Mastery is a state of being which puts an end to all suffering.It is our default state.  Yet few, very few,  experience it.  Why?  Simple really… the road to mastery is strewn with suffering.One cannot become a master without going through the suffering. There is no going around it.  Until one stops trying all the intricate way we have at our disposal to navigate around the hard work, little if anything is accomplished.  Rather than embrace our natural state, we run, really run, in the opposite direction.  We are like Forrest Gump.  “Run Forrest, Run!” Rather than sacrifice in place, we hightail it to the next pleasurable experience.Our lives are a serious of state changes.

“The only way to get to the bottom of it, is through the dark, bottomless pit”   Jay Cradeur

In short, we suffer, we look for something, anything, to stop the suffering, and we move towards it and away from mastery.We are state change junkies.Rather than be Human Beings, we are Human State Changers.

It breaks out like this.A man feels bored so he masturbates.A woman feels bored so she shops.We all have free time and we watch television.Few are the men and women who will face the fire and stop moving.Few will sit in the place of boredom, or anger, or lust,and feel it through and through.

We are trained state change artists.Masturbating, shopping, eating, talking, internet, television, books, work, relationships, children, sleeping, workshops, movies, drinking, and (add your own) all serve as ways for us to change our state.We seem to want to walk a middle ground, stay in the same safe emotional range, and not sway too far from one side to the other.Not too happy and not too sad.Better to be in the safe middle part, because that part we know.

The path to enlightenment, to mastery, isn’t pretty.To quote Richard Rose:

Richard Rose - www.tatfoundation.org

“Look, if you ever want to discover anything of importance,” he said with great seriousness, “you’ve got to get this Pollyanna crap out of your heads. People think they can indulge in whatever whim overpowers them at the moment, and that somehow this ‘spontaneity’ is going to transform them into a wonderful spiritual creature that God just can’t resist loving. This is nonsense.”

This action of changing state is the real killer.  It kills our birthright of freedom.  Why is it that when you buy a new car, you feel good?  Why is it that when your new car gets in an accident you feel bad?  What fucking difference does it make it the long run?  Why feel good or bad about anything?  How many times do we need to have an experience to recognize there is no special in special?  There is a puppet master pulling the strings and nobody sees the strings.

Here is a prayer I often use:

I am eternal

I am infinite

I am grateful

I am nothing

Nothing doesn’t burn

Every feeling is a learned behavior.  Certain things make you feel good, and certain things make you feel bad.  Doesn’t anybody want to dig even a little bit deeper and ask the question: Why?  What are the value systems that are in place?  Where did they come from?  You have money – Good.  You don’t have money – Bad.  Says who?  Why do we think we are any better or any happier than the guy who lives on the street with his shopping cart?

I need a little Thoreau right now:

Henry David Thoreau

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

I see state change every where.Everyone is so uncomfortable with experiencing the present moment.At the heart of the this is the Ego.Rather than accept what the universe delivers to us, we move away.Rather than take the shortest path to mastery, we walk, no, we run, in the other direction.

I am reminded of the recommended solution for a partner that has betrayed and had sex with someone else.Rather than sit with the feelings, and figure out why it hurts as it does, we say “Go have sex with someone else.”State change.Yet, when you look at this situation in the objective light of day, if he or she wants to have sex with someone else, why not?If someone isn’t in to you, why do you want them to stick around.It makes no sense.Wish em well and send them off.But no, it would be better to go have sex with someone else as quickly as possible.Makes no sense.

We create these worlds of insulation, all to stay in the middle ground.Note to reader:

There ain’t nothin’ that happens in the middle ground.It all happens around the sharp and jagged edges.

Rather than saying to the universe: “Hit me with your best shot”, we run and hide and protect and cover up so that we don’thave to experience the uncomfortable.Where did we learn to run and hide (another way to say “state change”)?

I am not interested in people who, when I ask them how they are doing, say “Good” all the time.I am interested in my brothers and sister who are in the struggle, who are willing to feel the pain and not run from it.For me, these people are alive.Everyone else is dead, living in some prefabricated fantasy for which only the harshest of life experiences will create any sort of awakening.

We live in a world of zombies, all with the same goals, all with the same feelings, all with the same beliefs, all so shit sure they are living a full life.Where is the questioning?Where is the desire to know thyself?Where is the thrill of a life lived in the unknown?

I had an experience of Samadhi some four years ago.During those hours, it was made clear to me that this life is an illusion.The idea that we are separate beings seemed preposterous.I felt in that experience that I could die having achieved what I came here to do.It was a blessing and a curse, for now I am still here, seeing the world through unfiltered eyes.Part of me has wants to scream out at the top of my lungs, something like “Wake up!!!”There is another part of me that recognizes everything is as it is and that is just about perfect.  And.. there is yet another part of me that feels that any efforts on my part would be about as significant as farting in the wind.  We all have our own paths to follow.

Adi Da Samraj - www.adidam.org

The Divine Process is not magic. You must respond. Beings must respond. You must do the work. Otherwise, you are controlled by the structures of your own adaptation, and no great thing occurs. Adi Da

In the process of self exploration, something shifts which creates an opening, a focal point through which the universe can speak directly.The more I read and study, it seems this is the common experience.It isn’t light flashes and a permanent state of bliss.It isn’t anything really.It is discovering nothing.It is realizing that the ego is nothing more than a little voice of distraction.It is not me and it is not you.The ego is the gatekeeper, who keeps telling us to move towards the comfortable.The ego thrives in the comfortable.Life is lived on the edge, far from the comfortable.To get to the edge, stand still.It will find you.And so I walk my way through this existence, speaking to those who want to hear, and not caring one way or the other whether I am only talking to myself.

Osho - www.theleadershiphub.com

“My purpose is to deprogram you, to clean you, to uncondition you and leave you fresh, young, innocent. And from there you can grow into a real, authentic individual.”

And the only way to bring consciousness is to go on hammering from all the sides so that slowly slowly chunks of your mind go on dropping. The statue of a buddha is hidden in you. Right now you are a rock. If I go on hammering, cutting chunks out of you, slowly slowly the buddha will emerge.”

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