We know what a pain in the gluteus maximus a control freak can be. They want us to conform to their way of thinking and disregard our needs. This is the suburban community that mandates houses to be painted a certain color and professional parents who will not allow a child to pursue an interest in art because they need a “real” job.

Control freaks come in versions other than those who just tell others what to do. Other manifestations include,

I Know it All

Certainty is the privilege of the closed mind – Author unknown

“Of course I’m right”! is usually the prelude to a relationship fight. As one grows in wisdom, the more extensive one’s education becomes, and the more one is a SME, , the more the realization sets in that

The way of humility is to admit “I don’t know”.

Instead of having all the answers, the person with inner freedom to doubt accepted convention searches out the questions to explore. By contrast, the “know it all” is often someone who

Constricted in spirit and infinitely insecure.

Has an internal world of emotional chaos.

Wants cut and dried answers to life’s toughest questions.

The cocksure person misses the fact that much of life is grey and filled with paradox. They are like flat earth devotees who hear that the world is round. That knowledge either shocks them out of their rigidity or sends them scurrying back to the security of their prejudice.

The trouble with all mental reductionism is that it shuts our minds down as they slip into secure and familiar grooves.

So instead of being like a lantern that sheds light in a large perimeter, closed-minded thinking becomes like a narrow beam of light with a sharp focus on a restricted area. Unless we have the courage to see the many shades of grey in our beliefs we are caught in the crosscurrents of the many varieties of error.

I Need More

The spiritual life is more about subtraction than it is addition – Meister Eckhart

Everything in life seems to be about adding value or accumulating more. This is one core tenet of what is potentially the dark side Capitalism. Here shareholder, customer, and employee value are the crown jewels of the corporate world.

But when does the profit motive become greed? When is enough quite sufficient? And when does one recognize other ways to find meaning than just to climb corporate ladder’s to nowhere?

A focus on growth alone can work against the wellbeing of us individuals and the planet. How many more trees in the Amazon do we have to cut down to sustain our supply of meat?

Consider one difference between humans and animals. Humans are focused on advancement and animals look to survive. The price we pay for advancement can be the destruction of our universe, compromised health, a fragmented society, zero sum treatment of others, and the radical division between the Haves and the Have Nots.

The push for more even infects spiritual pursuits. We learn mindful meditation in order to be more productive. As one devotee of an Eastern religion in Asia wrote:

“One teaching is, you make money Monday to Friday, then on Saturday and Sunday you come to the temple and meditate and your mind will be more supple and clear so that on Monday you can make more money.”

Contrast this with a more soul-driven statement from the Dalai Lama:

“If we begin with the simple act of regularly helping others, for instance, even if we don’t feel particularly kind or caring, we may discover an inner transformation is taking place, as we gradually develop feelings of compassion.

So more is not necessarily better. Sometimes it can be disabling. What do we have to learn to experience

“Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free”?

For control freaks the possession of more stuff and status becomes the controlling force in life. Our possessions control us rather than the reverse. They define our value and status rather than seeing us all as one and each having infinite value.

Another controlling influence is the drive for security.

I Want to be Safe

Have you ever noticed how many fear-based advertisements purport to keep us safe from the bogeyman. They claim to give us safety from burglars, hackers, depreciation of our assets, and even illness? Add another layer of insecurity with the current Pandemic. Here a friend or stranger could be viewed as death sentence if they come too close and infect us.

There is no place of ultimate safety. Health and wealth can be here today and gone tomorrow. In the world of Covid -19 our lives are so fragile. In the face of an impermanent life safety is an illusion. It would be better to live by the dictum

“Our short time in this world must be lived as fully as possible” – Nicos Hadjicostis

In the end, all the mental gymnastics of the control freak pander to the small self (the ego), create the impression that we are the center of the universe, keep us from finding true freedom, rob us of the joy of living in the present, lock us into rugged individualism, and blind us to the fact that we may think that we are gaining the whole world while losing our souls.

The way back to our true nature

At the end of every self-centered effort the person loses his/her way or soul piece by piece. The ultimate antidote for the drive to control is a twofold process.

Surrender

Here we let go of our frenetic efforts to be safe, needing more, and knowing it all. All that is the mark of a worried and divided person. We surrender to a still inner voice that is described by Thomas Merton as our True Self or authentic person.

When we admit “I can’t” and recognize the impermanence of life, a portal opens in us where our self-emptying is greater than the ego-self. It puts us in touch with a voice that has been there all the time. It also brings us back to our true humanity that is at one with all, complete in and of itself, and is the place where true meaning is found.

Love

We have to make a decision to love long before we have the inner feeling. Sometimes we have to walk back into a situation the perplexes us and where our every inclination is to run like hell from the person or situation. That is especially true of those who have lower levels of natural empathy.

The story of St. Francis is a case in point. He was repulsed by leprosy and he would not even allow his gaze to settle on a person with that disease. One day he came face to face with a lepor and started running from him until he had the realization “What am I doing?” He turned around and willed himself to engage the situation he feared the most until he eventually could fully embrace the man.

In the moments when we face the fear and do it anyway something deep within us starts to be released. Our hearts begin to melt and love emerges first in a trickle and then in a rushing stream. In this way we meet the outer world with our innate inner world.

What is it that you fear the most, that you desperately try to hold back with control behaviors? How then can you walk back into that feared situation and behave like a loving person until you feel like a loving person?