Mastery and Self-inquiry.

1.

Around the end of the previous century, I woke up. What I mean is that I stopped searching and started finding. And what you will be reading is my personal experience as I continued to know myself by being myself. I’ll be brief.

I have been practicing mastery since many years, this has been, and still is my absolute passion and endeavor. After waking up a couple of things became obvious. The first was that the journey had just begun and, as someone said, “After awakening, the laundry”. Another was the question “How do I embody day after day self-remembering? How do I learn to accept getting lost and then practice coming back home over and over until the road is so familiar that it starts happening by itself?”. One more was “How do I practice being present and disappearing at the same time, take myself out of the way?”.

This is what Mastery is. What often is called The Second Satori: the conscious and familiar capacity to go back home at will. Getting lost does not cease but it is not a problem as I know the way home. Fear disappears. However, mastery it is still a process.

My way home is self-inquiry. Something I have been practicing at least for forty years. Inquiry with the existential koans. Inquiry with the regular koans of the Zen tradition. Inquiry with all kinds of questions and about every aspect of my life, experience, understanding. I love inquiry and I am forever grateful that many Masters have shared this formidable tool. Inquiry is so much who I am now that I do not really need to practice it other than for fun. Inquiry happens by itself and then something arises as revelation. I do not know where it comes from. What I know is that it brings peace, trust, realization, integration.

A Master is a miracle. A miracle of stability and easiness. There is no self-reflection. Satori has become Samadhi (complete integration) therefore there is no coming and going. A Master is not present, rather he/she is pure Presence. Mastery is possibly and sometimes probably the way to become a Master, God willing.

I know all this as in mastery I am at time completely unified in Being and therefore with all the Masters, and especially Osho, my love.

I am also very attached to mastery because, even though at time I may still create karma, I can also continue to experience the delight of being a disciple and avoid complete aloneness.

2.

After I woke up many people asked me to give Satsangs. I refused. I looked honestly and intimately within myself, and I saw without any doubt or devaluation that that was not my path. I was not a Master; I was just on the way to Mastery.

I am sure that that decision was one of the smarter ones I have made in my life, and I am also well aware I was not who made that decision but rather it was Life itself.

Guidance has been with me since I can remember, in all the turns I have taken that have shaped my becoming as well as, more fundamentally, my capacity to remember myself.

I am not a Master, but I can certainly function through Mastery.

This functioning has some experiential understandings at its core that shape my embodiment of the Truth.

1. Whatever existence throws at me has one and only one function, to take me home and show me over and over again that I am loved.

2. Everything in life is an opportunity and a challenge to experience, comprehend and manifest the uniqueness that I AM.

3. I am here bringing a specific gift, embodying and sharing the fundamental Unity of All.

4. My way is surrendering to innocence. The way to surrendering is submission to what is.

5. I can make all the mistakes I want, because mistakes do not exist.

6. Freedom is both at the same time: absolute (I AM) and relative (within constrictions, in the form).

7. I know what it means to be present but only at times I am Presence, yet.

8. To have a drink (see Trungpa Rimpoche and Gurdieff) and watch a basketball game (see LeBron and the Lakers) is ok…I am HUMAN.

9. I am not waiting for the next life to be myself.

10. I do understand what Osho points to when he says, “I am an ordinary man”.

11. Life is good. RIGHT NOW!

3.

Awakening does not mean stopping cleaning. On the contrary, Awakening is just a blip in a process that most of us are already very proficient with.

Mastery is a deep and steadfast dedication to deal with what Osho calls “The inertia of habits”. Mastery is most of all in fact the willingness and capacity to shine the light of awakened consciousness in all the corner of oneself and include all the shadows and the rejected parts of ourselves as they transform in the love of this surrender to all that we are.

It is a deep surgery where we UNLEARN THE MIND.

In a discourse somebody asked Osho what the relationship between unlearning and meditation was. The answer was (and I quote) “There is no relationship. Unlearning IS meditation. What do we do in fact when we meditate? We unlearn the mind”.

The fundamental difference is that as we do not seek anything special anymore, all that energy that is usually occupied in chasing something in particular becomes available to be with what is and notice what needs to be cleaned up. And most of the time we are happy cleaners as we like it light and fun, right?

One of the basic tools in Mastery is sense of humor as we learn not to take ourselves seriously. We let go of dramas, comparison, self-judgement, goals.

Mastery is consciously UNLEARNING THE MIND DAILY, letting go of all sorts of self-deception, self-justification, self-pity, and self-importance.

Our broom is self-inquiry which is the willingness to tell myself the truth about myself.

Self-inquiry is a radical invitation to the Mystery to reveal itself and remember, remember, remember.

4.

As we use the inquiry broom, old ideas about ourselves start falling. Identification with the past tends to be released and our self-image become more and more transparent. Be aware, SELF-IMAGE DOES NOT DISSOLVE IN MASTERY, IT IS STILL THERE BUT WE CAN SEE THROUGH IT. We can see through our defenses, through our reactivity and projections. We become clearer, more candid, more direct, more open. And we become also ready day after day to face a fundamental obstacle: our desire of BEING SPECIAL. Wanting to be seen, recognized, appreciated, loved as special.

You might perhaps not be telling it even to yourself that this is what you want: being special, and if that is the case it is understandable; for many, most people, this is one of the deepest taboos. And yet, when we look inside with compassion and honesty it is not difficult to recognize this need. Everything grows better with care and attention, and we do intuitively know that. Unfortunately, specialism becomes a wound masked in many ways and, much more fundamental, it is a daily forgetfulness of our True Nature. As in our nature we are all incomparably UNIQUE.

There is a very simple truth that we need to take in our hearts: AS LONG AS WE WANT TO BE SPECIAL, WE WILL NEVER BE FREE AND CONTENT.

Mastery means to consciously move away from specialism and start RECOGNIZING, EMBODYING AND SHARING THE UNIQUENESS THAT EACH ONE IS.

Uniqueness does not know comparison.

Uniqueness does not idealize hierarchies.

Uniqueness does not hold back for tomorrow.

Uniqueness is not afraid as there are no errors possible, just steps into more and more uniqueness.

Uniqueness is diving daily in the mystery of I AM.

5.

How do we know when we are practicing Mastery?

There are few signs that I recognize in myself and in others.

1. No need to explain myself

2. No need to justify myself

3. No need to hide the truth about myself to myself and to the others, most of the time

4. No need to play victim

5. Not knowing is a joy and a blessing

6. Everything becomes fluid and unpredictable

7. I continuously let go of my personal history

8. It is fun to be myself

9. It is exhilarating to recognize myself

10. It is natural to share myself

11. I feel grateful and innocent