Managing the urge to Control – A Spiritual Guide to Healthy Relationships

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Haribol.

So the topic I was given: Managing the urge to control – a spiritual guide to healthy relationships. We are not, I’ll use the word “designed”, and we can understand that in different ways—we are not designed to be alone. We hanker for relationships. Our lives are, in many ways, touched, or we are involved in many different ways in relationships. We desire relationships, and yet we don’t think about the subject very clearly.

We enter into relationships with expectations. Right? We have expectations, but we frequently don’t really think about that very clearly, and we don’t identify it. Another thing that we never seem to do, is express our expectations of a partner in a relationship, nor do we discuss with them what their expectations might be of us. And that’s just like, oh my God, what’s with that one? Things are not going to work out very well if there is just so many unknowns and things undiscussed, and yet there are kind of quite strong feelings about what I expect from someone, and I often don’t consider what they expect from me. I take a lot of these kind of things for granted.

If we actually clearly thought about or verbalized what our expectations are we might be a little bit shocked at ourself, because our own expectations could potentially be unrealistic. I mean one of the common ones, when people look at relationships between partners and life, there is often an expectation that somehow or other, this other person is going to complete my life, that I’m going to find actual happiness in this relationship, that I am going to be fulfilled.

We often, in sort of subtle ways, make promises that we will also fulfill the other person. People do that in the way that they dress, and the way that they behave. There are all these subtle things that are being offered that are meant to make things sort of perfect and complete.

But then as things, time, passes, we often discover that our expectations are not actually being met, and then we seek to somehow control the situation or control the other person, in terms of behaviour, in terms of all kinds of stuff, hoping that if I can just get them to be like this, or to behave like that, or treat me like this, or treat me like that, then somehow there’ll be some great perfect thing happening here.

So, we have a sort of like a framework, or we have foundational beliefs for our relationships, both in relation to ourself and others. And we are not really often very cognizant or aware of what our expectations are. We just sort of—they’re just on board, and we’re just going with it, but we don’t really think about them very clearly; and we often blindly accept that my foundational beliefs or desires in relation to a relationship are good, and they will deliver on some perfection, on some great happiness. And of course, as mentioned, if I start experiencing that that’s not happening, if also my partner is showing signs of not being very happy with the relationship, then I become terribly insecure, and then I seek to become more controlling to produce what I think will be the perfect relationship.

And it’s like, many of the things that we can think or desire can actually be completely unrealistic. We don’t accept that we are gravely imperfect, and the person that we are in a relationship is also seriously imperfect. And when that discovery—when we discover that, then it’s like we’re all shocked.

One of the things that always used to blow my mind when I would hear it, when people have a disagreement, say a married couple, and one person says, “If I knew you were like that, I would have never married you.” And it’s just like, oh my God, how dumb is that? That’s your job. That’s your business to know who you’re getting involved with, and it’s your business to know what their character is like, what their expectations of you are, and what your expectation of them are.

In—I sometimes have been asked to offer people some counselling before getting into a very committed relationship, and I tell them, “One of the things you guys have to talk about, before you get too attached to each other, what do you actually expect from this other person? What do you expect from them, and what do you see as being your contribution to this partnership? What do you see as being your role? What are you offering, and what are you seeking to get?” And quite often, when people talk about that they suddenly realise, “Wow, we have different views of what a relationship should be and what expectations are.”

Our problem is, we sometimes discover these signs, you know, early into a relationship, we see a sign of, “Oh, what’s that all about?” And then rather than paying attention and talking about it, I think, “Ah, okay, I’ll fix the other person.” There’s something I don’t like in their character or their behaviour, or they’ve got some habit that I don’t like, and it’s okay, I’ll overlook it now, and later I’ll teach them how to behave properly. I’ll manipulate them into being the way I want them to be. We don’t openly say that but that’s actually what’s going on in our mind. And its sort of like, my gods, what’s that all about? How can you possibly have a healthy respectful and good relationship if you’ve got that kind of stuff going on in the background?

We often expect perfection from our partners in a relationship and don’t want to consider our own imperfections, but we become highly hyper-focused on their imperfections and seeking to change that, and so this tendency then to be very controlling, to try and manipulate a person or a situation to produce what we may consider to be an ideal outcome, becomes manifest in different ways.

It’s like so unfair to lay the burden on a partner in a relationship to make you perfectly happy and to love you perfectly. That’s so inappropriate, because another person, another mundane personality is not going to love you perfectly, nor are they going to be a perfect partner. And we often walk around with some ideal or fantasy in our mind, and then we try to control the situation to make the person like we want them to be and some sort of ideal that we’re seeing, and it’s so unfair to actually do that and to be thinking about or attempting to bring something like that about.

And the big problem with things is what I will broadly call material consciousness. I’ll just give you a little foundational thing here, in my approach to discussing things. Firstly, a spiritual perspective means the appreciation that I am an eternal spiritual being. This body that I am currently occupying is not my home and is not me. I am the person within. And similarly, a person that may be a partner in a relationship with me is also not that body that they’re wearing or inhabiting, that they are also eternal spiritual beings.

