The Coronavirus is bringing into stark view the fact that we are not in control. Which is fine, because we never have been, we just thought we were. So now what?
I bumped into a friend last weekend. He’s the MD of a business that’s already seen significant decline as a result of Coronavirus. “We just don’t know what things will be like by next Friday,” he told me. It occurred to me afterwards, of course, we don’t. We have never known. The only difference is that the shifts and changes between a “normal” Monday to Friday are relatively small. They constitute the kinds of ups and downs that we’ve come to think of as a standard week. Now the virus has exaggerated the variance, bringing it into stark view.
Confronting us with the truth that we were never in control.
What was your reaction just then?
The conceptual mind (intellect, idea of self, ego) can often hear ‘you’re not in control’ in two ways:
- What do you mean I’m not in control? Of course, I am! Look at all the decisions and choices I’ve made in my life. Look at all the people I’ve influenced and the changes I’ve made to circumstances around me.
- Phew! I’m not in control!! Thank the Lord for that!
Maybe even both will appear. Because that’s the nature of the conceptual mind. It bandies around all sorts of thoughts, most of which are opposing and contradictory to each other — and this is what we’ve been listening to. No wonder we’re confused and lost. We’ve been walking around on one of those wobbly-floor fairground attractions trying to find solid ground. Impossible!
Let’s explore responses 1. and 2.
In the presence of response no.1, we’ll experience difficulty and effort. Battling our way through life in resistance to what shows up that apparently needs taking control of. Something new that needs controlling will always appear when this is the thinking we’re believing.
With no. 2 we’ll experience a moment of calm, comfort, security and OK-ness. The relief of it! And shortly after we’ll go back to feeling uncertain and insecure.
When the mind notices that calm, comforting, secure feeling and then the return to discomfort, it thinks the nice feelings were coming from this new ‘I’m not in control’ game and it thinks great! I’ll start playing that game because it feels nicer than trying to be in control.
It looks like saying ‘I’m not in control’ is the route to security but this is a misunderstanding. There was never a causal relationship here. The conceptual mind lives to pattern-match and correlate and all it’s done is correlate ‘nice feelings’ with a new made-up belief of ‘I’m not in control’. From this belief, it now walks a different tightrope of life. ‘I’ll be OK when I stay out of control. Must not control anything!’. This leads to a denial of what’s appearing. A blase, laissez-faire attitude to life — Oh I don’t care, I’m not in control anyway.
This is no more true than the old ‘I’m in control’ game because the conceptual mind isn’t in control, and neither is it not in control. It’s just a bunch of ideas floating around in the ether of the mind. It layers a story over life of seeking and resisting. Hanging out in a misremembered past and an imagined future. Wishing and avoiding. Hoping and fearing.
The conceptual never had anything to do with life. Life happened and then it applied a storyline.
Now what?
There was information in the glimpse of calm, comfort and security. Just not the information the conceptual mind took it to be. In ignorance, the mind starts us on its addictive chase of that chase of applying the new game. But in ‘knowing’, we start to reveal the whole thing.
The glimpse is us catching sight of our innate nature.
The moment the conceptual mind goes quiet (which it does when it thinks it’s found a way to shut itself up) brilliance shines through. It’s not the idea of ‘not being in control’ that makes the nice feeling appear, it’s the absence of the voice in our heads that reveals what was always here.
The brilliance that’s always here takes the form of calm, secure, grounded, content, joyful, creative, connected, resourceful, resilient, compassionate, authentic, boundaried. Human.
Believing a conceptual mind that seeks control, certainty and ‘right answers’ is, in fact, the very activity covering up what’s being searched for. Running around, kicking up so much dust that everything gets obscured.
How do we do this?
This is a question of the conceptual mind as it always wants a ‘do’, a way to apply what’s being shared, an action to take to succeed and live life the ‘right’ way. There is nothing to do, nothing to change, there is no right way. Whatever you’re experiencing is just how it is right now. Whatever changes is what changes. It’s not the conceptual mind that will make anything change from you reading this piece.
And…
Awareness can be refocused towards the constants and away from the ever-changing:
- Look towards what emerges naturally the moment thinking settles down.
- Look towards the break in the clouds that allows something fresh and full of life to appear.
- Look towards the experience that naturally arises when the clouds pass on, change shape, or when they stop looking so troublesome and in need of change in the first place.
With love, Helen
Helen – Welcome to the BC360 family. Enjoy the respectful engagement that helps us grow as people, the encouragement from fellow writer and readers at make writing a joy, and followers who become trusted friends. You are off to a good start.
Thank you Len, it does indeed seem to be a beautiful community. Dennis is doing wonderful work here.
