Let’s briefly talk about “control”.
There is no control.
There is a difference between control and the illusion of control.
The Ego clings to an illusion and calls it control.
Imagine yourself in a large, raging river. You do have choice in how you engage with it.
You can fight it and swim upstream.
You can let yourself be carried by it.
You can swim to shore and get out and watch it go by.
You can even build dams and modify its flow.
But ultimately, none of that is control.
Even the dams would not last without your maintenance, and eventually, the river would return to how it wants to flow.
Water always chooses the path of least resistance.
Seeking control is an attempt to find safety. And again, that is an illusion.
You have more control as a driver of a car than as a passenger on a plane, yet flying seems scarier to some of you even though it is objectively safer.
The ultimate safety is not control, it is the realization that you are an eternal being.
You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not your personality. These merely make up a character you play. An avatar, so to say.
When a character dies in a play or movie, the actor does not. In fact, the actor never dies. You merely choose to play different characters, different roles, use different avatars.
When you realize this, you find peace.
The peace that no matter what happens to this character, you are ok. And that is freedom!
It is an upgrade because you go from looking for safety to looking for experience.
In that freedom you have the choice of what you want to experience. You recognize the power of intention. You liberate massive amounts of energy, energy that you used to unconsciously protect yourself from threats that cannot harm your true eternal self.
It is a movement from a state of contraction, from reacting like a turtle that hides in its shell, or a hedgehog that curls up, or a bunny that runs away, to a state of expansion.
You expand into the world, into life. You engage with it. You experience it. You experience yourself as part of the whole and the whole. Not through separation, but through oneness.
Fear does not make sense when you know yourself as all there is. You can only fear something that is separate from you. There is no fear in wholeness. Whatever happens, you are whole.
This is not an intellectual teaching. You don’t learn this rationally. This can only be realized through experience. The words we share about it are a reminder that this experience is possible. And the most useful thing you can do is to have a clear intention around it, whatever it may be.
“I want to live in peace.” “I want to know myself as all there is.”
Your intention is doing your 50%. There is no control because 50% is the best you can do. The rest is up to the world.
In a band, you can play your instrument well. You can’t control everybody else. Even the conductor of an orchestra only has influence over its parts. He directs, guides, conducts, but he does not control.
Lastly, “control” is a word. A word is a concept. It’s something that only exists in the mind.
Concepts are limited. Do not use them in absolutes. Concepts are like a subway map. They are a useful abstraction. A subway map is useful when you take the subway, not when you ride your bike.
We are showing you a path towards the right relationship with your mind, just like any other tool.
“This is a hammer, and this is how you use it.”
It is the abuse, the “abnormal use” of the mind that creates the majority of present-day suffering.
“What is the mind?” Anton asks.
The mind is where thought happens.
The brain is hardware, the mind is software. The mind is the operating system. The mind analyzes, conceptualizes, thinks.
The mind is not consciousness. Consciousness is what is aware of the mind.
Most people have not awakened to this distinction yet.
It is as if they are an actor who fully believes that he is the character he is playing. He forgot that he is an actor.
The early stages of awakening are that realization: I am an actor playing a character. That gives you choice.
A choice over the software you are running. A choice to uninstall software that is not useful and install better programs.
And a choice to connect.
Awakening is like a lone computer being connected to the Internet. You suddenly realize that everything is available to you.
Everyone has this capacity.
So in summary: Do your 50% through your intention and aligned action and leave the rest up to God.
That is all.