This world is not our home. We are passing through this current life. It had a beginning with our birth (or before it, but we can consider birth) and this current life experience will end with death—and that, we’re all doing that without exception. This is the trajectory, this is the path that we’re on. But we adopt this idea of trying to create a perfect life here, and that sort of like, that goes completely against a spiritual reality. This world is not perfect and other personalities here, while we may potentially have very nice, even wonderful, relationships with them, another person cannot fulfill your deep inner spiritual desire to both love and to be loved.

And then that opens up the question, “Well, well, wow, if that is the case then how should we be operating? How should we be dealing with each other? How should we be functioning? And is there a bigger picture?”

The bigger picture is that we are all eternally connected by a bond of eternal kinship to a transcendent spiritual entity or truth, the Supreme Soul, as it’s referred to in the yoga texts. And it is because we have become distant from that connection that we are busily hunting for someone to fill up that emptiness in our heart, within this world. Everybody desires to be connected to something great, to something big, to something greater than themself. You think so, or not? Like somebody thinks, Wow, if some famous personality or some famous movie star supposedly falls in love with me, that somehow that’s going to make my life amazing—or some rock star. And that one goes to crap pretty fast. And it’s so—but that desire is there, and that desire is manifest in so many different ways.

I was talking to some people at the Mount a couple of days ago. I remember one time looking at—I can’t even remember where it was. It was in somebody’s house, they had like a coffee table book of astronauts—Americans, Russians, French, Indian, all kinds of different astronauts that have been into space; and so they had like a picture of looking out of the window of a space craft in space, or just a big—a picture of just the vastness of space. And in a few lines, a couple of sentences from each one of these astronauts, and each one of them have this experience, and it’s like a religious experience; looking at the vastness of the universe and the smallness of this world on which we all live there is just this overwhelming sense of great awe, that I am part of something vast that I don’t understand or comprehend, and I am actually very small.

But when we get caught up in this world and our lives, we can get really petty, and we can get really nasty, and we get so upset when things are not going our way. And it’s due to, as I mentioned before, I used the term, material consciousness.

Material consciousness has got two components. One is the idea that this body, which is made of material energy, is me. I’m sorry, that’s not true! You’re not that body. If you think you are the body you are on a pathway to unhappiness, because you will think that I will find happiness, I will find acceptance, I will find love or being lovable all in relation to this body that I have. And of course, oh, where does, the trajectory of the body is you have birth, then you have growth and development, youthfulness, maturity, then there’s often offspring, and then there’s a decline that starts becoming very rapid to its diminishing or death. That’s the trajectory. That’s where it’s all going.

And if I think that by—or through the medium of this body alone that I’m going to find perfection, that I’m going to find perfect love, that I’m going to find acceptance, that I’m going to be categorized as being lovable or not, by how it looks, oh, you are in a world of hurt, and it will get very unpleasant.

The second part of material consciousness is this overwhelming sense that I am the centre of everything. I see everything in relation to me. I use terms like my mother, my father, my husband, my wife, my partner, my children, my friends, my town, my city, my country. I see everything in relation to me. And when I think about that in relation to what I was just mentioning earlier, about the astronaut in space, looking at the vastness of the universe and the smallness of the earth, and how you can’t even make out the cities hardly, which could be filled with five or eight or ten million people in the biggest cities of the world. And you—each one of them is thinking that I’m the centre of things. I’m seeing everything in relation to me.

This is a massive contribution to unhappiness, and it is a massive problem in connection to relationships, because it very much becomes about my expectation, and what I want, and, “You didn’t give me what I wanted. You hurt me.” You know, it’s just the me thing. And it’s sort of like, oh, this is just a formula, a guarantee of unpleasantness, of pain and unhappiness.

The cultivation of a spiritual understanding, a spiritual vision, means a realization of my essence: that I am an eternal spiritual being, my position: that I am very small in relation to the vastness of this universe, I am simply one of a limitless number of living beings, that we are all connected, that we are all equal in nature and—but amongst all living beings there is categorized and understood to be one that is extraordinary and different, that we do have an eternal connection, a bond of kinship with. It is described in the Brahma Samhita. And my most natural function, of the soul itself, the spiritual being, the thing that where I will find the greatest happiness, is in loving, and in that love, to serve.

And this is why, when we show kindness, when we do something selflessly and we manifest kindness, we help someone, we do something, there is a feeling that’s so wonderful, that’s so nice. It’s not like you’re jumping up and down and “Yaaah!!!” you know, but there is this calm but strong feeling of something very nice that touches us deeply within our heart of hearts. And that’s because that act, even if it is not purely spiritual, is connected to our deeper inner spiritual nature.

In relationships that are founded on material consideration, where my mind is filled with all of these desires that I think I want and need, and then I manifest a controlling—a tendency to want to control, either subtly, or quite strongly, depends on a person’s personality, but we want to control the situation and the relationship to produce what we consider is desirable and what we consider is important. When we attempt to control any other living being, for the purpose of trying to extract from them my happiness, you will be unhappy. You will not be able to be fulfilled. We don’t have any right to be demanding something of someone else, or thinking that they—my happiness is dependent upon them, and I’m deserving of that, and you have to give me what I want, you have to make me happy—This is like—oh my, you’ve got to learn to let that one go. It is so unrealistic.

