Collected writing
Mastery 101
MASTERY 101 A Traveler's Guide to Mastery Author’s Foreword If you're anything like I am, you understand what it means to be Traveler with a Capital T. You like to get to know people, their customs and ways. You probably speak more than one language. Life has taught you that you are strong enough to stand up against any adversity, and that somehow, you will find a way to make it through. Sometimes you stand strong like an oak, sometimes you bend like a willow. It all depends on which wind is blowing. You have taken the high road, the low road, and the road not taken. You have seen sparkling successes and devastating failures. Through it all you have tried to cultivate yourself into something more than you have ever been before. For this, I salute you, my fellow travelers. You might have a sense that your stay here on Earth is a temporary one. You tend to question your own thoughts and beliefs, and examine them from different perspectives and different points of view. You are capable of experiencing great enthusiasm and crushing disappointment. You understand that each act of destruction along the way forms the platform for the next vision to be made real. You and I are creative machines. I am what is sometimes referred to as a channel. There is nothing mysterious about this to me anymore, except for its origins. In my travels and in my work, I have picked up what I would call a hotline to what we in spiritual psychology would call the inner counselor. It is very much a voice, and very much a choir or a cacophony of voices at times. When this phenomenon becomes overwhelming, and it does, I have learned the methods to calm myself down through breathing, exercise, meditation, and proper nutrition. At the moment, I would say that overall, I am in some of the best shape of my life. I have overcome being paralyzed from the neck down while performing ski patrol duties in Southern California, which was the starting point of my journey in this direction. 7 years ago, I got on a 1000cc Kawasaki Ninja, a black one named Jesse, and began my journey North into the California Golden Central Valley Plain. What I found here was as risky, as spiritually uplifting, as dangerous, as alienating, and as profoundly life-changing as any experience of my lifetime before. It ranks in the pantheon of my most treasured and most feared memories. What I want to do here is to distill the pure essence of my Travels with a capital “T” and to bring them home into a form anyone can pick up at an airport gift shop, as they climb aboard their next outbound 747. Self mastery is the reason we are here. Earth is a school, that's it. Picture yourself in a university laboratory, where you are in charge. Notice now that that lab is on a campus somewhere. Now rack focus to observe that that campus is in a country, which is in a world, which is in space. You begin to grasp the picture. We are channels and transceivers for both inner and outer energies. We are part of an electromagnetic and electrochemical exchange, which occurs all the time. It counts for things like your biorhythms, your heartbeat, you're vitals, your breath. They are all in constant interaction with one another. My job here is to break it down in a language my gracious readers can relate to. This is very complex territory, but I believe I have a way to dispel what is unimportant, and move as directly as possible to the center of these questions. I am not so much about answers. Historically, through science, medicine and the arts, and throughout humanity itself, as Bob Dylan said, The times they are a changing. So it is that the answer is are always changing. Still the questions remain the same. Who am I. Where am I going, why am I here. When Buddha became enlightened he found the answers to these questions. I know how to sit. I know how to think. And I know how to wait. This book, in essence, is a step-by-step, mile by mile walk into mastery. What you do with what you find here is up to you. By delivering this book to you, I am doing what is up to me. Without getting into numbers, I will say that I have written vastly more during this last seven year journey, then I ever have before. My writing gets stronger and clearer every time. This applies to novels, nonfiction, epic poetry, song, hundreds of thousands of words, in all media. I am on my way back to Southern California to start the next process, which is to bring the best of this work to you. I salute you on your way, and I acknowledge you. I know who You are. God bless you.