Meet the Controller

Part 2—Meet the Controller

3. Hold the Controller.

I used to speak about control as if it were simply a bad habit. I wanted to stop clenching, stop squeezing, stop trying to manage reality. When I get out of the way, ideas come from what feels like an infinite well of creativity underlying everything. Things happen more perfectly, with less stress and less worry. I know this from experience.

So why keep controlling?

Because control helped me.

As a child, I went from an idyllic life to thinking constantly about the end of the world. My parents became fundamentalist Baptists. I didn't believe what I was being told, but I knew that if it happened to be true, I was fucked. I'd be left behind when Jesus returned. The entire structure of the universe became unstable, and there was nothing I could do to settle whether the story was true.

Control gave me a shell. It gave me a modicum of stability in an unstable universe.

I didn't consciously design that strategy. A child found something that worked. Control narrowed the field. It created a little domain where action seemed possible. It helped me survive a reality that had suddenly become cosmic, threatening, and completely outside my control.

I've worked through much of the original fear. The habit remained.

That distinction matters. The controller isn't evidence that I failed to heal. It's a structure that continued performing a job after the emergency changed.

I also think the need to control is part of being human. The ego knows its time is limited. Death happens. The ego seems to believe that if it makes the right decisions and controls things adequately, it can go on existing forever and finally become happy and satisfied.

That isn't the human condition. We aren't here to establish permanent stability. Existence is inherently groundless, in my opinion and experience.

When I brought attention to the controller in my body, I could feel it under my rib cage. The sensation had moved lower over the years and faded, but it was still there. I expected to find a part afraid of failure or danger.

I found something more subtle.

The controller was afraid of boundless possibility.

It was afraid that if the full magnificence capable of moving through this body and mind were allowed to pour forth, it would have no home. It felt homeless and worthless. It believed there would be no need for it.

The part wasn't large and tyrannical. It was small. It wanted to hide in a hole. It wanted to stay small. It needed nurturing and tenderness.

That changed the work. I couldn't beat the controller into surrender. I couldn't shame a frightened part into trust. I couldn't tell it that it was illusory and expect it to feel safe.

The apparent self is precious. It's beautiful. It may be temporary and still deserve care.

The story beneath the controller became clearer. I was the oldest of five boys and the oldest grandchild. I pushed my brothers on their little riding toys and pulled them on sleds. They got to move fast. They got to be carried. I became the capable one.

After about six years old, I was rarely the one being pulled, pushed, or cared for. My father became increasingly absorbed in religion. My mother had five children and less time. I was highly independent, so the family system used that independence.

I learned to nurture and care for others. I became good at solving problems. People call me when they have hard problems, and I help them solve them. I love doing it. This isn't a complaint about service.

But every once in a while, I want somebody to fucking hold me and take care of things.

Every once in a while, I want to be the one whose problem is solved. I want to let go and relax, almost like a young child being held by his mother.

The controller wasn't asking for more control. It was asking to be held.

This is where the work becomes almost paradoxical. When I guide someone in a session, I appear to be holding them. But in that place, I feel held. A bigger I is held, supported, and loved. The controller is at total peace. I get to feel held while I'm holding someone else.

Everything gets to exist at the same time.

The controller doesn't need elimination. It needs a new relationship to the whole. It can become a tool rather than the operator. It can manage details, protect commitments, and notice risks without pretending it must move the hand of the painter.

When the controller appears, I can ask:

- What are you trying to protect?

- What do you believe will happen if you let go?

- How old do you feel?

- What would let you know that you will not be abandoned?

- What role could you perform without steering the whole life?

Then I can listen before the mind grabs the sensation and tells a story. The body often knows the shape before language arrives.

The goal isn't to convince the controller that nothing bad will happen. That promise would be another attempt at false stability. The goal is to let it know that it won't face what happens alone.

