{"id":18708,"date":"2020-04-02T09:32:38","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T13:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18708"},"modified":"2020-04-02T09:32:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T13:32:38","slug":"you-are-not-in-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18708","title":{"rendered":"You Are Not In Control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Reality Initiating Us:<br>\nPart One&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lesson\nFour: You Are Not In Control&nbsp;<\/strong><br>\nThursday, April 2, 2020&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jmoVfAePenw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-mjktdtl-bdudkgkj-r\/\">Click here to listen<\/a> to Richard Rohr\nintroduce&nbsp;this week&#8217;s Daily Meditation theme&nbsp;on &#8220;Reality\nInitiating Us,&#8221; addressing our current global crisis as a collective\ninitiation experience which we are all undergoing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At some moment I did answer Yes to\nSomeone\u2014or Something\u2014and from that hour I was certain that existence is\nmeaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-surrender had a goal.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Dag\nHammarskj\u00f6ld&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be in control of one\u2019s destiny, job, or finances is\nnearly an unquestionable moral value in Western society. The popular phrase\n\u201ctake control of your life\u201d even sounds mature and spiritual. It is the\nfundamental message of nearly every self-help book. On a practical level, it is\ntrue, but not on the big level. Our bodies, our souls, and especially our\nfailures teach us this as we get older. We are clearly not in control, as this\npandemic is now teaching the whole planet. It is amazing that we need to assert\nthe obvious. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Learning that we are not in control situates us correctly\nin the universe. If we are to feel at home in this world, we have to come to\nknow that we are not steering this ship. That teaching is found in the mystical\nwritings of all religions. Mystics know they are being guided, and their\nreliance upon that guidance is precisely what allows their journey to happen.\nWe cannot understand that joy and release unless we\u2019ve have been there and\nexperienced the freedom for ourselves.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my life I have found the mystic teachings of St.\nTh\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux (1873-1897) helpful for living into this truth. She was a\nmaster teacher who was never afraid of presenting humiliating evidence about\nherself. She called this her \u201clittle way.\u201d As she so brilliantly put it, \u201cIf\nyou are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself,\nyou will be for [Jesus] a pleasant place of shelter.\u201d [2] What gives religion\nsuch a bad name is that most religious people are eager to be pleasing to\nthemselves, and want to be a part of a \u201cbig way.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being willing to be \u201cdispleasing to ourselves,\u201d or to\nallow our autonomous ego\u2019s needs to take a back seat to the larger field of\nlove, is part of what it means to not be in willful control. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gerald May (1940\u20132005), one of my own teachers, very\nhelpfully contrasts willingness with willfulness: &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Willingness\nimplies a surrendering of one\u2019s self-separateness, an entering-into, an\nimmersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It is a realization that one\nalready is a part of some ultimate cosmic process and it is a commitment to\nparticipation in that process. In contrast, willfulness is a setting of oneself\napart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct,\ncontrol, or otherwise manipulate existence. [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For many of us, this may be the first time in our lives\nthat we have felt so little control over our own destiny and the destiny of\nthose we love. &nbsp;This lack of control initially feels like a loss, a\nhumiliation, a stepping backward, an undesired vulnerability. However, recognizing\nour lack of control is a universal starting point for a serious spiritual walk\ntowards wisdom and truth. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please join me\nin trying to be faithful to that walk, even as we pray for God\u2019s mercy for\nthose who suffer, and especially the most marginalized. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reality Initiating Us: Part One&nbsp; Lesson Four: You Are Not In Control&nbsp; Thursday, April 2, 2020&nbsp; Click here to listen to Richard Rohr introduce&nbsp;this week&#8217;s Daily Meditation theme&nbsp;on &#8220;Reality Initiating Us,&#8221; addressing our current global crisis as a collective initiation experience which we are all undergoing. At some moment I did answer Yes to Someone\u2014or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18709,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708\/revisions\/18709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}