Control Dramas and Power Theft

We must face up to our particular way of controlling others.

The Fourth Insight reveals that humans have always felt short of energy and have sought to control each other to acquire the energy that flows between people. The Fifth then shows us that an alternative source exists, but we can't really stay connected with this source until we come to grips with the particular method that, we, as individuals, use in our controlling, and stop doing it-- because whenever we fall back into this habit, we get disconnected from the source.

Getting rid of this habit isn't easy because it's always unconscious at first. The key to letting it go is to bring it fully into consciousness, and we do that by seeing that our particular style of controlling others is one we learned in childhood to get attention, to get the energy moving our way, and we're stuck there. This style is something we repeat over and over again... our unconscious control drama.

I call it a drama because it is one familiar scene, like a scene in a movie, for which we write the script as youths. Then we repeat this scene over and over in our daily lives without being aware of it. All we know is that the same kind of events happen to us repeatedly. The problem is if we are repeating one particular scene over and over, then the other scenes of our real life movie, the high adventure marked by coincidences, can't go forward. We stop the movie when we repeat this one drama in order to manipulate for energy.

"A perfect example of how a control drama interferes [is] how you were so aloof you didn't allow an important coincidence to take place. Everyone plays a drama of [some] kind.

At least now you know how yours works.

Your way of controlling people and situations... in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself that you're being cautious but what you're really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what's going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings.

The first step in the process of getting clear, for each of us, is to bring our particular control drama into full consciousness. Nothing can proceed until we really look at ourselves and discover what we are doing to manipulate for energy.

The next step [is that] each of us must go back into our past, back into our early family life, and see how this habit was formed. Seeing its inception keeps our way of controlling in consciousness. Remember, most of our family members were operating in a drama themselves, trying to pull energy out of us as children. This is why we had to form a control drama in the first place. We had to have a strategy to win energy back. It is always in relation to our family members that we develop our particular dramas. However, once we recognize the energy dynamics in our families, we can go past these control strategies and see what was really happening.

Each person must reinterpret his family experience from an evolutionary point of view, from a spiritual point of view, and discover who he really is. Once we do that, our control drama falls away and our real lives take off.

[You] begin... by first understanding how your drama was formed.
Tell me about your father.
Well, he was always critical. I could never do anything right.
How did he criticize you?
He asked questions, then found something wrong with the answers.
And what happened to your energy?
I guess I felt drained so I tried to keep from telling him anything.

You mean you got vague and distant, trying to say things in a way that would get his attention but not reveal enough to give him something to criticize. He was an interrogator and you dodged around him with your aloofness.

An interrogator is another kind of drama.

People who use this means of gaining energy set up a drama of asking questions and probing into another person's world with the specific purpose of finding something wrong. Once they do, then they criticize this aspect of the other's life. If this strategy succeeds then the person being criticized is pulled into the drama. They suddenly find themselves becoming self-conscious around the interrogator and paying attention to what the interrogator is doing and thinking about, so as to not do something wrong that the interrogator would notice. The psychic deference gives the interrogator the energy he desires.

Think about the times you have been around someone like this. When you get caught up in this drama, don't you tend to act a certain way so that the person won't criticize you? He pulls you off your own path and drains your energy because you judge yourself by what he might be thinking.

Let me explain the classifications spoken of in the Manuscript.... Everyone manipulates for energy either aggressively, directly forcing people to pay attention to them, or passively, playing on people's sympathy or curiosity to gain attention. For instance, if someone threatens you, either verbally or physically, then you are forced, for fear of something bad happening to you, to pay attention to him and so to give him energy. The person threatening you would be pulling you into the most aggressive kind of drama, what the Sixth Insight calls the intimidator.

If, on the other hand, someone tells you all the horrible things that are already happening to them, implying perhaps that you are responsible, and that, if you refuse to help, these horrible things are going to continue, then this person is seeking to control at the most passive level, with what the Manuscript calls a [poor me] drama. Think about this for a moment. Haven't you ever been around someone who makes you feel guilty when you're in their presence, even though you know there is no reason to feel this way?

It's because you have entered the drama world of a [poor me]. Everything they say and do puts you in a place where you have to defend against the idea that you're not doing enough for this person. That's why you feel guilty just being around them.

Anyone's drama can be examined... according to where it falls on this spectrum from aggressive to passive. If a person is subtle in their aggression, finding fault and slowly undermining your world in order to get your energy, then, as we say in your father, this person would be an interrogator. Less passive than the poor me would be your aloofness drama. So the order of dramas goes this way: intimidator, interrogator, aloof, and poor me.

Some people use more than one in different circumstances, but most of us have one dominant control drama that we tend to repeat, depending on which one worked well on the members of our early family.

If you are a child and someone is draining your energy by threatening you with bodily harm then being aloof doesn't work. You can't get them to give you energy by playing coy. They don't give a damn what's going on inside you. They're coming on too strong. So you're forced to become more passive and to try the poor me approach, appealing to the mercy of this person, guilt tripping them about the harm they are doing.

If this doesn't work, then, as a child you endure until you are big enough to explode against the violence and fight aggression with aggression.

