I said some time ago (1) that, when I enter a new area, I try to establish a beachhead of understanding.
Why understanding? It’s been the conventional wisdom from a way back that the ways of the mind cannot help us in spiritual exploration.
But another fact of spiritual life is also important and that’s that what spiritual life is all about is learning the truth of an ultimate mystery – who we are.
Given that truth plays such a big role in spiritual life, establishing the truth of a situation can be helpful. And even if what we establish is not the truth, it still stimulates and promotes the questioning enterprise and may bring us closer to the truth.
Once the truth is known, realization may occur. And it’s realization we’re aiming for.
So I now enter a new context called “self-mastery” and I attempt to make the first distinctions possible, to establish clarity and carve out for myself some solid ground to stand on.
The first distinction that occurs to me is around the word “self” in self-mastery.
It makes no sense that the self we’re to master is the “Self,” the soul, the Atman, the Christ. The Self is the master of us all. There would be nothing permanent that could master the Self except the Supreme Self.
So the “self” to be mastered must be the lower vehicles – the ego, mind, senses, body, etc. (2)
The old paradigm of creative expression gave little thought to mastering the self. It gave more thought to expression and that worked well as long as the task before us was to end suppression.
But now the task is to prepare ourselves for working with higher-dimensional beings. Creative expression can’t help us as well with that task as with the other.
The Company of Heaven has been assisting us to do the clearing work that rids us of our vasanas and false grids. That’s the brush-clearing that must go on if we’re to have a chance at mastering the self that remains after the clearing is completed.
The paradigms we’ve outgrown are also false grids. All grids may be ultimately false. But some work better than others to assist us to know how to conduct ourselves. And self-mastery, though another grid, falls into that category.
So the first distinction I make as I establish a beachhead of understanding in the new world of the paradigm of self-mastery is that what we’re here to master is, not the Self, but the self. Instantly upon saying that, I feel a degree of clarity flood me.
Footnotes
(1) “A Beachhead of Understanding,” Aug. 16, 2013, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/08/a-beachhead-of-understanding/.
(2) A reader encouragingly writes in:
Self-mastery’, what a strange name to call something that does not exist…
The Real Self does not need to be mastered…
The False self only needs to be thrown away…
How easy it is to understand Reality…
The seeking and the desires are also thrown away…
When You have found Your Self, the path ends…
Welcome Home….
