How do you try to exert control?
Some attempts to gain control are overt: Demanding. Manipulating. Laying down rules for yourself or others.
And some ways are insidious.
When we don’t move forward with our dreams it’s a form of trying to exert control.
We Can Control an Idea in the Mind
A good idea loves to rest in the safety of the mind. It loves to remain as the seed of potential and possibility.
In that seed form, all things are possible. An idea flourishes in a dream. In a vision, it can become anything.
In the safe recesses of the mind, I can control what the idea becomes, how it evolves, where it leads.
When I put the idea into the world, it may play out differently from how I imagined.
Once we plant an idea seed in the soil of time, we lose control.
Because we control neither the soil nor time. The idea will be shaped by time and nature and the elements. It will be shaped into something that perhaps differs greatly from what you imagine.
Out in the world, the idea will be influenced by factors out of your control and may evolve into something beyond your vision.
This is the fear:
The fear of losing control of the potential and possibility of what the idea seeds could become.
The fear that the idea will take on a life of its own, a life that you could not have predicted and maybe don’t even want for it.
Creation Means Giving Up Control
When an archer shoots the arrow he lets it go. He no longer controls where it will land.
No matter how well the archer set up the shot, aimed at the target, calibrated the bow, once the arrow sets sail it is out of his control.
A parent brings a child into the world, and eventually must release control of who the child will become.
So too with the idea “children” we birth. We may bring the idea into the world, we can set them up to take a certain trajectory, and we may have a preference for where that idea will lead, but once released into the world the elemental forces impact it, shape it, and mold it. We will no longer have control of our idea.
Our idea.
The Illusion of Your Idea
This is the illusion: that the idea was ever yours to begin with.
Ideas birth through us; they do not belong to us. We steward them; we don’t own them.
We get to help the idea take root in the soil of now. We get to nurture it and care for it, to watch it evolve under the influence of the elements and grow in the soil of time.
We don’t get to control it.
You Are the Channel, Not the Creator
We are responsible only for being the channel through which the idea flows into the world.
Our job is to unblock the channel and let the idea flow freely.
The idea is for the collective. It didn’t begin with you and doesn’t belong to you.
Most important, the idea serves no value when locked away.
When locked in the cages of your dreams your ideas don’t serve you and cannot serve the world.
If it came to you, it’s your job — your duty — to birth it into the world, and to let it go, so it can serve it’s intended purpose.
Release your ideas. Let them become their destiny.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...