A person goes to whatever extreme necessary to get attention energy in their family. And after that, this strategy becomes their dominant way of controlling to get energy from everyone, the drama they constantly repeat.

How does the interrogator develop?

What would you do if you were a child and your family members were either not there or ignored you because they were preoccupied with their careers or something? Playing aloof would not get their attention; they wouldn't notice. Wouldn't you have to resort to probing and prying and finally finding something wrong in these aloof people in order to force attention and energy? This is what an interrogator does.

Aloof people create interrogators [and] interrogators make people aloof. And intimidators create the poor me approach, or if this fails, another intimidator.

That's how control dramas perpetuate themselves. But remember, there is a tendency to see these dramas in others but to think that we ourselves are free from such devices. Each of us must transcend this illusion before we can go on. Almost all of us tend to be stuck, at least some of the time, in a drama and we have to step back and look at ourselves long enough to discover what it is.

Once we see our drama, what happens next [is] we are truly free to become more than the unconscious act we play. As I said before, we can find a higher meaning for our lives, a spiritual reason we were born to our particular families. We can begin to get clear about who we really are.

[About finding "true self"]

There's only one way. Each of us has to go back to our family experience, that childhood time and place, and review what happened. Once we become conscious of our control drama, then we can focus on the higher truth of our family, the silver lining... that lies beyond the energy conflict. Once we find this truth, it can energize our lives, for this truth tells us who we are, the path we are on, what we are doing.

The process of finding your true spiritual identity involves looking at your whole life as one long story, trying to find a higher meaning. Begin by asking yourself this question: Why was I born to this particular family? What might have been the purpose for that?

What did your father stand for?
Has he been able to do this?
Have you thought about why?
What about your mother?
Can you see what her life represented?
So where did that leave you?

Didn't they both want your allegiance? Wasn't that why they were interrogating you, to make sure you weren't siding with the values of the other? Didn't they both want you to think their way was the best?

You're looking for the meaning her life has for you, the reason you were born to her, what you were there to learn. Every human being, whether they are conscious of it or not illustrates with their lives how he or she thinks a human being is supposed to live. You must try to discover what she taught you and at the same time what about her life could have been done better. What you would have changed about your mother is part of what you yourself are working on. [And} how you would improve on your father's life is the other part.

We are not merely the physical creation of our parents; we are also the spiritual creation. You were born to these two people and their lives had an irrevocable effect on who you are. To discover your real self, you must admit that the real you began in a position between their truths. That's why you were born there: to take a higher perspective on what they stood for. Your path is about discovering a truth that is a higher synthesis of what these two people believed.

How does one live a life that is both? From your mother you received the knowledge that life is about spirituality. From your father you learned that life is about self-enhancement, fun, adventure. For you, spirituality is the question. Your whole life will be about finding one that is self-enhancing. This is the problem your parents were unable to reconcile, the one they left for you. This is your evolutionary question, your quest this lifetime.

You can go right back into your old drama, or you can wake up tomorrow and hold on to this new idea of who you are. If you do then you can take the next step in the process, which is to look closely at all the other things that have happened to you since birth. If you view your life as one story, from birth to right now, you'll be able to see how you have been working on this question all along. You'll be able to see how you came to be here in _________________ and what you should do next.

The Sixth Insight is my special insight. My truth is helping others grasp this insight. And I'm effective because I've gone through the process myself. I was an interrogator.

My father was a poor me and my mother was aloof. They completely ignored me. The only way I could get any attention energy was to pry into what they were doing and then point out something wrong with it.

My father stood for accomplishment. He was very goal oriented. He planned his time to the minute and judged himself according to how much he got done. My mother was very intuitive and mystical. She believed that each of us received spiritual guidance and that life was about following this direction.

Because of my father I was sensitized to the idea that life was about accomplishment: having something important to do and getting it done. But at the same time my mother was there to tell me life was about inner direction, an intuitive guidance of some sort. I realized that my life was a synthesis of both viewpoints. I was trying to discover how we are guided inwardly toward the mission only we can do, knowing it is of supreme importance to pursue this mission if we are to feel happy and fulfilled.

And you can see why I was excited about the Sixth Insight. As soon as I read it I knew that my work was to help people get clear so that they could develop this sense of purpose.

Wil's drama was to be aloof, like yours. Also, as in your case, each of his parents was an interrogator and each had a strong philosophy they wanted Wil to adopt. Wil's father was a German novelist who argued that the ultimate destiny of the human race was to perfect itself. His father never advocated anything but the purest of humanitarian principles, but the Nazis used his basic idea of perfection to help legitimatize their murderous liquidation of inferior races.

But searching out the Manuscript awakened all this in him.

The insights spoke directly to his main question. They reveal that the thought of both East and West can indeed be integrated into a higher truth. They show us that the West is correct in maintaining that life is about progress, about evolving toward something higher.

Yet the East is also correct in emphasizing that we must let go of control with the ego.

We can't progress by using logic alone.

We have to attain a fuller consciousness, an inner connection with God because only then can our evolution toward something better be guided by a higher part of ourselves.