Nobody wants to risk the infection or pass it on to loved ones and the isolation measures, to be respected in any case, have generally been welcomed. At the same time, however, there are also those who ask to take even stronger initiatives or, moved by fear, launch themselves into absurd “hunts for the grease”.
In this emergency health situation, according to some, a real “state of exception” in fact, the boundary between personal freedoms and public health is decidedly blurred – the professor begins -, difficult to establish. We can say that in this situation the scales are decidedly on the side of public health with the compression of some constitutional rights.
The more one is afraid of a danger, in this real case, which among other things is not seen but whose effects are seen when it occurs, the more the demand for further limitations of personal freedoms by the population grows (not all However). It is difficult, in a situation like this, to manage to think and think clearly, even if in my opinion it is necessary to continue to do so and, for this, the freedoms of expression, also of criticism, not only and not so much of the measures that are taken, as on why this emergency was born and how the various political systems (local, national, supranational) are facing it, must be defended and guarded
Thanks for commenting Aldo. I rest in the knowing that what’s happening is all that could be happening. Everyone is doing their best and making decisions based on what looks real to them, and that is all any of us can ever, and have ever, done. Stay well.
Welcome to the Bizcatalyst360 family, Helen! Let us look forward to expanding the constructive network yet another notch. I am positive you will find value in the sharing and caring environment here the same as we all do.
As regards your above article, I am much impressed by your analytical rendition. Without making any attempt to offer a critique, not even implied, I would like to mention something I read a while back:
“Adversity is a fact of life; it can’t be controlled. What we can control, however, is the way we react to it.” Given the current situation brought on by COVID-19, our reaction is paramount to survival, not just ours alone, but also that of those depending on us.
Thank You, With Warm Regards, and a Prayer!
Thank you Bharat, this really does seem like a wonderful, caring community.
And thank you for your comment about adversity. What I’ve increasingly found through my exploration into who we really are is that we creating an experience of adversity – or not – depending on thought believed in the moment; and we aren’t even in control of our reaction. The more we let go of that idea, the more we seem to have the perfect response for this moment now. In full alignment and flow with what is.
Thank you so much for the important offering of the quiet mind, the awakened witness consciousness in this essay, Helen! Having practiced meditation and mindfulness daily since August 2014 I have experienced the expansion of deep, quiet peace, an enduring grace inside my soul that I now know is always there and always mine. From this place I can respond to life-all the outer world with a greater patience, dignity, profound awareness, and gratitude. This serves me greatly as the noise and confusion of changing outer circumstances rarely rock the surfboard of my inner world that continues to flow into all the nooks and crannies inside of me. I’ve done tons of practice and release of past inner junk to get to this place of adapting, to flowing, to knowing I can choose my response-the words I type, the inner world I cultivate. That is all that I’ve ever been in charge of….I choose inner dynamic equanimity no matter what goes behind me, before me, or all around me. I can ground in conscious awareness and the spiritual being I am whose having a human experience. What an exceptional experience of being alive! Flowing through all emotional content and keeping an open heart at all moments. I love the encouragement of Michael Singer in his book The Untethered Soul. Your essay and wisdom reminds me of his wise words! 🙂
One of my favorite quotes: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor E. Frankl
Cultivating what I like calling the “inner fly on the wall” reaps many, many benefits!!!
Welcome to BizCatalyst360!
Wonderful Laura, and I can hear the peace in your words. We can even go a step further and see we don’t need to choose or control our words. Not us, the self, at least. The real us might choose them but little us has never been in control of that.
This is exactly where I write from including the replies to these articles. Comes from beyond, the still place. I have become the hose, the unkinked hose. Thank you, again, for all you’ve contributed!! I’m with you, Helen!
Unkinked hose! Love it! What a brilliant metaphor.
WELCOME, HELEN TO THE BC360 FAMILY! I HOPE YOU HAVE THE SAME REWARDING EXPERIENCE THAT I HAVE HAD! Let me congratulate you on your first article. The feeling of no longer being able to control our lives as we used to is very traumatizing. Nothing could have prepared us for this. Let us hope this all ends soon.
Thank you for welcoming me Joel, and rather than traumatising, I see this is life inviting us to see through and let go of beliefs we’ve been holding to be true which never were. On the other side of that is freedom.
Thank you, Helen for your response to my comment. Stay safe and well.
Hi, Helen.
I thank you for clarity and kindness together. From Leonard Cohen:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Mac
Beautiful Mac. He knew who he was didn’t he!
Amazing to see you here Helen and when I saw the title was like “if this is not Helen, I will share it with her!” Just stunning writing, as always. Thank you for sharing, is important anyway but especially right now.
Thanks Garry! And thank you for connecting me to Dennis.