When I Stopped Trying to Control the Ending

Control can feel very sensible. If I can work out exactly how something should happen, I can prepare for it, steer it and hopefully avoid disappointment.

There is one small problem with that. I have already decided the best possible ending before life has had a chance to show me anything else.

That is a lot of confidence for a mind that can walk into a room and forget why it went there.

In Kundalini Yoga, we learn to observe the mind instead of automatically following it. During meditation it becomes very clear how quickly the mind decides what it wants and how persistent it can be when reality takes a different direction.

It decides how a conversation should go and how another person should respond. Once that picture is fixed, our energy becomes focused on trying to produce it.

That is how control limits us.

We rehearse a conversation until the other person has been given a script they have never seen. We decide an opportunity only counts if it arrives in the form we expected. Then we measure everything that happens against the ending we have already chosen.

When life changes course, disappointment can arrive before we have even discovered what the change may offer. Sometimes the ending we were fighting for was only the best one our mind could imagine from the information it had at the time.

Kundalini Yoga brings another dimension to this. Our thinking mind is finite. It works with memory, previous experience and what it can currently see. Our practice also connects us with intuition and the Infinite Self. From there, possibility reaches far beyond the plan created by the mind.

Surrender still asks us to participate fully. We take the action that belongs to us and then allow life to respond. We can prepare carefully and speak clearly without trying to control every step that follows.

We practise this each time we come to the mat.

When a kriya becomes challenging, the mind wants to decide how much longer it can continue. We keep breathing and remain present. During mantra, thoughts keep arriving with their many helpful suggestions. We return to the sound.

Each return teaches us that a thought can be heard without being obeyed. Something deeper within us can remain steady while the mind works through its reactions.

Control usually begins with a very human wish to feel safe. That deserves compassion. Yet trying to mentally hold a situation in place uses an enormous amount of energy. Sometimes we only recognise how tightly we have been holding on once a kriya is complete and the body finally softens.

We may finish the practice with the same situation waiting for us, but its authority over us has changed. We can see another response. We can make a choice from clarity instead of fear.

Psychology describes something similar as psychological flexibility: the ability to stay present and continue acting from what matters while uncertainty remains. A review of 91 studies involving more than 30,000 people found that difficulty tolerating uncertainty was linked with less helpful ways of regulating emotion, while mindfulness had the strongest positive relationship.

Another series of studies following people through daily stress and over six months found that people who accepted difficult thoughts and feelings experienced less negative emotion during stressful times and better psychological health.

Science is describing one part of what we experience through practice. When the mind stops wrestling with every unknown, we have more freedom in how we respond.

Once we stop pushing for one result, we can actually see other possibilities. A conversation may reveal an option we had dismissed. A delay may lead us away from the wrong decision and towards something far more suitable.

Control can produce the circumstance we are trying to create, if we manage to get it. Surrender leaves room for that circumstance and many others. One of those other possibilities may be far better than the ending we had decided upon.

Letting go is a practice. I can release an outcome during meditation and find myself mentally organizing it again before breakfast. Apparently, the mind does enjoy collecting things we thought we had put down.

So I return to the breath and mantra and begin again.

Now, when I feel myself trying to control an outcome, I ask:

Am I supporting this situation or forcing it towards one ending?

What else could become possible if I let go of how I think it should happen?

I still care deeply and take the action that is mine. Then I allow the situation to show me what else is possible.

Control offers one ending. Letting go leaves room for many.

Some of them may be far better than anything I could have planned.