The Hidden Desire for Control

I began examining why I wanted a sign.

On the surface, the answer seemed innocent. I wanted to make sure I was practicing correctly.

Surely there is nothing wrong with wanting to know the truth.

But underneath that desire, I discovered something else.

Fear.

I was afraid of being wrong.

Afraid of directing my consciousness toward an illusion.

Afraid that God might not be listening.

Afraid that I might not be receiving the love I was seeking.

And most importantly, afraid of surrendering myself to something I could neither understand nor control.

My request for rain was not simply a prayer.

It had become an experiment.

I had established a condition and expected reality to satisfy it.

If it rained, I would feel reassured.

If it did not, I would doubt.

In other words, I had made my confidence in divine love dependent upon a physical event.

And in doing so, I had subtly changed the direction of my attention.

I was no longer concerned only with receiving love.

I was concerned with obtaining certainty that I was receiving it.

These are not the same desire.

The desire to receive love opens a relationship. The desire to guarantee love seeks control over that relationship.

And control, at least in this experience, was being driven by fear.

Of course, not every exercise of control is fearful. We organize our lives, protect our families, make plans, and exercise judgment for perfectly reasonable purposes.

But there is a particular form of control that arises when we cannot tolerate uncertainty.

We try to turn what is unknown into something measurable.

We try to convert a relationship into evidence.

We try to make reality reassure us that our expectations are correct.

And when reality refuses to cooperate, we suffer.

I began to wonder how much of my spiritual life had been shaped by precisely this impulse.