The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [32]
Then it dawned on me. These people were controllers, in the same sense that the Old Prophecy had described them in the Fourth Insight. We had come to the Fourth Integration—so of course I would be running into controllers!
As the Prophecy had shown, controllers were not interested in truth, and only marginally motivated by outcomes. What they wanted above all was the feeling of power that comes from dominating others. In order to do this, they make up any facts necessary to throw the other person off balance and undermine his self-confidence. And if the controlling was successful, the victims would eventually lose their centered clarity altogether and begin to defer to the controllers’ opinions—which, of course, would give the controllers a hit of energy and power from the others’ attention. Controlling is obsessive behavior, used to push away insecurity.
This type of controlling is the chief characteristic of those both Left and Right, who have a primarily ideological approach to politics. They don’t want to debate the issues. They want only to shout down the opposition and win. The old Prophecy predicted that this selfish insecurity could be resolved only when one found true security: a spiritual connection inside, where seeking the truth and being of service were more important than winning.
Shaking off the experience, I continued to look around for any sign of Rachel and Wil but saw no one I recognized. I was about to head back to the tent when I heard someone talking in a loud voice in a campsite to my right. I looked around and tried to see through the dim, flickering light. The night was now draped in a slight fog-like haze from the smoke of the campfires.
Finally, I spotted four or five people standing in a group, illuminated by a large campfire. Two men were opposing each other in a heated interchange. One of them was shouting, and the other man was … Coleman!
I was so glad to see him that I rushed over and stood just to the right of him for support.
“You’re one of those Right-wingers,” the loud man said, waving a finger at Coleman. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be talking like this.”
Coleman shook his head. “I’m only saying that it takes a balance. Some people want big government totally regulating everything and others want big corporate influence and very little regulation. I think the best position is right in the middle, with just enough regulation to provide adequate consumer protection.”
His opponent wasn’t listening, going off on a tirade about how those were just code words for Right-wing intentions to undermine programs for people. He called Coleman a fascist extremist out to control the economies of the world and oppress anyone who wasn’t rich.
At that moment, a lightbulb went off in my head. We were now seeing the reverse of what I’d experienced earlier. When I tried to discuss politics with the Right-wing guy from a more moderate position, he called me a Leftist. And now I was witnessing a man on the extreme Left—because Coleman was also coming from a moderate position—accusing Coleman of being from the extreme Right.
Both extremists were using the same tactic. If someone disagreed with them even slightly, they were simply pushed into the opposite extreme category—so they could be dismissed and dehumanized and not taken seriously. That way, each side—far Left and Right—could justify their own extreme behavior. Each thought of themselves as the good guys having to fight to save civilization from a soulless enemy.
As the other man continued to shout, Coleman gave me an exasperated look and nodded that we should leave.
“Where are you going, Right-winger?” one of the other men shouted. “You aren’t going to win. If we have to install a dictator, we’ll do it. You aren’t going to win!”
Once we were out of sight, Coleman stopped and pulled a copy of the Fourth Integration from his pack.
“We need to talk,” he said.
As we walked back to where I had set up camp, I gushed out everything that had happened, including experiencing the Third Integration, seeing Rachel and