"Valuable Secrets to Present Moment Awareness"
from The Best Is Yet to Be
by George and Sedena Cappannelli
Three illusions significantly limit our lives and prevent us from living the life we were born to live. These are control, safety, and security. Learning to master them can be your next and most important step on this journey.
Control
In this world where science and technology are revered, many of us live under the illusion that we can control things—our physical environment, our financial future, our careers, and in some instances, even the people around us. Yet, if we look closely at the most important events in our lives, most of us will admit that for all intents and purpose, life has been pretty much outside of our control from the start. We did not control our birth, and the majority of us will not control our death.
Even the basic physical functions that allow us to stay alive—respiration, digestion, elimination, and circulation—are autonomic. And some have suggested this is a very fortunate thing.
If you look closely and without ego at your life, you will also admit that many of the really meaningful and consequential events you've experienced fall into the category of surprises, unexpected events, and what Carl Jung called synchronicity—"chance exceeding probability." Here are some examples: the moment the love of your life showed up; the day your career took one of its most surprising and beneficial turns (a turn which might have seemed negative at first); changes in your health that prompted you to adopt new practices and sometimes even a new way of life; chance encounters with people you did not like at first and who later became your close friends; unanticipated intersections with allies and mentors; and sudden flashes of insight and inspiration that brought you wonderful gifts.
Control is pretty much a fabrication, a kind of hoping against hope on the part of a species that likes to think it is "master of the universe" but for whom this complex thing called life still remains pretty much beyond comprehension.
Safety and Security
What about safety and security? Many of us spend as much, if not more, of our lives in search of safety and security as we do trying to exercise control. In fact, if we are honest, we will admit that we cling to this holy triumvirate of control, safety, and security with a tenacity that ranges from the compulsive to the obsessive.
On the surface, of course, some of us appear to succeed in our relationship with safety and security. We accumulate a certain amount of wealth and use it to erect buffers between us and the world: gated communities, 401(k) plans and other investment accounts, special insurance policies, extra health coverage plans, investment properties, and in some cases, even private security personnel. With all those buffers in place, we appear, at least on the surface, to be pretty safe and secure.
If you look a little closer at these conditions, however, you will also discover that just like control, safety and security are illusions. For no matter how much money we have, how many private clubs we belong to, or whether protective gates surround our communities, no matter how many special health plans or insurance policies we own, in the end, none of them truly protect us from aging, illness, loss of loved ones, intersections with unhappiness, loss of meaning and purpose, and ultimately our own deaths, and none of them ensure that we will be more loving, generous, and conscious.
Surrender Is the Key
Instead, surrender, acceptance, and trust are the real keys to a successful life. This does not mean throwing in the towel and rolling over on life or not paying attention to the upkeep of our homes, payment of bills, making and monitoring investments, taking care of our health, nurturing our relationships, or ordering our affairs. Surrender, acceptance, and trust are not synonymous with indifference, inattention, and disinterest.
As many wise beings before us have said, we do the best we can do, hold the highest thoughts possible, live life according to our truest set of values, and ultimately trust in the flow of life and in the higher order of things.
Indeed, a very wise old man, a master sculptor from Spain named José de Creeft, who was still carving and modeling remarkable pieces well into his nineties, said, "It is not our job to worry about the music. It is our job to become the best instruments we can so that the music of God can play through us."