Balancing Mastery and Mystery

by Wendy Palmer

Mastery

There are many ways of thinking about what mastery means. In sports, the term master class athlete refers to people who are over fifty competing in an event. In other situations, mastery is used to describe the highest level of skill possible to be achieved in a field of expertise. In Asia, masters are usually elders—those who have immersed themselves for many years in the study and practice of a particular art form or discipline. These Asian masters have a highly developed level of skill that has matured with time and experience—such as masters in the tea ceremony or the martial arts.

The word mastery is used in the coaching and leadership fields as an indication of a credential. I have heard the term “master coach” used about someone who has been through a coaching program and has a credential from an institution. My long time friend and colleague, George Leonard, has written a wonderful book entitled Mastery, which offers a more contemporary way of relating to the concept. He sees mastery as a long-term commitment to cultivating a way to be more balanced, healthy, and creative in life.

In the conscious embodiment model, we are working with form, a specific facet of mastery. We use form as a way to relate with our bodies and our energy. Energy follows attention. When we put our attention on our body and energy field, our attention helps us to recognize, and perhaps modify, the shape and size of our energy field so we can be more skillful in our interactions.

Form

In conscious embodiment, form is the foundation of mastery because it establishes a clear, tangible reference point. Form is a way to think about who we are. Having a reference point of form gives our attention a specific focus. When we are busy trying to manage our relationships, our energy can become constricted, dispersed, or fragmented. Focusing our attention on form allows our energy to calm and stabilize. Using form to practice mastery, we train our attention to focus the shape and size of our energy field. We begin to focus our attention by becoming aware of the posture of our body.

A simple way to become aware of our posture is get a sense of our upright position and our vertical center. Throughout most of our daily activities—walking, running, standing and sitting—we have a vertical orientation. Focusing on our vertical center is the core reference point for organizing our form. Remember the growing plant metaphor. A plant always puts a taproot down into the soil, and then it extends up toward the sun, after which the leaves begin to extend out horizontally. Likewise our vertical core must be well established before we extend out to connect with others. Our capacity to connect is linked to the integrity of our core. To activate form, we remind ourselves: “Vertical first and then extend out horizontally.”

Conscious embodiment uses two shapes in the mastery of form: the wedge and the circle. If we are advocating, wanting to bring something into the world, we relate with the wedge shape. If we are listening and practicing acceptance, we focus on the circle. Focusing on the shape and size of our energy field gives us the possibility of clarifying our form and being more effective in our actions. We can be more receptive when we listen by shaping our energy field to be round and inclusive. By contrast, sharpening and streamlining our wedge shape allows us to enter into situations or advocate with precision and ease.

Practicing the mastery of our form develops an awareness of ourselves in a balanced and centered way in the here and now. Our sense of self has form. This form is a container for what we mean to project and for our intention. We experience integrity through the effort of concentrating on form, posture, and the shape and size of the field. Conscious use of the shape of our energy field aids us in being genuine listeners/receivers and speakers/actors.

Concentration

Our experience of integrity is enhanced by our ability to focus and sustain concentration. Remember our foundation principle: energy follows attention.

In this type of concentration we focus our attention on our posture by moving through the body starting with the feet, imagining the bottoms of our feet open to receive the energy of the earth. Next we imagine that our legs are hollow and can also receive the energy of the earth as it moves up through our body the way sap flows up from the ground into the trunk and branches of a tree. By putting our hands on our abdomens we can concentrate on the sensation of the pressure or warmth and remember the sense of strength and confidence that resides in our core. Next we lengthen our solar plexus and the back of the neck to increase the sense of lightness and uplift.

This is a fluid concentration. As we move our attention up through our body, we are in a process of bringing a specific awareness that deepens our precision with our form. The result is a clear sense of the vertical presence and integrity of our core. Once the core is established, we shape the field. Form enhanced with concentration gives us a tangible, energetic way to experience ourselves. The field becomes the container, the reference point for our exploration of center and personality.

Containment

In Western culture, we tend to swing between over expression and repression. Containment, the capacity to be with or accept an experience, is the key to growing our ability to be present in the here and now. Containment is the aspect of mastery that begins to open the door to mystery. We use the awareness of the shape and size of our energy field to clarify what we can and cannot tolerate.

The elements of basic practice are forms of concentration that we apply to establish the centered state. As we shift to either open attention or the irimi shape, the size of our field expands. If we experience frustration or become spacey, it is clear that our field is too large for us to handle and we are not yet able to contain all the energy we are experiencing. As we reduce the size of our field, we can discover the size that allows us to relax, open and tolerate the energy or content inside the field that is our container.

Over time and with practice, we build our capacity for intense experience the way we lift more weight to build a muscle. We develop muscle strength little by little. The muscle slowly grows stronger and can work with more and more weight. The same holds true for working with our field. Little by little, we grow our ability to open and include more and more of our experience.

