Reflections on simplicity

It's complicated because there's never enough time. In my anxiety to conquer time by controlling its dispensation, I feel myself victimized by it. I am unable to find time, take time, get time: all control words. (3)

In reality, it is God we would like to control, or replace.... our desire to be our

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own source of security, to substitute ourselves for God, our desire to be God....We keep learning that the roots of our desire for control are subtler, more interior, more devious, than we imagined. The continuing revelation is that the master we really serve is our own ego. (13)

The process of becoming simple is the process of letting go of the desire for the power to control my own life. The means to becoming single-minded is a continuing process of confronting my own duplicity. The objects I seek to control, interior or exterior, are the masters I serve. From this vantage point, it looks as if one cannot aim at simplicity itself, but only approach it from the back door, that is, the door of letting go or detaching, as that is revealed to us. From this vantage point, one can reach the master whom one wants to serve only by discovering the false masters, the idols, progressively revealed as one's own lust for control. We become single only by discovering how we are double. (14)

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