My commitment is to go through Ascension publicly and that requires going through the bad as well as the good.
At this moment, core issues are coming up for observation and acknowledgment. I’m told this is part of the tsunami of love: the forcing up of whatever in us is incomplete.
The core issue that’s arisen and begs recognition at this moment is around control. It’d be melodramatic of me to say that I’m a control freak. But the control issues I have are nonetheless staring me in the face at this moment in time.
It’s hard to call oneself on one’s own number. But an unacknowledged core issue hurts more and longer than one that’s acknowledged.
John Enright used to say: “Unawareness leads to momentary relief and continuing pain; awareness leads to momentary pain and continuing relief.” (1) I know that’s true.
Who wants to think of themselves as a control freak?
Yet I have to look at this if I want to be free of it. Unless I acknowledge what’s actually there, it remains.
So I take a look at it, try it on, test it out, which is what we’re invited to do on the awareness path.
My mission in the first half of my life, so to speak, was to control the control freaks. But in the process I also became a controller. Take away the subject being controlled – in this case, a controller – and I’m left with my own desire to control.
And I see it. The moment I own it, I see it. “You have to be able to see what you’re doing to see that you don’t see it.” (2) I do see it.
The picture slowly came together from bits of evidence here and there. I saw myself as the runt of the litter controlling by holding things up – strategically.
I saw myself as the one who got his way by putting a stick in the spokes of the wheel. You want to go on a vacation? We will – if you pay attention to me. I was an expert in “being difficult” and I do know that my Waterloo, my nuclear issue, is to come up against another expert in being difficult.
But I didn’t relate what I already knew to control issues.
I saw the moment when I utterly lost control – when my father shouted at me from inches away from my face. I shattered into a million pieces. That moment probably sealed my fate. My life ever after became about resisting ever experiencing that extent of loss of control again.
I saw the violence in our family and how I hated being controlled by it. I saw myself become the one who controlled the control freaks. I became the policeman of the world.
As the pieces of the puzzle became clear to me (and this process has taken me weeks), I found myself in an “Aha!” moment. I saw the whole picture. I already knew something was wrong and needed addressing. But I didn’t see what it was. And now I did.
I don’t want to take the matter too far and become melodramatic, but I also don’t want to minimize it.
I’m amazed at what I’m seeing at this moment. I have all the makings of a first-class control freak. It’s only what I learned from the growth movement and my stand that I won’t control others that prevents me from going all the way.
What we resist persists. What we oppose we become. Out of our fear of being controlled comes control.
Oh, my gosh.
Footnotes
(1) John Enright at Cold Mountain Institute, January 20, 1979.
(2) Dennis Percy, est Trainer Candidate, 29 Sept. 1980.