This article takes on a very challenging topic, a topic that makes many people rather uncomfortable. However, if we don’t address it and address it soon we are never going to resolve some of our world’s greatest dilemmas. Now is the time to face it, examine it, make choices about it. Let’s go.
We have all seen children in the playground, running with abandon screaming their heads off and generally behaving without any control. Perhaps we look at them and feel a little envious, with a little chagrin that we can no longer do that. We are now adults and have too many responsibilities. We have to be in control now. Perhaps some of us look at these same children with annoyance and some measure of disapproval thinking that they should be quiet, be more obedient, and not so loud. They are perhaps thinking, “Children should not be seen and definitely not heard. Isn’t there some nanny that can just take them while we take care of the serious business of adulthood?
Little by little these children will be socialized and conditioned to behave appropriately and they too will turn into little adults with tidy dresses and shirts and polished shoes. Some of them will not learn and they will laugh too loudly and behave rudely only to be shunned by more polite company. Well perhaps these are the extremes and there is terrain in the middle, not too in control and not out of control.
What does it mean to be in control anyway? Because of the many different messages from our parents and teachers many of us reach different conclusions about what it means to be in control. For some of us being in control means having good eye hand coordination and learning to ride a bicycle or drive a car well. Maybe it means developing great skill with a musical instrument or our own singing voice. Perhaps it means we can throw a baseball well or dominate a tennis court or catch a football on the fly from forty yards downfield while opposing players are hurtling toward us at breakneck speed, attempting to take us down. For some being in control might mean having a good way with technology and managing a video game or computer program with great skill and dexterity. These ways of being in physical control are actually quite desirable and not at all a problem. The problems begin when the messages about control extend to our emotions. Don’t let yourself feel or don’t let them see you cry. “Never give in; Never give up; “Don’t listen to them; Never let them see weakness; Don’t show fear, Control yourself, No pain no gain, Ignore the pain” and so on. Notice that these messages about control are mostly fed by fear of consequences, of losing, of failing, of being crushed.
Having great dexterity on the athletic field is not a message about fear, rather it is a message about mastery. Dominating the playing field comes from skill and mastery and less about wanting to dominate others. The greater the dexterity and skill the more dominant the player. However when the emphasis shifts to wanting to dominate others there is a loss of flexibility and losing becomes intolerable. This person is not fun to live with and terrible to play with.
When the desire to be in control is fed by fear it creates problems in the personality. The obstacles become involved and everything goes south. For example Stubbornness is the fear of being pushed around, told what to do, having your freedom taken away. So stubbornness is a rigid strategy of not listening, not cooperating, being passive aggressive, and refusing to give in even if it is in your own best interest. Stubborn people are very controlling of themselves and others. Martyrdom is rigidly holding on to a victim stance in order to control and punish others. Impatience is an attempt to control the schedule and the time, something almost impossible to carry out. Arrogance is an attempt to control others from getting too close and trying to force others to think highly of you. Self-deprecation is an attempt to control others by reducing their expectations of you and getting them to ignore you. Greed is controlling the supplies, making sure others are deprived while the goods are forthcoming to oneself. Self-destruction is the ultimate in control by being the one whose own hand destroys oneself rather than leaving it to another.
Trying to control life, trying to control others, and oneself is actually a horrible way to live because no matter how hard you try to be successful you will ultimately fail. Life is just not controllable from the personality level. You can fool yourself and think you are in control but you never are. Almost every malevolent control freak dictator you can think of comes to a nasty demise. Only essence controls life. It has the ultimate blueprint, wrote the script, and knows the plan. That is why you have moments of déjà vu. It knows your karma, all your agreements, and knows what your lessons are.
The most foolhardy thing of all is to try to control others. Not only is it intensively karma producing to control others because you are interfering with their freedom of choice, but it is sure to make them angry and turn against you unless of course they are among the 5% that have a goal of submission.
Look at the havoc wreaked by people trying to control other people. For example look at the horrors inflicted in the Middle-East by the fanatical Taliban and Islamic state trying to force their rules and religious ideas on others. Look at the misery created by all religions that have tried to control other’s behavior, their beliefs, their life styles through shame, guilt, and threat to life and limb. Can you imagine what the inquisition was like to live under? Look at the control exhibited by authoritarian governments like the Fascists, the Communists, the Nazis, and the extreme right and left wing parties that actively work to take freedoms away. Why do they do this? It is because they are profoundly afraid. They are so afraid of open expression, of creativity, of the feminine, of the wildness in nature. Deep down they distrust the human spirit. Why? Because these are people who at heart distrust themselves. Control freaks are almost always younger souls who have done terrible things to others in the past. However because they are so unsophisticated they project all of their concerns outward so they feel they must control others for what they themselves have urges to do. Yes, they are the ones that might need some restraints but they cannot see that. So in their rush to control possible violations they commit new more terrible violations and the wheel of samsara just turns around again and again for centuries with seeming endless suffering.
