I believe that the desire or need for control comes from fear.

For me, the fear is that if I have to deal with the spontaneous or the unexpected I’ll be found wanting – I’ll be seen, attention will be focused on me and I’ll be found out as not being good enough or important enough.  I am aware that this desire resides in me and I think it was born when my Mother retained all the control in my life (friends, money, social time) – right up until I married my first husband at the age of 21. Thereafter, being away from the controlling situation, I needed to have control myself. I needed to be right.   I needed to know where things were going and what would happen. I planned things to death, lists were the order of the day and so were tantrums if things didn’t go my way! Over the last year or so – since I began my spiritual journey – I have come to understand that we have no real control over anything other than ourselves (though I do frequently still experience this desire to control, just as I fear being exposed as not being good enough). When I get into this place of resistance (need to control or opposition to what I believe), I feel it as tension, both physically and in my soul. It feels like there is a large, strong, solid fence resisting the wind, and the anxiety, anger, frustration and hurt that I feel is the turbulence caused by the wind hitting this immovable force. When I visualise it like this, I can imagine the fence changing into a tree with beautiful pliable branches, thus allowing everything through. The turbulence stops, and it really does feel like softening, and the anxiety, anger and hurt can dissipate. My soul feels gentler and more able to allow love in.

This really is a work in progress – it’s not easy to break down the walls that I have taken 30 years to build up, but brick by brick I am dismantling them.  Ultimately, they will go and the ‘me’ that I have been afraid to show the world will be there in all my glory – with no need to control, because I will understand that I am good enough and I am important!

This post was inspired by Julie Daley’s post ‘Softening into the Silk of the Soul’. You can find it here -  Unabashedly Female by Julie Daley

This was originally posted as part of Amy Palko’s Beautiful Beliefs Project at Sunshine on a Rainy Day on 6th June 2012.

This post is published as a contribution to Amy Palko’s Beautiful Beliefs Project.  If you would like to know more about Amy’s Beautiful Beliefs Project, then click here Amy Palko or on the box – it’ll take you straight there!