A sense of confidence begins to develop as we discover that we are able to recover our form and experience the integrity of center more easily. Confidence gives us some breathing room; there is more acceptance and we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves. As the form becomes familiar, it is easier to recover. This allows us to enjoy the mystery, the unknown, without the fear that we will be lost in it. Life in balance is constantly pulsing between expansion and contraction, mastery and mystery.

Mystery

Mystery is inherent in human civilization and humans seem to have an insatiable desire to know and understand things. Children constantly ask, “Why?” When we were children the why came from a place of genuine curiosity. As adults, we tend to ask from a place of concern or insecurity. When we don’t understand, it scares us. Many of us, and I include myself in this group, become annoyed or aggressive when we are scared. Fear is masked with righteousness and indignation. We can’t admit that we just don’t know and it scares us because adults are supposed to know what is going on and not be afraid. From the point of view of personality, becoming an adult means being assimilated into our culture and our educational system.

Our current social environment orients around knowing and understanding as the reference point for security and acceptability. We tend to look to authorities for explanations to quell our concerns about the unknown. Yet deep down inside each of us, we know there are mysterious forces active in the world around us. Scientifically, we still don’t know about the origin of matter. Medically, we don’t know why some people become ill and others live long and healthy lives. Socially, we don’t know how to bring different cultures together in harmony. And personally, we don’t know why it is so difficult to be happy. So when science and medicine are unable to give us the answers, we turn to the spiritual path.

The spiritual path offers as a reference point, a vision of mystery as a source of comfort and support. The mystery encourages us to return to the source, to embrace the unknowable and to be embraced by the wonder and magic of the unfolding process. We are calmed by the possibility that there is a universal intelligence that is trustworthy and fundamentally good. This intelligence permeates space and is the wellspring that sustains life. I have always enjoyed the kind of cult response to the subtitle for the TV series Star Trek. It is with part anticipation and part humor that we say, “Space: the final frontier.” For as much as the scientists can tell us, we know that there is much more about space that is unknown and mysterious.

When we are centered, we have a greater capacity to accept the vastness and mysteriousness of space. The personality has less tolerance for such expansiveness. The drive for security and control brings us back to that which is known and safe. Even in politics, the necessity of knowing shows up as an ongoing debate and disagreement about the origin of life. Science and religion continue to seek the path of dominance over mystery—the path of knowing and controlling over wonder and openness. Priests, professors, and doctors analyze and explain the mystery for us. They create rules and tell us about how the world works. These authorities tell us what is correct and how things began. They do this by giving names to things. When we name something, it begins to take form and shape and suddenly there is a reference point. We are safe again, we have entered the world of mastery; we can know and be right. But wait, there is still something missing. No matter how much we seem to know, travelers on the spiritual path continue to be drawn to the mystery. When we are centered we love to ask, “Where does life come from, where is it going, and how do I use myself for good?”

If we are to investigate these questions—to tolerate not-knowing—we must have a reference point from which to begin. We need a reference point that is stable and simple. Form is the container that creates limits on how much of the mystery we will explore. Form is the platform that we step from to enter the mystery. So as not to overwhelm ourselves, we will examine one aspect of the mystery at a time. I am fascinated by the part often called the “flow state.”

The Flow State

We have all had moments when we are able to be at ease and capable of effective, effortless action at the same time. It is sometimes described as the “flow state” or “being in the zone.” The feeling of being relaxed and allowing actions to flow out of us is a wonderful experience. I am always intrigued to rediscover that whenever I use effort to try to achieve the flow state, I fail because of the tension that comes from trying. I have even tried to trick myself by not trying, but I have discovered trying to fool myself causes an energetic collapse and I space out. When I’m in this collapsed, spaced-out state, I find that the no-effort strategy usually fails.

The flow state is somewhere between effort and no effort. The flow state often shows up after a period of pushing, when there is a feeling of fatigue, but before collapsing or giving up. There seems to be a small window that can be cultivated through a combination of form with effort and release of effort without collapsing. I have been experimenting with the flow state and its connection to not-knowing—the mystery. The exploration has been informative and exciting. How do we invite the flow state without having to exhaust ourselves or simply luck into it? I believe it is always available but our experience is clouded with self-consciousness, trying too hard and filling the space with our habit of knowing.

© 2008. From The Intuitive Body, Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido. Reprinted with permission from Blue Snake Books, Berkeley, California.

Wendy Palmer, a sixth degree black belt in aikido and senior instructor at Aikido of Tamalpais, has been exploring the principles of aikido and mindfulness for over 35 years. She is the author of The Practice of Freedom: Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide (Rodmell Press, 2002) and the DVD Conscious Embodiment.

Wendy will co-lead the module, “Embodied Leadership: A Practice for Presence, Confidence, and Compassion, at the
Shambhala Institute’s Authentic Leadership in Action program,
June 22-28, 2008 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.