Who Controls My Life?

When it comes to trusting the universe to guide your life and provide your abundance and prosperity, we could say there are 3 different models.

Let’s pretend you’re a ship in the middle of this river. Man, what a view!

Photo by Kajo Merkert

Let’s examine different ways you could deal with the swift current in this area.

Remain Stationary

• You don’t like the fact that your view keeps changing and you’re continually traveling into unknown territory. The unknown is scary. It makes you incredibly uncomfortable and you’re comfortable being where you are. So you drop anchor and sit still in the middle of the river and watch the sunset.

It takes a lot of energy to hold on tight in this current, but you do it anyways because at least now you have some semblance of “control.” You feel comfortable because you know what to expect. Nothing has to change. You can be right where you are without having to be taken by this river, be taken by a power seemingly beyond your control.

This is commonly expressed as depression, as debilitating fear. Instead of taking a risk and jumping forward, people hold on tight to exactly where they are.

The founder of McDonalds, Ray Croc, had a famous saying:

“When you’re green you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.”

If you’re not continually growing and expanding, you’re rotting.

The movie The Shawshank Redemption put it well.

“Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”

People will generally clutch onto their anchor until it gets to painful and takes too much energy to keep holding on. The built-in human desire for variety kicks in and they want to experience something new so they’ll raise anchor up and start moving again.

Move, but Control where you go

• Life on this river seems very out of control. I’m not going where I think I want to go. There’s a cool view over there and I want to go see it, but the river is taking me elsewhere. Turn on the engine! We’re heading over there! Fight the river! Go upstream! Yes it takes an inordinate amount of energy to get over there, but I want to do it anyways!

We see this manifested as people working super hard trying to accomplish things in the world. It’s very common in the workplace where people believe that if they work harder and put in more hours, they’ll earn more money and be more successful.

There’s nothing wrong with this understanding. It’s simply not choosing to work in flow with the river. It’s choosing to use all your (finite and limited) physical energy to push and dominate your reality. Life is seen as a struggle, a battle to get ahead.

This is a very tough existence. Nevertheless, life is a great teacher.

There will be many experiences in which a person “gets a feeling” that they should take an action, but chooses not to follow that feeling and continue to butt heads with life, struggling all the way.

Perhaps the next time they get a feeling, they go with it and something magical happens. Things fall into place effortlessly. Solutions work themselves out almost magically. Synchronicity occurs and an amazing number of seeming “coincidences” start to occur that make success and accomplishment much easier.

At first these miracles seem extraordinary and infrequent.

Gradually they become more and more common. The person starts to see the correlation between trusting their own inner guidance and the elegance behind efficient and effective creation.

Trust the River of Life Completely

• Instead of constantly trying to push against the river of life, the ship’s captain lets go altogether and allows the current to take him wherever the river sees fit. Instead of feeling insecure and uncertain like before, there’s an inherent trust in the river and a knowingness that nature is designed to work things out perfectly. Things may not always look ideal on the outside, but in the end, every experience is designed as a necessary part of the final creation regardless of whether it’s labeled as good or bad. There’s trust in the process.

Translating this metaphor to real life, from the outside, it may LOOK as though the person is still making decisions and choosing where to go and what to do.

In reality, however, the person is constantly connected to the Source energy, continuously feeling out life and following the highest feelings, the greatest sense of joy, and the deepest feeling of excitement.

When it comes time to make a decision, there’s an internal knowingness beyond what the mind could ever possibly know as to the “best” direction to head.

External situations start effortlessly falling into place and it’s as if the person is just traveling as the world takes care of problems for them.

You are not in charge. Not you alone. YOU ARE in charge, but not you alone, physical mind. The Oneness of physical mind / higher self, that’s the YOU that’s in charge. Both aspects of your being is the persona.

The higher self has the higher knowingness while the physical self does the acting out.

There is Trust in the process. No the river will NOT always take you where you (the mind) THINK you want to go, along the path you BELIEVE is the ideal path.

It’s like driving a car across the country at night. The headlights only shine maybe 100 feet in front of you, but you trust that as long as you can see the next step, the curve of the road ahead, you can keep following the road and it’ll take you clear across the country. You don’t have to see the entire road at once and know ahead of time every detour and road block. Just the next step and you will have all the knowledge and resources to deal with a situation as it arises, but not before. Besides, the situation may be entirely different by the time you get there anyways.

Know your destination ahead of time, but don’t worry about the path. Your job is to focus on the WHAT, not the HOW.

Everyone is in a river that leads to the same destination, but the river doesn’t take everyone along the same route towards that destination.

The destination is Love, Peace, Freedom, Truth, Joy, God. The words are all synonymous.

The river understands that the ideal pathway is not the same for everyone, so each person takes their own personalized route. What’s best for one person may or may not be appropriate for another. That’s okay.

We’re all headed towards the same destination anyways: Oneness. “Heaven”, if you will.

It’s okay to allow yourself to be guided by a power greater than yourself.

You can trust it. It’s okay. You’re safe.

When you can learn to listen to your own inner guidance and let go of the need to use the mind to figure out the “best” answer or second-guess your inner guidance, life will become much more harmonious. This is the way life was meant to be lived. This is how the river of life is designed.

Allow yourself to let go and trust.