On the Way

I found the following in my writings of a journal about a spiritual experience:
“The other thing I learned from all this was that there is not a simple duality of “in control”/”letting go”. The relationship is more dynamic than that. In my experiences, one still has control of one’s reaction and engagement in letting go. It is being in a situation, accepting it, and engaging with it in a manner fitting with that acceptance. It is NOT a complete loss of being in the situation. You are always *here now*. You can accept this or not: embrace it as another changing moment of nothingness (here meant with Buddhist resonance) or fight against it in the desire to be somewhere else – whether spatial or temporal. This also means that the power trip we get from being “in control” of our situation is another illusion. Seeking to “lose control” is oddly just as worthy of a smile as seeking to grasp onto control always. This does not mean that I’m saying we have no choices or that our actions are determined. I’m merely pointing out that we are in a world which presents different situations for us all the time. We are in relationship with these situations and cannot control them, merely accept our relationships with them and control ourselves insofar as we act in a way that shows that acceptance. Thus, it is not a dichotomy of active/passive – being passive requires a certain active engagement, and being active attempts to disregard and fight against the passive position we have in the situations of our lives – like rocks in a stream. The most control we have in our lives is precisely that I still think we do have choices and that those choices matter. We choose the situations our life brings (this is not meant as any form of blaming the victim), just like I chose to come here. Sometimes, perhaps often, we do not know the repercussions of our choices, but we choose one path or another, nonetheless.”