"The beginning of mastery is that what you are mastering at
least comes up for you immediately when you have failed with
what you are mastering, that is to say, you consistently
immediately catch yourself."
If we're going to have a useful, practical conversation about the
beginning of mastery in the space / time allocated, let's pick one area
of living in which we can easily distinguish the beginning of mastery,
and then later extrapolate back to all areas of living in
which we can distinguish the beginning of mastery. With all that said,
in this conversation let's entertain the possibility of mastering
peace of
mind.
Let's distinguish the beginning of mastery of
peace of mind.
Look: don't bother entertaining the possibility of mastering
peace of mind
until you can first accept and acknowledge your mind's monkey-ness
is its nature. That's
a Buddhist notion:
the mind does what it does whatever it does whenever it does, bounding
like a monkey from one distraction to the next, from one shiny object
to the next discontiguously - which means bouncing /
careening from topic to topic not continuously but brokenly,
interruptedly, intermittently.
Even veteran practitioners of
the meditation
disciplines
who claim they can
quiet
the mind, will attest (if they tell the truth about it) they bring at
best only a temporary respite ie the monkey mind can only be
temporarily
quieted.
So if
peace of mind
is to be mastered, it won't be through
quieting your mind.
I'm
sorry,
but that's not its nature. Really. Instead it's likely to be through
accepting / accommodating its very monkey-ness, that is to say
it may just be in your allowing your mind to be in which
the possibility of mastering
peace of mindshows up,
not in working on changing the nature of your monkey mind itself.
I assert it is an
attitudinal
shift
toward responding to your mind's monkey-ness with "There you go
again ...", and away from being distracted by (not to mention
frustrated by / exhausted by, drawn into) its monkey-ness which is the
beginning of mastery of
peace of mind.
Try this on for size: the beginning of mastery of
peace of mind
is that when you're distracted by and drawn into its monkey-ness, it at
least comes up for you immediately when you have failed with
mastering
peace of mind,
that is to say, you consistently immediately catch yourself
being distracted by and being drawn into its monkey-ness.
So with that laid out, here's something kinda obvious to
consider
(and how often don't we overlook the obvious?): maybe the immediacy
with which I catch myself being distracted by and drawn into its
monkey-ness ie maybe the speed with which / the velocity
with which I catch myself being distracted by and drawn into its
monkey-ness, is the only measure of mastery of
peace of mind
worth anything, and not the
quieting
of its monkey-ness itself (just maybe).
These are ideas of
Werner's
through which I view the beginning of mastery of
peace of mind.
But his distinctions could also be deployed as the beginning of mastery
of any area of living you're intent on mastering. Mastery begins not
when you take on something to master. And it doesn't even begin when
you take on something to master, and fail with mastering it. No,
it begins when you take on something to master, fail with mastering it,
and it at least comes up for you immediately when you've
failed with what you are mastering. That's what's called catching
yourself. It's when you consistently immediately catch yourself
when you've failed with what you're mastering, that you can correct it
/ fine tune it. That's when mastery begins. That's the beginning of
mastery.