I can build structures that hold me: trusted sessions, friendship, mentorship, sound, movement, restorative practice, honest partnership, and the willingness to receive. Support isn't proof of weakness. Receiving doesn't erase authority. A two-way flow is stronger than a one-way flow.

Control once made an unstable universe feel stable. I can honor that service.

Then I can place a hand under the rib cage, feel the small shape, and say something different:

You do not have to disappear for magnificence to arrive.

You are not being left behind.

You are being held.

4. Let Magnificence Arrive.

At this point in my life, the loudest fear is often not fear of failure. It's fear of success.

That's a strange thing to admit because fear of success can sound like a story people tell when they want a more flattering explanation for avoidance. Sometimes it is. In my case, the distinction became clear in the body.

The fear appears at choke points where things are going well.

Most of the time, I believe the deeper intelligence is running the work. I get out of the way. The intellect, creativity, education, and experience become tools, almost like a laptop that opens when needed and closes when the work is complete. Then momentum builds. The scale becomes visible. The possibility becomes less theoretical.

That's when a part says, Hold back.

You can't possibly do this.

Only a very small percentage of people build something that large. What are the chances that you're one of them?

You're dreaming too big. You're fucking insane.

The voice is quieter than it once was. It isn't an audible voice. It often appears as contraction before it appears as language.

When I finally said the belief aloud, something unexpected happened. The bodily sensation weakened. My mind responded: What the fuck are you talking about? Here are all the reasons you're capable.

I said it again. There's no chance you can build a multibillion-dollar company. You went to a lower-tier law school. You went to a lower-tier undergraduate school. You were homeschooled. You can be antisocial.

Out loud, it sounded stupid.

Internally, the belief had felt like Gollum clutching the precious. Externalized, it was almost ridiculous. I called the process an anti-affirmation: say the limiting belief fully and honestly rather than covering it with a positive statement. Let it leave the nonverbal body and become a claim that can be heard.

The belief only existed because the belief existed.

It didn't exist because the external world reflected it. It created a sensation, and the sensation made the belief feel true. The loop proved itself by referring to itself.

Then another question opened it further: Whose belief is it?

I connected it to my grandfather. He was a deeply capable man and the trusted second-in-command at a multibillion-dollar company. He participated in enormous deals. He remained close to the person at the top without becoming the person at the top.

Moderation was one of his ideals. The lesson I absorbed wasn't simply, Be humble. It was: Don't become the point on which the whole inverted pyramid rests. Let someone else take the ultimate risk. Receive enough reward to live comfortably, but don't carry the entire responsibility.

He didn't say all of that directly. It was the way I interpreted his life and words. That qualification matters. I don't need to make him wrong to recognize that I inherited a model.

The model said second-in-command was the ideal place. My life is asking something different.

I have evidence that I can accomplish unusual things. That doesn't guarantee success. It doesn't mean I'm special in some cosmic ranking. It means my particular tapestry was woven from an unusual set of circumstances: homeschooling, self-directed learning, programming computers as a child, law, computer science, international tax, business advising, spiritual inquiry, and a lack of concern for many ordinary conventions.

Everybody has a unique tapestry woven by experience, family, genetics, education, and interest. Everybody offers something unique to the world. The thing I offer may also be the thing capable of driving a very large company.

Maybe this is bigger than what I've done before. What the fuck is the difference? It's a matter of degree.

I don't have to perform ninety-nine percent of the work. I have to find people who can do what I can't do and work with them. I have to hold the vision, integrate the parts, and make decisions that can't be delegated without losing the thing itself.

The controller hears magnificence as abandonment. If the work becomes grand, it fears that the small part will be forgotten. It believes success will prove it worthless.

So the answer isn't to force myself to think bigger. The answer is to let the small part know that expansion doesn't erase it.

Magnificence doesn't mean grandiosity. Grandiosity ignores evidence. Grounded confidence studies evidence. It includes limitations. It says: I can't do everything. I do not know everything. I have never built something at this scale. I'll need to learn. I'll need people. I may fail.

