{"id":9237,"date":"2017-01-16T13:01:31","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T18:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/?p=9237"},"modified":"2017-01-16T13:10:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T18:10:40","slug":"a-voice-in-the-wildernessdoes-it-take-10000-hoursto-achieve-mastery-in-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/?p=9237","title":{"rendered":"<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">A Voice in the Wilderness<BR><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">DOES IT TAKE 10,000 HOURS<BR>TO ACHIEVE MASTERY IN LIVING?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Editor&#8217;s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore &#8212; one-by-one &#8212; the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the <\/em>Conversations with God<em> dialogues. This series of observations and interpretations is offered with my continuing disclaimer: I could be wrong about all of this.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>CWG Explored\/Installment #7: How long does Mastery take?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In my last column here I wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What does it take to change the Self? What is required to <em>transmogrify? <\/em>Does it take a long, long time? Years and years of study, effort, and practice? Was Malcolm Gladwell right in his 2008 book, <em>Outliers<\/em>, in which he hypothesized that it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery at anything? Could this include reaching mastery at Mastery?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I promised that I would touch on this in my next entry of this series&#8230;and so here we are. And the answer, as most of you know, is no, it does not take 10,000 hours to reach mastery at Mastery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">First of all, in my awareness it is not a question of <em>reaching<\/em> Mastery, but of returning to it. There is nothing we have to learn &#8212; not a single thing &#8212; to \u201creach mastery.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In my lectures and spiritual renewal workshops I often point to a tree outside the window and ask, \u201cWhat has that magnificent oak, standing there in its majesty under the splendor of its canopy, learned in the years of its growth?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The answer, of course, is: \u201cNothing. Not a thing. Everything the tree needed to know to become its glorious self was encoded in the seed, no bigger than your fingernail, from which it sprung. The tree had merely to grow into what it was programmed at the outset to always become.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cNow if God so loved the tree that it encoded in its seed <em>everything<\/em> it needed in order to become what it was created to become, would God not all the more encode you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The answer, of course, is \u201cYes.\u201d And God has.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Therefore, there is nothing for you to learn, and it does not take 10,000 hours to learn nothing. \u201cAh, but,\u201d &#8212; you might say &#8212; \u201cit took 10,000 hours and more for the tree to <em>grow into<\/em> the fullness of its magnificent self.\u201d And that, indeed, is true. Growth takes time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">For trees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Growth for humans takes no time at all, because we are not talking about physical growth &#8212; we are not talking about growth of the Body (or even the Mind) &#8212; we are talking about growth of the Soul . . . and such a thing is not only not required, it is impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">That which is whole cannot grow to become whole. That which is complete cannot grow to become complete. That which exists in its ultimate totality cannot grow to become its ultimate totality. It already <em>is<\/em> that which the Mind might imagine that it seeks to become.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Soul simply desires to experience that which it Already and Always Is: the Individuation of Divinity, the Expression of Divine Consciousness in Singular Form. Or, if you please, a Singularization of The Singularity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">So if growth is not necessary, then what <em>is<\/em> necessary for humans to reach the State of Mastery?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Awareness. And its expansion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And this is a function of the Mind, not of the Soul, as I have experienced it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Journey of the Soul through Time and Space is the process by which the Soul expands the Awareness of the Mind, so that the Mind may then use the Body to express and experience in physicality the total being\u2019s True Nature and Only Identity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Thus, the three-part being that constitutes every member of the human species becomes the living expression of Divinity &#8212; or the out-picturing, if you will, of that which was encoded in its DNA (Divine Natural Awareness) at the outset.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">(Of course, there is no such thing as the outset, since \u201coutset\u201d suggests a \u201cbeginning\u201d &#8212; and no such thing exists in the realm of Time\/No Time within which Divinity expresses).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And so, it takes <em>no Time at all<\/em> to achieve Mastery. Yet it may take what you <em>call <\/em>\u201ctime\u201d in your illusory world for your Mind to experience Mastery, and your Body to demonstrate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Even within the context of your illusory world, however, this is not a process of learning or achieving or becoming something you are not, but of simply realizing and expressing what you are, have always been, and will always be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This can be experienced in \u201cEarth time\u201d in an instant. It does not have to take 10,000 hours. And it can if you wish it to, or if you think that it must. But it can also be experienced in an instant. And, indeed, it <em>has been already <\/em>for nearly every human being.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Many people can remember a time when, for whatever reason, and perhaps only for the blink of an eye, they suddenly and inexplicably \u201cknew\u201d everything. They knew who they were, they knew themselves as one with all, they knew that there was nothing they had to do to fully experience their reason for being here, they knew the deep peace and simple joy that comes from knowing that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is scarcely a person anywhere who has not had at least one such instant, one moment of what we have come to call \u201cmastery\u201d of life on this planet. It may have been when they were nine minutes old, or nine weeks old, or nine months old, or nine years old, or nineteen years old, or ninety years old, or in one of the moments between, but they, and most of us, have had at least one instant in which total mastery of life was experienced.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Of course, a statement like that begs the question: What <em>is <\/em>\u201cmastery\u201d? How is it defined?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">For me, \u201cmastery\u201d is defined as \u201cthe fullest expression of the fullness of my being.\u201d That is, the total expression of the totality of my Self.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yet in order for me to know and to recognize that I have had such an experience, I would have to know (and be able to explain to my Mind) what my \u201cSelf\u201d is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What <em>is<\/em> the Self that I am seeking to express in fullness?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We\u2019ll look at that next.<\/span><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor&#8217;s Note: For the next several months this space will be used to explore &#8212; one-by-one &#8212; the messages, metaphysical principles, and spiritual meaning of the material found in the nearly 3,000 pages of the Conversations with God dialogues. 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