Quotes About Control

The very unfortunate result of this preoccupation with order, control, safety, pleasure, and certitude is that a high percentage of people never get to the contents of their own lives!

That's what happens in the early stages of contemplation. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That's why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things that show up are wild beasts (Mark 1:13). Contemplation is not first of all consoling. It's only real.

You rest in God, not in outcomes.

This new world order is based on the experience of a God who is experienced personally. Jesus seems to be saying that God is not a philosophical system, a theory to be proven or an energy to be discussed or controlled, although we have often reduced God to such. Jesus believes that God is a Person to be imitated, enjoyed and loved.

We each have our inner program for happiness, our plans by which we can be secure, esteemed, and in control, and are blissfully unaware that these cannot work for us for the long haul—without our becoming more and more control freaks ourselves. Something has to break our primary addiction, which is to our own power and our false programs for happiness.

the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

often the rich, the religious, and the self-sufficient know nothing about self-surrender. Jesus

Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot "manage," you will never find the True Manager. So, God makes sure that several things will come your way that you cannot manage on your own.

Contemplation is waiting patiently for the gaps to be filled in, and it does not insist on quick closure or easy answers. It never rushes to judgment, and in fact avoids making quick judgments because judgments have more to do with egoic, personal control than with a loving search for truth.

this preoccupation with order, control

In a certain but real sense, the church itself is the first cross that Jesus is crucified on, as we limit, mangle, and try to control the always too big message. All the churches seem to crucify Jesus again and again by their inability to receive his whole body, but they often resurrect him too. I am without doubt a microcosm of this universal church.

Any time you surrender a negative, accusatory, compulsive, or self-serving thought, word, or behavior, the Buddhists describe this as "dying"! Power, self-image, and control do not give up without a fight, and this is first of all true inside of our minds, where the illusions begin.

The shadow self invariably presents itself as prudence, common sense, justice, or "I'm doing this for your own good," when it is really manifesting fear, control, manipulation, or even vengeance…. Invariably, when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction, out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed, so watch for any over-reactions or over-denials.

You surrender your need to control your partner, and finally the relationship blossoms. Yet each time it is a choice—and each time it is a kind of dying.

The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is control. You must leave the Garden, where there are angels with flaming swords to keep you from ever really returning. You must leave the womb to be born.

You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?

Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths, though in the end there's but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves only because we have no choice.

But of course everything had conspired to spoil her entrance, which only went to prove what Janine already knew: that no matter how well you planned something, God always planned better. If He was feeling stingy that day and didn't want you to have some little thing you had your heart set on, then you weren't going to get it and that was all there was to it.

You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities.

You can do things his way, or you can wish you had.

people are forever confusing will with power

I don't dislike Gracie. At least I don't dislike her when I think about her. When I'm in one place and she's in another. It's when she's near enough to backhand that back-handing her always seems like a good idea. This is true of several of my colleagues, actually, though they don't bother me in the abstract.

I've got Abba in my head," she told him. "Make them go away.

She had always seemed to him to be deep-down wild, the wilder because she harnessed that wildness most of the time.