=kit002.txt

KIT 2 - Mastery - the Effect of Retreats

As we plunge deeper and deeper into retreats at the Abode, we
become increasingly amazed at the effect of mastery on human
transformation. The sheer determination that it takes to reverse
the human machine, which is coming through from inside represents
a remarkable victory of the will, with the result of unleashing
intense magnetism. And it is this energy that shifts consciousness
from its commonplace setting. Of course, meditation is the art of
learning how to use the human focus of a universal will to
mobilize that universal will in all its infinite scope.
Eventually, the forces of life take over to set up a tidal wave of
transformation. However, though will acts as a catalyst, it is
ecstasy (the energy of the psyche) that avers itself to be the
driving force. People of great accomplishment have performed feats
of mastery. Murshid says that if you are not making a success of
your undertaking, the chances are that you are not in control of
yourself.

Yet mastery is subject to much controversy in the Sufi Order and
in general. Most psychologists since Freud warn that inhibiting
impulses, frustrating desires, and withholding anger, will damage
the psyche and make a person up-tight, crestfallen and timorous.
Protesting this view, a few teachers have been departing from the
characteristic mastery of traditional schools to promote an
epicurean permissiveness. The sluices are wide open,
indiscriminately; everything goes. Public opinion is outraged.

In the nick of time, psychologist Carol Travers, in her book:
Anger, The Misunderstood Emotion, points to the danger of simply
giving in to anger. She says that by so doing, one escalates anger
possibly to the point of a tantrum; it takes over. One may become
an irate, inconsiderate and insufferable person.

Murshid took a balanced view of this problem. One is sometimes
faced with the choice between wounding one's psyche by withholding
an emotion or blowing a delicate situation by behaving simply in
an uncouth manner, showing a lack of sensitivity and refinement
(rather like an elephant in a glass palace). This behavior can
sometimes do violence to a person in his/her self-esteem. In this
case, just as it is not always advisable to mollycoddle the body,
but rather expose it to the seasons, even so the psyche will get
strengthened by rough handling it, provided one does not overdo
it. However, while the ascetic orders practice detachment and
desirelessness to effect liberation, the Sufis see the whole
universe as the divine nostalgia for self-discovery, the actuation
of potentialities, proliferation, inventiveness and evolution.

If, as the Muslims affirm, "La ilaha illa 'llah," it is all one
being, since there is none other than God, then what we believe to
be our desires are extensions of the overall divine desire, albeit
narrowed down by the limitation of our personal perspectives,
maybe distorted, possibly eviscerated. Rather than quash an
impulse, Murshid advocates harnessing it like a yachtsperson
harnesses the wind to blow the sailboat where he/she wishes it
instead of where it wishes. Rather than disperse the energy of
anger in an explosion of fury, one could make use of that energy
in an implosion: gaining an ongoing sense of dignity and
sovereignty that imposes respect.

The trouble is that mastery easily becomes a feat of proving
oneself to oneself or to others, especially when challenged. It is
the stuff that makes the mountaineer, the athlete, the fireman,
the hero, the yogi. Besides, people and fundamentalist
institutions have a way of making one feel that one should do this
or that; one often "shoulds" oneself. One finds oneself in a bind
when pushing beyond the boundaries between stress and overstress.
The bind is in the mind. One fears being humiliated in one's self-
esteem, reproved, punished or even dismissed if one should fail.
At a certain point, something has to give. If one has a vulnerable
mind, one slips into schizophrenic behavior; if a strong mind, one
could have a heart attack or cancer.

A perspicacious person will notice that he/she is more vulnerable
to overstress when pitting the personalized will against odds
doggedly and stubbornly. One must regard the natural trend of the
formative processes within us that prevail upon us to stop hitting
our head against the wall and get into synch with a will of a more
universal and impersonal scope calling for attention from within.
One could easily slip into cussedly "doing one's thing under the
banner of mastery, unaware of it's effect on others. It is because
the dervish musters the will of which his will is the extension
(what we call the divine will) that the mad elephant will obey
him. If he were to apply his personal end of the cone, of which
the divine will is the big end and his the small, the dervish
would be killed by the elephant. Such is the divine power that
sparks one when, to quote Murshid, One discovers in oneself the
same power that moves the universe.

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