Does your spiritual path teach ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’? Control or no-control? Does your chosen spiritual path require you be an active participant or a passive observer? Do you seek to surrender control of your thinking or are you seeking to channel your thoughts through some form of intentionality?
Sometime ago, I engaged in just such a discussion through Tom Stines blog and his post “No Control, No Control, No Control.” Tom, and many of his readers, believe that the path to "awakening" requires a detachment from thought or ego. To quote Tom, “We like to think we have control, or we like to think that we have at least some control, but in point of fact, we’ve got none. Hell, we can’t even control the thoughts that flow through our minds, let alone the turning of the wheels of life. And, to get right down to it, there isn’t even a you who is or isn’t in control! How’s that grab you?! No you, no control.”
You'll notice by reading the comments attached to this post that there were a fair number of egos who agreed with Tom and many who did not (my comments are listed under Mike S).
When you closely examine the ingenuity of the ego in creating brilliantly designed "awakening games" that secretly serve (actually it's not very secret at all) to further accentuate itself, you must wonder why folks are so anxious to escape it or demand the ego surrender control. Why not tap the power of the ego to see how far it can take us, since obviously it must be fully utilized to play “awakening games.”
Alas, the ego does cause suffering, but of course, that's contingent on the ego’s choice of suffering games (similar to awakening games, except a different prize). Yet, that is exactly what the awakening games seek to alter. Your ego is what 'you' are, since it is a psychological package of beliefs you clearly designate as 'you.' The rule for the "no-control" player is that you passively identify with your belief package rather than firmly assert it. This is fine and I imagine it may help reduce anxiety/fear, that is until certain problems pop up demanding an assertive ego and then the game is seen as disingenuous.
In this game the ego recognizes that it is the cause of suffering, therefore, it needs to get out of its way so that suffering will cease. It sets up a game in which it attempts to redirect its experience of suffering by asserting a claim that it's no longer in control, hence, suffering should cease. The rules of the game are that we simply allow thoughts to come and go and don’t attach to the thoughts, but merely let them pass. Essentially, this means that the ego will continue to construct concepts (that's what egos do!) with the goal of not attaching to what it makes.
The problem is that this tends to deny the hierarchical thinking that the ego engages with, in which some concepts are more serious than others. This is because thinking is a serious game (why else would we seek to detach from it) in which some thoughts or concepts predominate over others.
The thought “I am hungry” is much more serious than the thought “I am bored,” since relieving boredom is certainly not as crucial as relieving hunger. The ego can easily detach from boredom because boredom is a concept having very little to do with survival of the body and the body is a major idea in the ego’s bundle of concepts making up a "you." Continuing to detach from hunger will exacerbate your suffering until you eventually die. Obviously, ego demands existence and so hunger must be attended to very assertively.
We may pretend this hypocritical contradiction does not exist, but eventually we will realize the rules are disingenuous simply because the ego makes up the rules it has determined will save it.
Now the argument seems to be, “there is no 'YOU' to be bored” and that makes sense in relation to the abstract nature of the concept of "you." But try “there is no 'YOU' with hunger and I imagine you won’t get very far. Although you may surrender control of your “boredom” you will inevitably seek to control your “hunger.” The game is stacked against you from the git-go, so why bother playing by those rules?
However, it's fine if you choose to play by those rules, I just wouldn't take it too seriously, that's all. You can feel free to play any game you choose (make no mistake, 'you' do choose), but it will be the degree of seriousness you attach to the chosen game that will determine your degree of suffering. The game of not taking ego seriously (detaching from thought) can be a very serious game. Once it becomes a 'serious game' then the rules take on grave significance and world history demonstrates what happens when we take "awakening games" (or God) seriously.
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