Breaking the Chains of Control
Embracing Change and Collective Well-Being
Chrysta reflects on flawed power structures, critiquing the modern scramble for control that leaves many feeling trapped and unfulfilled. She explores how spiritual awakenings arise when external achievements crumble, urging a shift from suffering and competition to grief and growth. Emphasizing change as a constant, Chrysta advocates for leadership rooted in divine service and relationships that complement rather than compare, guiding us toward valuing collective well-being as the ultimate truth.
Transcript
We’re thinking about power structures in the world lately. They’re not saying them, they’re saying this is a collective vibe. That for so many years we’ve strived to create a different power structure that works. They’re showing going from this hierarchy within the Middle Ages, coming into, like we’ve built something else, but that something else is even sicker than the system we moved away from.
Indeed, the desire for control, for power runs rampant. While this existed previously and has always existed, the vast majority of the time people were born into a station, whereas now we’re desperately fighting for control and desperate for mobility to break out of the monotony that many see in their daily lives. Yes, it is true, we have become slaves to a system to try to better ourselves and in the end many feel like they have lost themselves within the system.
This is how many come to have a spiritual awakening, been on a path, in which the external accomplishments, achievements, doing, being, looking a particular way from the outside has -- built this net that when the net crumbled we fall to the floor -- it is generally not a soft landing. In many cases it’s a landing that feels like one has broken every bone in their body, the very foundation of truths we built our life upon no longer hold true.
That is not to say what we are doing in the external doesn’t matter, what we are doing in the external matters deeply. What people are seeing is it doesn’t give the result of satisfaction like we are expecting, because what we do in the external is only a piece of retaining satisfaction. Additionally, when corruption and a lack of self-reliance, self- awareness and morality aren’t part of the infrastructure you working within, one spends a lot of time digging out sludge that’s not your own in order to remain more true to self.
There’s lots of people who have tried to move away from these systems. -- They’re showing in building of communes or other communities. -- Many times these situations start out peacefully enough, but the desire to crawl up and gain power and control can cause any organization to crumble. Thus, we must be very mindful of who or what we put in the seat of power and recognize that whoever sits in the throne of power must recognize the leadership and power are not their own, but instead come from God, come from the divine.
That the leader must always be listening and must be in act of service, not self-sacrifice though. The martyrdom complex is very corrupt as well. -- like I am a leader, therefore I must suffer for you -- There is all too much focus on suffering and the requirements of suffering in this world. Yes, suffering is a part of this existence, but do we suffer for someone else? Or do we suffer for another reason altogether?
They’re not answering that question. Why does suffering always need to have a purpose? We talked before about joy and pain filling the same cauldron, so to speak, opening us up to the same space. We’re much better off flocking toward grief than flocking toward suffering. Suffering implies a resistance with the perpetuation of grief and our own emotional instability.
Coming in and out of this perceived stability is part of the human experience. We’ve all experienced times in which we deeply sense this loss of control. This most often comes up as suffering. When in reality the only thing that made you feel you were in control was things were going the way you wanted them to. So, desire comes into play when we’re thinking about what we want and also suffering. Which is this active not getting what you want. They’re saying we could say it’s more complicated than that, but it’s really not.
Look at where the desire for control fits into this narrative around suffering. The lack of accountability for actions in one’s own existence. We say this because many times people are aware of either patterns or circumstances in their lives before they are willing to change them and often things must crumble more and more and more and more before people are willing to change. Why, they’re saying, why the discomfort with change, is not change a constant part of this human experience. We must remind you all things never change at once, so there’s always things staying the same and there’s always things changing.
Sometimes there’s a season for one thing to change, then there’s a season for another thing to change, but nothing remains in stasis. This an important part of understanding the human experience. Putting our focus on what is staying the same and what is changing. So often we are reacting or freaking out about the thing that’s changing that we don’t want to change; when other things change every day and we’re okay with that, because we have an expectation of change.
You can expect everything in your life will change at some point. Even the very core of your identity seems to change. You can’t look at an 80 year old and look at that person when they are 20 and see the same person. Yeah, there might be some threads that tie them together, but that’s part of what we like to reflect on a life journey. How many different experiences? How many different variations of self we’ve gone through? How many different lives we’ve affected? It’s not that any one thing stays fixed in time. Thus people find more happiness when they are looking at how they are growing and moving forward and who they have an opportunity to become through the change rather than just looking at what’s changing.
We call this a growth mindset, but it goes deeper onto the level of the soul than that. It takes careful study of who we are on a core level to understand our desires in all this. Desire for power and control versus desire for growth versus desire for suffering, all go down onto this deep core level. We ask you look at these patterns within yourself. What comes up at what particular time? A lot of times these patterns aren’t fixed, move through them -- looks someone’s shuffling a deck of cards – we’re just shuffling through which one is coming up. Sometimes we get stuck at “I don’t want that one” within this pointed piece of judgment that can be distracting from the actual shifts.
We brought this up around power structures, because that desire for power and control grows out of this idea of predictability that you can predict your own outcome. That somehow controlling others gives you a higher truth and a higher purpose. This deeply competitive nature that we foster, that we must be better than those around us in order to be here. This a very harmful belief and in fact, is massly instructed in most of our systems. That the best person will win, that the best must be the fittest, the best must be the -ist of everything rather than recognizing the rhythms of chance, the rhythms of change throughout life. And how we complement each other in particular situations rather than the singularity of a ranking.
We can think of how we complement each other in relationships. Like, this person brings out my funny side and I really enjoy this. And this person inspires me to work harder. Observing how you shift and who you are around other people rather than “their hair straighter than mine”, or “she’s prettier than I am”, or “she’s smarter”, or whatever we go into rather than loving someone else, we’re destructing ourselves in their presence. And that’s very different than love. This competitive nature is at the very root of the power structures that we’re trying to tear down right now and that we’re seeing compromised by corruption and by this revealing that everyone’s well-being wasn’t at the center of it all anyway. How do we get back to valuing overall well-being as the highest truth of God?
Meaningful Quotes
“We’ve strived to create a different power structure that works… and that something else is even sicker than the system we’ve moved away from.”
"We have become slaves to a system to try to better ourselves and, in the end, many feel they have lost themselves within the system."
“The very foundation truths we’ve built our life upon no longer hold true.”
“There is all too much focus on suffering and the requirements of suffering in this world.”
“You can expect that everything in your life will change at some point. Even the very core of your identity seems to change.”
"When corruption and a lack of self-reliance, self-awareness, and morality aren’t part of the infrastructure you’re working within, one spends a lot of time digging out sludge that’s not your own."
"We’re much better off flocking toward grief rather than flocking toward suffering. Suffering implies a resistance with the perpetuation of grief."
“This deeply competitive nature that we foster, that we must be better than those around us in order to be here… is a very harmful belief.”
"This competitive nature is at the very root of the power structures that we’re trying to tear down right now. And that we’re seeing are compromised by corruption and by this revealing that everyone’s well-being wasn’t at the center of it all anyway."