Author Richard Eyre has said, “I have come to believe that almost all of us spend a substantial amount of our time and our mental effort seeking three things that end up working against us and against our happiness and joy. They are things that almost all of us think are good things — right things — things we think will bring us happiness. And it is our obsession with these three things that destroys the balance and the quality of our lives. The three things are Control, Ownership, and Independence.”

Oh how we as Americans long for Control. Like proverbial St. Nick, we make our lists and check them twice, but we are usually only concerned with getting ahead without regard to being nice. It seems that we have been sold on an idea that we can control our destiny by orchestrating the events and decisions in our life through rigid theories and inflexible patterns with a hope that our efforts will determine who, what, when and where we will be. We place ourselves at the center of everyone’s universe naively thinking we can regulate other people’s behavior, with shame, discipline and reward as we endeavor to accomplish “our goal.” And when things go wrong, as they usually do, or in a different direction than we had planned, we become paralyzed with frustration and overwhelmed with stress.

Some may suggest that Ownership is an American way of life in which there seems to be a giant scoreboard where we are seemingly measured and valued by that which we own. There is an associative competitive spirit that perpetuates a desire to be seen as good as one’s neighbors or contemporaries using the comparative benchmarks of social caste or the accumulation of material goods. This desire for ownership, commonly referred to as “keeping up with the Joneses,” is so strong that we have been willing to work longer and harder than any people in the history of the world because we want more wealth, more possessions, and more exclusivity. Unfortunately, when we compare what we own to what others own we usually end up envious and jealous or else proud and condescending — both of which lead ultimately to unhappiness.

So great is our desire for Independence that in America we even have  a holiday named for it. We rigidly postulate a seeming notion that we are Lone Rangers, while spreading the mistaken belief that we can be completely removed for others and that we need no one but ourselves. Yet our basic human needs tell us that that we must be interconnected and interdependent in order for us to love and to make commitments.

Richard Eyre further continues: “We not only desire Control, Ownership, and Independence; as a society we worship them. They are our idols. They are what we measure success by. They are what our self-help books are about. They are the assumed goals that cause us to change jobs, or to get a second job, or to move to a new place or to not have another child, or to go further into debt, or to buy bigger planners or day timers, or to try to get through things on our own rather than ask for help. There are two big problems with the concepts of Control, Ownership and Independence. One is that they cause stress, frustration, and unhappiness. Two is that they are false concepts! They are lies!“

When you really think about it, what do we really control? Do we really believe that one small individual in a world governed by higher supreme powers than we can really control the events, timing, elements and laws that govern our universe?

Consider the title transferring documents used to bestow ownership. A simple examination will reveal that these intellectual property instruments are nothing more than recognized licenses declaring acknowledge rights for use. There really is very little that one can own. We instead become agents and stewards of that which has been entrusted to us.

And from what are we independent? Honest reflection clearly reveals our interconnections and our dependence on sources and powers beyond our self, as even the very air we breathe is beyond our ability to create.

Richard Eyre concludes: “Most people, when they really think about it, can see the limits and the falsehoods in the idea of Control, Ownership and Independence…Control, ownership and independence are very useful economic concepts, and are also at least partially useful and true psychologically. It’s good to control our checkbooks and our emotions. Ownership and property rights are essential in a democracy and a free economy, and trying to live with relative independence in a psychological and economic sense is certainly a virtue.

The problem comes when we get so obsessed in our desire for the three, and our pursuit of them, that we let the obsession take over our lives. It is in the spiritual context that each of the three is a lie. And the spiritual context is the most important one. Reality is best and most accurately understood as a spiritual paradigm. And it is in the eternal, spiritual “things-as-they-really-are” point of view, that control, ownership, and independence do not exist. “