Mastership Of Life


Ishvara:

Life is about mastership, not control. Mastership comes from realizing that everything is connected, that there are unlimited possibilities, and realizing that you can prepare yourself for the experience by being open, receptive, and present.

So much of your life can be spent in resistance or attachment, wanting or not wanting, to the extent that the living experience, the presence, is often missed. That seems peculiar: how can Now ever be missed? Yet humans have the capacity to be in the Now and live elsewhere. Projecting, analyzing, contemplating, comparing, escaping -- all of these are attributes of elsewhere. To master presence is to intentionally keep your focus on what is actually happening, not the interpretation or projection, but what really is going on. One way to do that is to give unconditional acceptance to everything. This doesn't mean that you like it; it is simply the realization that any kind of resistance to what-is creates a problem. When you are giving unconditional acceptance to the things around you, to people, to places, you create a flow of energy that is circular, it comes back to you, and in that process it tends to lift, to increase your frequency, to help you be aware of more possibilities, even greater connections.

If you are thinking negative thoughts, fear thoughts, separating thoughts, it diminishes you; it takes the Life force from you; that too is circular, but what you get back is more "taking," more diminishing. Any reasonable person would recognize that the only way to live is to embrace what-is, to live fearlessly with presence. It is quite magical when you get into it: you can walk on the earth, loving the things around you, which increases the energy. The things you love, the things you accept and embrace, are enhanced.

In the world as it is now, it is difficult to see any kind of progress being made; most often it seems humanity is going backward instead of forward, but you can be aware that adding to that energy just makes it worse. If you focus on "Ain't it awful," you find more of the awful, and in that process you are diminishing your own being-ness, limiting your possibilities. So for your own benefit, you change the way you look at things, and master the process of living. When you become a master of Life, you are not controlling Life. You are looking at Life in a way that contributes, adds to, lifts, supports, and inspires. You benefit from that, and everyone around you benefits. Things benefit from it; the earth benefits from it. It is amazing what a little bit of direct communion with Life --things, people, places -- brings.

People are afraid. The media has no good news for anyone, so people are frightened. When people are afraid, they react. They go into survival mode, which is very selfish and separative, not realizing that that very act is compounding the problem. When you withhold, when you hold back, you block the flow of Life, the flow of experiences; you block possibilities. It seems illogical to be giving in a time of lack. It seems foolish to be loving when there is so much hate being projected. It seems unwise to be allowing when there is apparently so much that should be disallowed.

In the mastership of Life, the direct experience of the information and possibilities that you are as Life, there is a way of being that will lift, support, encourage, and expand, and that is what mastership is about. Anyone can just live, be tossed about on the sea of change, and become frightened with all of the other sheep, struggling for survival, living separately. That is easy to do, because there are so many examples of it around you, but that will not lead to mastership of Life; instead, it will lead to the eventual demise of life.

Life-enhancing processes are connecting processes, connecting with the world around you, fearlessly. Yes, there are many things that you would prefer not be happening, but they are happening. That is the Is-ness. There is a way of looking at things where you can help in those instances. Physically, there may not be much you can do about it. You can march and protest and draw attention to it, but when you do that there is somebody else trying to do the opposite. The anti-war demonstrators protest alongside the pro-war demonstrators, and they actually cancel each other out. The whole process creates more enemies, more judgments, and more separation.

Living processes are established within your own arena: how YOU see things, the things you know and experience. The things you really know are the things that carry weight, that make a difference to the world; not what you believe, not what you hope, not what you think, but what you know. In the mastership of Life, you are learning how things work; you gain an understanding, and you also realize that resistance doesn't work. Resisting things merely gives them more energy. Attachment also is a strange phenomenon: what you are attached to, flees from you; what you hold onto, dissipates. What you reach for, skates out of your way. And the things you don't want, well, you just can't get rid of them; they stick to you. That realization is part of understanding how energy works.

Developing a relationship with Life means developing a relationship with nature, with the earth, with its people, realizing that all are connected, that all participate in this great adventure of Life. I know it is hard to be happy, to be present, when there is so much lack, so much suffering around you. Yet it is important to realize that you don't need to contribute to that. What you hold, what you know, is contributing to what is known. When you realize this, you turn away from negative things. This does not mean that you deny or hide from them. You can't turn away from something unless you know it is there, so you are not escaping it, but you realize that by turning from it you cease to energize it. It is quite magical. If you ignore it (without resistance) it will go away.

This is not a process of denial, but of accepting Is-ness and of not giving it more energy when you see that it limits possibilities. You don't push, you don't shove, you simply say, "Yes, I see you there; you can hang out if you must, but I won't have anything to do with you." There is a simplicity that tends to create an environment of acceptance and allowing. It begins with your thoughts: what you hold, what you think about, what you believe, what you contemplate. It is so simple: your story -- the story you believe about yourself, how you look at things, your interpretation of things -- carries weight; because you believe in your story, you act out its various elements. Often you forget that you can change your story.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This has been a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on March 13, 2005. - TG.

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