Mastery

Greetings all,

I once more set out on the road again this week. Not just for a weekend this time.  I will be staying out until after the second expo.  This has been a busy season so far.  Once winter settles in, my traveling days will be done for a bit and I can work on my artistic endeavors again.  This week's topic could have just as well been last week's, as it arose from a conversation with a friend of mine.  I'd like to spend a little time speaking about mastery.

This seem's to be the seeker's goal.  Many of us start on a spiritual path either due to a deep longing for meaning or because we are profoundly unhappy with the direction our life has gone.  Pain often is a great motivator as we don't seek to change when everything is nice and pleasant.  So we set out on the road to discovery.  What is mastery though?  Ask different seekers and you'll get different answers.  For me it was the ability to transmute or transcend any circumstance, to be untroubled by what was within myself and out in the world.  For others, it is to be without desire or without fear. The longer I am on my path the less certain I have any idea of what mastery is.  These days I would say it means the ability to fluidly change how I relate to anything be it a person, place, circumstance, or myself.  I could of course be wrong, it happened once before.

Over the years, I have had people come to me convinced I could let them in on a big secret of the universe, and that they would be transformed into a shinier version of themselves, a version without troubles.  Where there is life there is hope, but there are also challenges.  The difference between a master and ourselves (I''m assuming you're not an ascended master reading this post, if you are then yay) is how we show up for those challenges.  I don't know about you but I don't embrace my troubles like I do my joys.  All the people who have come to me wanting to be a master wanted to do it and remain essentially themselves. That's pretty impossible I mean to transform we have to change, quite dramatically. Many of us myself included have wanted change without changing.  We start doing the work and things start to shift and we freak out.

I drove myself crazy trying to become a master.  Mostly because I decided there was no time to lose I had to achieve mastery right now!  No ego involved in that attitude, nope not even a little.  As with many things involving the ego it stems from a fear of not being good enough.  Yes that old tired belief set.  The I'm not young enough, pretty enough, smart enough, strong enough, talented enough, emotionally mature enough, etc…. This mode of thinking always has our becoming somewhere off in the hazy future.  Someday I will be good enough to be a master.  Someday I will be good enough to be loved.  Someday I will be good enough to be of service.  It is of course a lie.  You will never be good enough someday.  You are good enough right now.  When I opened my healing practice, I knew a lot less than I do right now, and yet I was able to help people.  I'm sure a year or so from now I'll know a great deal more.  You see we are always in the process of becoming.  Every minute of our life we are becoming ourselves.  By taking mastery out of the equation, we allow ourselves to embrace who and what we are.  I have in essence given up on becoming a master, and elected instead to become more of who I am in this life.

So how about you?  Are you waiting for your so called perfected self to feel worthy?  Do you think you need to be a master to be of service?  Do you entertain fantasies of an unencumbered journey through life?  Well you might want to think twice and remember Dorothy wanted to go over the rainbow, but when she got there she found evil witches, flying monkeys, and charlatan wizards.   So why not click your heels together and wish to be who you are.  Let yourself off the hook.  You don't have to be a master today, only yourself.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle