses our obsession about control in order not to to allow the consciousness to expand. Having control wrested away and seeing how like pawns we are in a game is very liberating but also very scary and demands the courage to stay steady knowing that we cannot see the bigger picture only a piece of a jigsaw.

I will have to sign off soon because I am soon going to be called into a tutorial. I know the drill by now. We will go through all of the parts of this course, I will be asked how I am getting on, a tick will be put into a box and it will be over for another two weeks....the real world will begin after I finish the course.....

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