Most of us spend our lives trying to keep things under control. We manage our emotions, our words, the way people see us, and the outcomes of our choices. Control feels safe. It gives us the illusion that if we hold on tight enough, nothing will threaten us. But if we’re honest, control takes a devastating toll: exhaustion, anxiety, disconnection, depression, stress. The awe and wonder of life fades. The harder we try to control it, the less we are truly living. 

When I talk about control, I’m really talking about the structure of identity: the personality, habits, and survival strategies we’ve built to get by in the world. It’s the part of us that knows how to keep things familiar. But beneath that identity is something more. Call it soul, being, true nature, eternal self, the Love we are…

Identity is provisional, fragile, and changeable. Soul is unchanging, eternal, and whole. Living only from identity keeps us in survival mode. Living infused by soul is living from essence.

The shift I’m pointing to is from control to allowing. Allowing whatever arises within us while trusting our inherent enoughness. It’s the process of identity loosening its grip so that our deeper essence and nature can flow through and touch our humanity.

 

Why We Control 

 

The ego’s function is survival. Our identity forms as strategies to keep us safe, to make us feel solid, to remain in the realm of what we know. Control is how we do this.

We control because it gives us a sense of continuity, a sense that we know who we are. Without it, we fear groundlessness. But the continuity we hold onto is false, and it keeps us bound.

 

As A.H. Almaas writes, “The ego is a structure that attempts to preserve identity, but essence is what we are beyond that structure. When the personality relaxes its control, essence begins to flow into it, transforming it.” The very things that once protected us end up cutting us off from something deeper.

 

Control shows up everywhere. It closes us to life itself. We stop hearing the deeper guidance inside. We cut ourselves off from mystery and wonder. Growth slows. Possibility narrows. Instead of being nourished by what is real, we settle for the life our mind can manage.

 

The Invitation to Give In 

 

So what happens when we stop controlling?

At first, it’s difficult. All the patterns we’ve relied on for survival rise to the surface. Habits, addictions, old beliefs, they all come up. The nervous system reads letting go as a threat: If I don’t hold on, I’ll die!

This is why the beginning of this path often feels worse before it feels better. Not controlling doesn’t mean abandoning ourselves. It means staying. Staying in the body. Staying with the discomfort. Staying in the heart. Staying a few seconds longer than we could before.

Through staying in our experience, and choosing not to be pulled back into familiar strategies, what has been hidden begins to surface. It can be raw. It is vulnerable.

And then something shifts. The body softens. The breath deepens. The energy that’s been locked away starts to return. A wider intelligence shows up, one we could never manufacture.

 

Where Soul Meets Human

 

To be infused by soul is to let life move through us directly, without filter. It’s when our eternal essence touches down in the messy, temporary reality of being human.

Instead of rejecting our density, we meet it. Identity, history, gifts, darkness, light, it all belongs. Our patterns stop being enemies. They become doorways.

We start noticing how much we try to control, this is honesty and vitality returning. This practice of staying, of feeling without identifying with every thought, is how identity softens and our deeper essence is embodied. Over time, our humanity begins to shine with the qualities of our soul.

And as the “shoulds” of the mind, the opinions, demands, and compulsions, start to fall away, something else comes through. Beneath the noise is a natural rhythm, a real impulse. It’s not a rule or command. It’s simple: I feel like walking. I feel like reaching out. I feel like creating. This isn’t compulsion. It’s alignment.

Gradually, the need to filter everything fades. We find a naturalness, a raw availability of heart. Compassion, forgiveness, creativity, love, kindness, wisdom: they stop being concepts and start becoming lived realities.

 

Not controlling isn’t a one-time choice. It’s a daily practice. It starts in the body, noticing the urge to tense or escape, and staying with it just a little longer. From there we begin to see how much we try to control everything - and we meet that with love and forgiveness. 

 

Letting go of control isn’t passive. It means choosing, again and again, to stay present with our experience, allowing what we feel to be felt without agenda. It takes courage, vulnerability, and the willingness to embrace ourselves exactly as and where we are.

Ram Dass put it simply: “The ego is who we think we are. The soul is who we really are.” When we stay, soul touches ego. And the grip begins to loosen. This isn’t about escaping our humanity. It’s about embodying it more fully.

Choosing not to control unravels the structures we’ve built for safety. And yes, that can feel like loss. But what falls away is only the machinery of control.

What remains is more real than anything identity could manufacture.

 

Bela Crowder