Remote Healing
Each month, around the new and full moons, Jose, Lena or Anna leads a remote shamanic healing session. These approximately 30 minute sessions are designed to be experienced in a quiet, safe place free from distraction. Even if you cannot join live they can be very powerful, and always include a good clearing and beautiful icaros. Recording access is included for a short time afterwards. See the product description for dates and times.
What is the solution? This is a very challenging dilemma. Older souls do not want to control others nor do they want to be controlled. They want maximum freedoms for everyone but they have sometimes forgotten that much younger souls do not want this freedom. They want controls and if they are given freedom to control and dictate they will do terrible things. So older souls are faced with a big problem. They must not let younger souls take over governments, religions, or large groups of people because they will make a mess of it and oppress everyone, even kill them. This need to restrict younger souls behavior violates the older soul’s sense of giving everyone full expression, a completely democratic process. Unfortunately younger souls not only cannot handle democracy, they don’t want it, and they will work toward eradicating freedoms as fast as they can. You have seen this take place in the United States since 911 with everything from homeland security to the partisan act and more.
So older souls are faced with limiting the power and freedom of younger souls to ruin things and that is hard to do. In everyday life we do this automatically. We do not let children vote, we do not let them drive, we do not let them drink alcohol, and we do what we can to protect them because they are too young to know better. But we do not protect younger souls from themselves and others because they are in grown up bodies and the culture at large does not recognize soul age as being a factor in what goes on. All we do is throw them in jail by the millions because so many of them end up in the justice system. Is that any way to treat children? No, it only makes them worse.
So we have a real problem on our hands and it needs to be solved as soon as possible. Perhaps we need ways of verifying just who is a younger soul in the world. Values determine soul age so perhaps we need a way of determining what a person’s values are before they can vote for the ultimate leaders or before they can hold office or the like. Who creates the test? Who carries it out? Is that too much control? If we don’t do something along these lines we will continue to have what we have, a complete mess.
Perhaps there needs to be a way that people earn the right to vote or run for office by demonstrating that they have integrity and live responsibly, not righteously according to any religion. How do we shift to a world where the most developed people, the most conscious people are more in charge and the children are relieved of responsibilities that they cannot handle anyway?
This path is fraught with dangers because there are so many ways it can go wrong. Corruption can always rear its head, the system could be gamed, or manipulated, and a nightmare would once again ensue. There is no easy answer to this challenge, however you can be sure that this same problem has been handled many times before in many times and places in this vast universe. There have even been times of great peace on this planet and systems of governance that generally worked rather well for the majority in times past. Perhaps these should be reviewed and revised for our modern world. We have tried many systems on this planet and for the most part they have failed due to corruption and manipulation. Some have held promise but they too have failed because the greed of the few co-opted the system. This is what has happened to our democratic system. It is perhaps the best system we have found to date yet it is in great need of reform. For one thing it needs the money interests banished from it because our capitalistic monetary system has corrupted it. They need somehow to be separated in order for democracy to work better.
Socrates warned of these dangers long ago and for that he was ordered to take hemlock and die. The vested interests of the times felt he was in the way of their ambitions. Socrates was a transcendental soul, a very wise human being who was not afraid to warn the people about the dangers of the system they were advocating. He said that giving everyone the vote, even the uneducated and ignorant would be a disaster because they could so easily be manipulated by unconscionable politicians who would speak with silver tongues and promise them the world, then do whatever they wanted. Was he wrong? He said that money could corrupt the system and vested interest would get what they wanted? Was he wrong?
What if politicians were forced by a code of conduct to answer every question and evasive answers were not tolerated? What if they were fact checked the instant they said something and were confronted with the facts immediately and they had to answer to that? What if all politicians were given the exact same amount of money to run their campaigns and there could be no outside interference and so on? What if they all were voted in for six years and there could be no running for office again? What if a very wise council of elders were responsible for electing a leader from a pool voted in by the people and the council could remove them from office at anytime if they failed to lead well? What if we got rid of political parties period and had only individuals with good ideas running for office? The possibilities are endless. Certainly we are not so bankrupt in ideas that we cannot come up with alternative systems that would actually work so much better, however there has to be the will to do it.
Who should be in control? How much control should they have? How much control can we let go of? What would happen if each one of us let go of trying to control everyone else? You see it is a big topic and if we don’t address it, we will never change and if we don’t change we are doomed to replay the past again and again. Do you want an inquisition again? Do you want a fascist government running you? Do you want the Islamic state or some other group of fanatics running the world? If your answer is no then put your creative thinking cap on right now and start visualizing what you want the world to look like for your kids. Without your input, God knows what they will be faced with. Fortunately a golden age is coming. It is almost here but before it can blossom there are just a few little problems for us to iron out. This is one of them.
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José Stevens
José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.
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