Lost in the Freedom of Living
The ego loves to imagine itself as the master of experience, clutching at the illusion of control. It whispers: I am steering, I am directing, I am managing what unfolds. But when we turn our attention to the phenomenology of that supposed control, what do we actually find?
Look closely. Beneath the surface, the experience of control is not freedom, but contraction. It is the narrowing of attention into vigilance, the tightening of muscles, the bracing of psyche against the unknown. What feels like mastery is often just insulation, a walling-off from immediacy. In the name of keeping life manageable, we distance ourselves from the raw vitality of life as it unfolds now. Control is not contact. It is the dulling down of life’s pulse into something more predictable, less dangerous, and less alive.
The Riot of the Ego
The ego is a riot. On one hand, it craves life to be static—predictable, organized, and safe—so that it can feel in control. On the other hand, it can’t stand still for long. It hungers for stimulation, novelty, and distraction, even as it fears what change might bring. This double-bind keeps the ego spinning: resisting change while chasing stimulation. It seeks security and excitement simultaneously, but finds neither. What results is not freedom, but restless dissatisfaction. Only when this riot quiets do we find ourselves lost in the freedom of living.
Reactivity vs. Responsiveness
This tension feeds reactivity. Reactivity is the ego’s attempt to manage its paradox, to clamp down on the unpredictable while feeding off stimulation. It is fast, rigid, and fueled by old patterns—our history replaying itself in the present moment. Reactivity is not about reality as it is, but about keeping the ego’s contradictions from unraveling.
Responsiveness, in contrast, emerges from presence. It does not need control, nor does it fear change. Responsiveness is not driven by old contractions but arises from direct contact with what is. It is supple, creative, and rooted in objective reality rather than in the echoes of the past. Where reactivity narrows and repeats, responsiveness opens and renews. Responsiveness is the soul’s way of being lost in the freedom of living.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. — Alan Watts
The Freedom of No Control
When we inquire into our need for control, childhood echoes begin to emerge. Old beliefs and strategies taught us that safety lay in vigilance, that survival required a tight grip on the flow of experience. But vigilance, while protective once, becomes a cage. What was meant to shield us from harm becomes the very barrier that separates us from the full taste of existence.
No control, then, is not chaos. It is the uncoiling of that ancient contraction. It is allowing experience to arrive unfiltered, uninsulated, and unarmored. In the absence of control, life floods the senses with its immediacy—the warmth of sunlight, the rawness of grief, the thrill of uncertainty, the quiet of presence. The vitality of no control is the vitality of direct contact. It is here that we truly lose ourselves in the freedom of living.
I am not afraid of chaos, because chaos is the womb of light and life. — Carl Jung
To release control is to discover beauty not in the safety of distance, but in the intimacy of being touched by life as it is. In surrendering the reins, we find that experience doesn’t collapse into disorder. Rather, it expands into depth. What seemed dangerous to the ego is revealed as the very source of aliveness.
The invitation, then, is not to tighten but to loosen, not to master but to meet. The beauty of no control is that life no longer has to be held together by effort—it holds itself together. And in that discovery, we finally feel what it means to be alive: lost in the freedom of living.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and a student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.