It also says: I can learn what I need to learn. I can hire people who know what I don't. I can lead a vision that came through me. I don't have to shrink merely because the probability is small.

When fear says only a few people do this, I can answer: A small percentage isn't zero. Someone occupies that percentage. The real question isn't whether I have permission to imagine it. The question is what the next honest action requires.

Then do that action.

Don't make magnificence a state to achieve. Let it pour through the tools already here.

Say the limiting belief aloud. Hear whether it's actually yours. Keep what's protective and true. Return what belongs to another life.

The fear of success isn't proof that success is certain. It's evidence that the possibility has become real enough to activate the part that prefers smallness.

Hold that part.

Then let magnificence arrive.

5. Claim Authority Without Fear.

I began with what sounded like a simple spiritual goal: stop controlling.

That goal was too crude.

There are times when getting out of the way makes me more decisive, not less. I become less likely to worry about everybody's feelings. That doesn't mean I become mean. It means that when I know the right thing to do, I can say, No, we're doing it this way.

From the outside, that can look like control. Internally, it may be the opposite.

The real distinction isn't control versus no control. It's fear-based control versus clear authority.

Fear-based control tries to secure a preferred outcome because the alternative feels intolerable. It rehearses conversations to eliminate uncertainty. It forces other people to perceive reality correctly. It rescues people who haven't asked to be rescued. It mistakes another person's autonomy for a threat. It believes that if it stops steering, everything will collapse.

Authority accepts a role.

Authority listens carefully and still decides. Authority allows another person to disagree without surrendering the responsibility attached to its position. Authority can set a boundary without trying to control what the other person does next. Authority serves the larger vision rather than the emotional need to feel safe.

I have the vision for my company in a way that nobody else probably ever will. That isn't an insult to the people around me. They offer enormous value in areas where I can't. I need to listen because I do not know everything. But listening doesn't require pretending that every role is interchangeable.

I'm the CEO. There's a reason I'm the CEO. Me being CEO is part of the flow.

That sentence used to feel dangerous because it sounded egotistical. But refusing to occupy a necessary role can also be ego. Shrinking can be ego. Avoiding a decision because I want everyone to approve can be fear-based control disguised as humility.

Only I can know the source of a particular action with any certainty, and even I can be wrong. So I need tests.

- Does the action arise from constriction or clarity?

- Am I trying to eliminate another person's freedom, or am I defining what I'll do?

- Am I protecting the vision, or protecting my image?

- Am I listening for information that could change my decision?

- Would I make the same decision if nobody praised me for it?

- Am I demanding a particular result, or accepting responsibility for the next action?

The body often knows first. Fear-based control clenches, flinches, and squeezes. Clear authority can carry intensity, but it feels cleaner. It doesn't need to explain itself endlessly.

I saw this most clearly when someone connected my business leadership to the way I guide sessions. In a session, authority feels effortless. I listen. I allow what needs to come through. I intervene when needed. I don't abandon the person in the name of being noncontrolling.

I have never reacted out of fear in a session. Even in an early session that became strange and intense, I noticed the thought that I might be in over my head, but I didn't let fear run the process. I entered my authority.

The realization was simple and enormous: the authority I need in business isn't foreign. I already know it.

The work is to transfer it.

Authority isn't the controller's attempt to move the painter's hand. Authority is the brush accepting that it's the brush. It allows itself to make the stroke fully. It doesn't become limp in the sense of refusing action. It becomes available.

This distinction also applies in relationships. I can love someone and stop trying to control how they perceive reality. I can stop being the foundation on which the entire relationship supposedly rests. A relationship only exists through the unique combination of two people in this moment. Trying to hold it in a steady state is a fool's errand.

Boundaries replace force.

A boundary says what I'll participate in. Control says what you must become so that I can feel safe.

Authority can say: I love you. I won't do this. I'll continue with what I'm called to do. You're free to choose. Consequences are real. I won't use spirituality to pretend otherwise.

