Understanding Control
So our unhealthy emotions are a reaction to misjudgments. What are those misjudgments? One major type of misjudgment involves our assumptions about what we control. The following concepts about control provide what, for many, are the most powerful core of these kinds of teachings.
In the East this advice is framed in terms of nonattachment. Many people in the West have heard of the general advice that we should focus on what we can control and not fret over things that aren’t in our control1. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Serenity Prayer…
God, grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference
Whether literally used as a prayer by the theist or simply taken as a wise notion, the way this prayer is typically used is as I’ve described earlier. The person gets upset or experiences anxiety or worry, then returns to a wisdom teaching and says it to themselves in a somewhat mantra-like form to console or remind themselves after the fact. It's true that this can be helpful and formative for people, but it can often look like a shallow euphemism in the face of very real and deep problems we face in life2. Simple intellectual agreement with the teachings are insufficient to give us real equanimity.
This process is unfortunately the most effective many people’s spirituality gets for them. It has given a lot of people the impression that all this 'spirituality stuff' is nothing much more than motivational posters and affirmations. But as I've said, we will be covering how a spiritual practice can help us truly absorb wisdom in a way that is revolutionary to your life. Then it will become more apparent why and how spirituality can be as powerful, or more, than anything else you've tried.
There is another thing to note about the popular understanding of control above: it is far too weak. Although it can be helpful to remind ourselves that worrying about things we can't control is useless, the often assumed meaning of control here is very watered down compared to the more radical philosophies from which it originated.
Most people understand things like natural disasters and freak medical conditions being outside our control. They understand that events that intersect us and originated apart from us are outside our control (like whether a drunk driver crashes into our house, for example). And, because people nevertheless worry about such things, this is why the shallow version of wisdom on control is still helpful for them to some degree.
On the other hand, our culture is constantly telling us that we can be the master of our fate - that we can control our wealth, our health, our reputation, our relationships. There are all kinds of self-help books and 'easy steps' to help us 'take charge' of things. In American culture in particular, there is the notion of the rugged individual who 'makes things happen'. With the right procedures, creams, or workouts we can even allegedly control our aging.
All of this works in our culture similar to a 'prosperity doctrine' as they call it in some kinds of Christianity. In Eastern religion, people who practice in this way talk about things that will allegedly bring you 'good luck'. In New Age circles people talk about literal 'laws of attraction' and among supernaturalist Pagan or Wiccan groups it's about spells that will make you more powerful and control others or events in your life3.
Giving tips for navigating challenges in the world is fine, but an approach that views spirituality as a means to gain externals; a means to success in finance, love, career, and so on is superstition and off base. This is unhealthy, unwise, and misguided spirituality that will fail to provide true happiness.
Here is the radical alternative idea for you to consider: you control neither your health, nor your wealth, your relationships, your reputation, or any other external in life.
The first response from most modern people hearing this is to think it is suggesting a kind of nihilistic fatalism where we throw up our hands and everything becomes pointless. If we can’t control it then why do anything? I understand that some readers will recoil from this or immediately try to qualify it in some way. But to get the real power in the practice I’m going to suggest trusting me for a bit; let your mind go with this possibility for the time being.
I’ll get to ‘why we still do things’ in a moment, but for now let me address this rather absolutist sense of control. Typically people will retort with something about ‘degrees of control’ or influence. They will say, “Well, yeah, I don’t completely control my health or wealth, etc. But I have some control over it by doing certain things.” That sounds very obvious - a no brainer, right? I’ll explain why this idea is not so obviously true, and how it is keeping us from really getting the profound message of the teaching.
Suppose you worked in an office and just received a promotion to “Head Administrator” (HA). You get a fancy corner office and many people report to you. “Now!” you think, “I am in control and things will finally be done right around here!” So after getting settled in you begin making some executive decisions and giving out directives. Eventually you get a call from upstairs. You discover there is a person over you who is the “Chief Head Administrator” (CHA). Sensing your concern, he assures you that you are in control of your office – all he asks is that all directives be run across his desk first. Occasionally he may override your decisions if he sees a greater reason to. You might think you have “some control” over the office. But after a time, you start to feel this may not be the case.
Consider two columns; two categories of situation. In the first column are situations where the HA (you) and the CHA agree. In this column you always get your way. Now consider the second column where the HA and CHA disagree. In these situations the CHA gets his way and you do not. So, looking at this whole chart, it becomes clearer that the CHA always gets his way and you only get your way when it happens to agree with the CHA. The HA, then, is simply saving the CHA some work. Surely, if you were to leave, things would not work well, but you cannot say the HA is in ‘control’ of anything. The position is more like a decision-making proxy servant. So, when the CHA tells you you are still in control of your department, you can see how this is a farce.
There is a men’s ministry group within U.S. conservative Christian circles called the Promise Keepers. These folks believe that the man should be the master of the home and the woman should be under his leadership. I once saw an interview with a representative of this group. The reporter asked what he thought about a marriage being a team of equals. He replied that they are a team, but ‘you need to have a tie breaker, and the man is the tie-breaker’. Of course, if you were to work out a logical grid similar to the one I described above, you would see that the man in this scenario always gets his way, and the woman only when it happens to agree with the man’s. So, to say someone is a ‘tie-breaker’ in a team of two is to say they are the dictator. Talk of a ‘team’ in this situation is patronizing.
And this, precisely, is our relationship with the universe. While we can definitely take all kinds of responsible actions that may improve our chances of certain outcomes, our input into the system is only one of countless other variables that affect how things go. We might eat right and exercise every day only to have a blood vessel burst and end it all. We might be the most powerful warlord protected by legions of armies and tanks, only to be defeated by a peanut that goes down the wrong hole in our throat. In every case involving our external conditions, our efforts only come to fruition with the agreement of the rest of the cosmos. At any time we can be vetoed by circumstances we had no ability to prevent.
This is why notions about ‘some control’ are a red herring that misleads us into false value judgments (which then trigger unhealthy emotional responses). Attaching our flourishing to the requirement for certain external conditions is a prescription for anguish.
But then, why decide or do anything? Without understanding why, anyone would still have reservations about this take on control. I will elaborate on this, but for now the short answer is that, in other necessary parts of this practice, we relocate the locust of our motivations and value away from outcomes... and that changes everything.