How should we be living then? I’ll just read a couple of texts. They’re spiritual texts. One of them is from the Bhagavad-gita, and it talks about this—the way in which we should view all others. When I say all, doesn’t matter what the nature of our bodily relationship, they may be our children, our parents, a partner in life, or whatever, but how we should actually see things.

“He is a perfect yogi who, by comparison to his own self, sees the true equality of all beings, both in their happiness and distress…”

This is an amazing position, and it addresses both pride and arrogance, where somebody thinks they’re better than others, or the opposite side of that coin, where, “Oh, I’m useless, I’m not worth anything, I’m dumb and stupid.” That’s just the opposite side of the same coin. The spiritual reality is that all living beings are equal in nature. There are not higher, and there are not lower. All living beings are deserving of and are completely lovable.

In another verse from an ancient text, the Bhagavat Purana, it states:

“The Supreme Soul is very satisfied with the transcendentalist when they greet other people with tolerance, with mercy, with friendship and with equality.”

And of course, we can ask ourselves in our own relationships—and we’re talking about all the variety of relationships—is this how we view others? Is this how we deal with others, with tolerance, with mercy, with friendship and with equality?

If I see anyone else as being someone to exploit—we may not have that—we may not think of that word, and we may not think of it in that way, but when we demand from others that they should provide us with happiness and love, then we are seeking to exploit them. We are seeking to use them for self fulfillment; and another person, a mundane personality cannot fulfill you, cannot completely satisfy you. That is too big an ask.

We should look upon each other—and I’m talking specifically in terms of relationships and partnerships, husband, wife, whatever, we should look upon each other as fellow pilgrims, and we are on a journey together, seeking something greater, more holy, more spiritual, more wonderful, that we are seeking to reconnect—I mean the word “yoga” means union and linking, not of individual spirit souls with each other, although that’s automatically going to be there, but we’re talking about the connection between the individual spirit soul and their source, their origin, this is what that union is.

And when I look upon my partner in life as a fellow pilgrim and we are on this journey together, both seeking that which is spiritual, that which is great, that which is whole, that which is inspiring, and we recognize our individual shortcomings and deficits, and I try to help my fellow pilgrim to their feet when they stumble and fall, and they try to help me to my feet, and we aid each other in going together on this higher, this journey of a higher spiritual purpose, people can become very wonderfully connected and actually begin to love each other and to care for each other.

And it’s not based on the idea of, “What can I get from you to complete my emptiness? What can I get from you to make me whole and happy?” Instead of a relationship of trying to get, it’s a relationship of, what can I contribute? what can I give? It’s giving rather than taking, and it’s people moving together towards something that is greater, that is whole, that is holy, that is spiritual in nature.

The idea of seeking to control other people in a relationship, to exploit them for some temporary happiness, for some distorted sense of what I think I need to become complete, is a perverted idea. There’s nothing noble about it. There’s nothing wonderful about it. It’s exploitative.

So this is a big picture, and personally, I think it’s a wonderful picture. What do you think? Think it sounds nice? It’s an ideal. We need ideals. Even if we are very imperfect, we need ideals. We need to be striving for something greater than ourself. We need to be striving for that which is more complete and whole, which is more compassionate, which is more loving; and we need to constantly keep that in front of us, and to move in this way for our life to become more complete, for it to have real meaning, to be able to experience something actually very wonderful.

So, I think that’s about as far as I will go tonight. Was this—you like this? Or not? Nobody’s going to throw anything at me?

Audience: No.

Acharya das: No.

This is not just a fantasy. Material world is a fantasy. When people get together and expect each other to be—make my life whole. My partner is going to give me—make it so I can feel perfect love and happiness and everything, that’s a fantasy. There’s nothing real about that. That’s a false expectation.

What I’m offering is something very real. But it requires that we become heroic, not a big thing, but in a small way, that we begin to make a commitment in our life, that I will strive, I will be open to receiving grace, I will be open to be granted strength, intelligence, to be granted a good heart and right motivation. But I have to desire that. I have to actually really desire it and be open to receiving such things.

But as soon as we begin to alter how we’re thinking, yeah, we’re going to get a lot of resistance, because others may not respond in the way that we want them to. But that should not alter us. We are not in charge of how anybody else is going to live, and what they’re going to do. You are only responsible for your own life, your own life.

Oftentimes when people fight and it degenerates, people develop a thinking, “Oh, you hurt me, now I have a right to hurt you.” No, you don’t. They don’t have a right to hurt you, and you don’t have a right to hurt them just because they hurt you. You can defend yourself, but the idea of causing hurt to some somebody else, that’s not payback; that destroys your own heart, your own mind and peacefulness. Our focus needs to be on our own life and being responsible for it.

Okay, so that’s the end of things there. We’ll just chant a little bit, and then during the dinner, if you have questions, feel free to ask, and I will try to answer them for you. Okay? Thank you very much.

So I’ll chant also the Mahamantra.