The result may be painful. Authority isn't an outcome guarantee. It's a willingness to stand in the role that's actually mine.

Sometimes surrender means I stop forcing. Sometimes surrender means I make the decision I've been avoiding. Sometimes the deeper flow says no.

There's no contradiction.

Stop trying to eliminate authority in the name of surrender. Eliminate the fear that uses authority as a costume.

Listen carefully.

Notice the source.

Then claim the role that's yours.

6. Let Yourself Be Held.

Capability can become a trap when everyone, including me, begins to assume that the capable person doesn't need care.

I solve problems. People call me with difficult situations in many different areas, and I help. I can manage complexity. I can take care of myself. I love being useful. I love holding people when something important is happening.

But I spent much of my life in a one-way flow.

I was the oldest of five boys. I was the one pushing, pulling, carrying, thinking, and managing. Independence brought freedom, but it also trained the people around me to invest their care elsewhere. The capable child became the capable adult.

I used to think the unmet need beneath that pattern was evidence that I was neglecting myself. It wasn't. I'm good at taking care of myself. Self-care doesn't fully replace being cared for by another human being.

Every once in a while, I want somebody to fucking hold me.

Not all the time. I don't want to surrender my autonomy. I don't want someone else to run my life. I want moments in which I don't have to hold the structure together.

The controller interpreted expansion as another abandonment. If the higher self took over, who would care for the small apparent self? If the work became magnificent, would anyone remember the frightened part? The controller didn't merely fear losing power. It feared losing care.

That's why receiving matters.

When I guide another person in session, I enter a state where the apparent direction of care becomes misleading. It looks as though I'm holding someone else. In my experience, something larger holds me at the same time. A bigger I feels supported and loved. The controller becomes peaceful.

I get to feel held while holding someone else.

That isn't martyrdom. It isn't the old pattern of giving in order to earn love. It's a two-way flow. The work moves through me, and I receive from the same movement.

Leadership can work the same way, but only if I let it.

If I define leadership as being the point under the inverted pyramid, bearing everything alone, leadership becomes crushing. That was part of the model I inherited. The person at the top carries all the responsibility. The sensible position is close to the top, indispensable but protected, while someone else bears the ultimate weight.

But healthy leadership isn't solitary weight. It's relationship, role, delegation, trust, and mutual support. The leader holds the vision. Other people hold the leader in ways the leader can't provide for himself.

I can't do ninety-nine percent of what a large company requires. That isn't a weakness in the model. It's the model. My job includes finding people capable of carrying what's theirs.

The same is true in spiritual work. I have tools. I also need people around me who can see the threads and say one incisive sentence that reaches the heart of what I can't see alone. Receiving that sentence doesn't make the realization less mine. It creates the condition in which I can reach it.

Build a structure for receiving before the emergency.

Choose people with whom you don't have to perform capability.

Enter practices where the explicit purpose is to receive rather than produce.

Let a trusted person ask the question without rushing to answer.

Ask for practical help before resentment develops.

Delegate work that doesn't require your unique role.

Let support be specific. "Help me" can be too abstract for both people. "Sit with me while I feel this" is clearer. "Take responsibility for this decision area" is clearer. "Hold me for ten minutes without trying to fix anything" is clearer.

The controller needs evidence that surrender doesn't mean abandonment. Give it evidence.

This isn't dependency. Dependency tries to make another person responsible for my internal state. Receiving lets another person participate while I remain responsible for my life.

It's also not a transaction. I don't have to earn every act of care by solving an equivalent problem. I can let love move in both directions without keeping an account.

I once declared that the flow was no longer one-way. I'd talented people around me who contributed to the mission, people who supported me and people I supported.

It's a two-way flow.

Let that become more than an idea.

The capable person is still a person. The leader still has a nervous system. The one holding the room can also be held by the room, by the practice, by another human being, by God, by consciousness, by what is.

Call it whatever you call it.

Stop making capability a reason to remain untouched.

Let yourself be held.