Mastery (53 page)

In this remarkably complex chain of circumstances, we can identify, at certain turning points, a single ancestor from whom we humans have evolved (the first cells, simple animals, mammals, then primates). Some archeologists have speculated about a single female ancestor from whom all modern humans have descended. Moving up the chain, backwards in time, it is clear that who we are today—our particular physiological makeup—is intimately connected to each one of these original ancestors, as far back as the first cells of life. Since all life forms are descended from this common beginning, they are all interconnected in some way, and we humans are intimately implicated in this network. This is undeniable.

Let us call this interrelatedness of life the
ultimate reality
. And in relation to this reality, the human mind tends to go in one of two directions. On the one hand, the mind tends to move away from this interconnectedness and focus instead on the distinctions between things, taking objects out of their contexts and analyzing them as separate entities. At the extreme this tendency leads to highly specialized forms of knowledge. In the world today, we can see many signs of this tendency—the microscopic divisions between fields in our universities, the narrowest of specializations in the sciences. In
the culture at large, people will make the finest distinctions between closely related or overlapping subjects, and argue endlessly about the differences. They will distinguish between military and civilian society, even though in a democracy such a distinction is not so easy to make. (Perhaps keeping people and fields of study so rigorously separated can be considered the ultimate ploy of those in power, a version of divide and conquer.) At this level of thinking, a sense of the interrelatedness of life and phenomena is lost, and in becoming so specialized ideas can become quite weird and disconnected from reality.

On the other hand, there is the opposing tendency of the brain to want to make connections between everything. This generally occurs among individuals who pursue knowledge far enough that these associations come to life. Although this tendency is easier to spot in Masters, we can see in history certain movements and philosophies in which this return to reality becomes widespread in a culture, part of the zeitgeist. For instance, in the ancient world there was Taoism in the East, and Stoicism in the West, both movements that endured for centuries. In Taoism, there is the concept of the Way, and in Stoicism, that of the Logos—the ordering principle of the universe that connects all living things. As Marcus Aurelius expresses it, “Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one.”

Perhaps the greatest example of this was the Renaissance, a cultural movement for which the ideal was the Universal Man—a person who has managed to connect all branches of knowledge and approximate the intellectual reach of the Creator.

Perhaps today we are witnessing the early signs of a return to reality, a Renaissance in modern form. In the sciences, the first seeds of this began with Faraday, Maxwell, and Einstein, who focused on the relationships between phenomena, fields of force instead of individual particles. In the larger sense, many scientists are now actively seeking to connect their various specializations to others—for instance, how neuroscience intersects so many other disciplines. We see signs of this also in the growing interest in theories of complexity applied to such disparate fields as economics, biology, and computers. We can see it in the broadening of our thinking to ecosystems, as a way to truly conceptualize the dynamic interactions in nature. We can see it in health and medicine, in the sane approach many are taking to consider the body as a whole. This trend is the future, because the purpose of consciousness itself has always been to connect us to reality.

As individuals, we can participate in this trend simply by pursuing mastery. In our apprenticeships, we naturally begin by learning the parts and making various distinctions—the right and wrong way to proceed, the
individual skills to master and their particular techniques, the various rules and conventions that govern the group. In the Creative-Active we begin to melt these distinctions as we experiment with, shape, and alter these conventions to suit our purposes. And in mastery we come full circle, returning to a sense of the whole. We intuit and see the connections. We embrace the natural complexity of life, making the brain expand to the dimensions of reality instead of shrinking it to the narrowest of specializations. This is the inevitable outcome of deep immersion in a field. We can define intelligence as moving toward thinking that is more contextual, more sensitive to the relationships between things.

Think of it this way: the ultimate distinction you make is between yourself and the world. There is the inside (your subjective experience) and there is the outside. But every time you learn something, your brain is altered as new connections are formed. Your experience of something that occurs in the world physically alters your brain. The boundaries between you and the world are much more fluid than you might imagine. When you move toward mastery, your brain becomes radically altered by the years of practice and active experimentation. It is no longer the simple ecosystem of years gone by. The brain of a Master is so richly interconnected that it comes to resemble the physical world, and becomes a vibrant ecosystem in which all forms of thinking associate and connect. This growing similarity between the brain and complex life itself represents the ultimate return to reality.

STRATEGIES FOR ATTAINING MASTERY

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

—A
LBERT
E
INSTEIN

Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. But there is another element, an X factor that Masters inevitably possess, that seems mystical but that is accessible to us all. Whatever field of activity we are involved in, there is generally an accepted path to the top. It is a path that others have followed, and because we are conformist creatures, most of us opt for this conventional route. But Masters have a strong inner guiding system and a high level of self-awareness. What has suited others in the past does not suit them, and they know that trying to fit into a conventional mold would only lead to a dampening of spirit, the reality they seek eluding them.

And so inevitably, these Masters, as they progress on their career paths, make a choice at a key moment in their lives: they decide to forge their own route, one that others will see as unconventional, but that suits their own spirit and rhythms and leads them closer to discovering the hidden truths of their objects of study. This key choice takes self-confidence and self-awareness—the X factor that is necessary for attaining mastery. The following are examples of this X factor in action and the strategic choices it leads to. The examples given are meant to show the importance of this quality and how we might adapt it to our own circumstances.

1. Connect to your environment—Primal Powers

Among the many feats of human navigation of the sea, perhaps none are more remarkable and mysterious than the voyages of the indigenous peoples in the area known as Oceania—comprising the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. In an area that is 99.8 percent water, the inhabitants of this region were able for many centuries to deftly navigate the vast spaces between the islands. Some 1,500 years ago they managed to travel the several thousand miles to Hawaii, and perhaps at one point even voyaged as far as parts of North and South America, all in canoes with the same design and technology as those of the Stone Age. During the nineteenth century, mostly because of Western interference and the introduction of charts and compasses, these ancient navigating skills died out, and the source of their uncanny skill remained mostly a mystery. But in the area of Micronesia known as the Caroline Islands, certain islanders maintained the ancient traditions well into the twentieth century. And the first Westerners who traveled with them were astonished at what they witnessed.

The Islanders would travel in outrigger canoes fitted with a sail with three or four men aboard, one serving as the chief navigator. They had no charts or instruments of any kind, and for the Westerners who accompanied them this could be a disconcerting experience. Taking off at night or day (it didn’t matter to them), there would be apparently nothing to guide them along the way. The islands were so far apart that one could travel for days without spotting land. To go off course only slightly (and storms or weather changes could certainly cause that) would mean never spotting their destination, and probably death—it would take too long to find the next island in the chain, and supplies would run out. And yet they would embark on their sea voyages with a remarkably relaxed spirit.

The chief navigator would occasionally glance at the night sky or the position of the sun, but mostly he talked with the others or stared straight ahead. Sometimes one of the men would lie belly down in the middle of the outrigger canoe and report some information he had gleaned. In general
they gave the impression of being passengers on a train, serenely taking in the passing scenery. They seemed even calmer at night. When they were supposedly getting closer to their destination, they would become slightly more alert. They would follow the paths of birds in the sky; they would look deeply into the water, which they would sometimes cup in their hands and smell. When they arrived at their destination, it was all with the air of pulling into the train station on time. They seemed to know exactly how long it would take and how many supplies were required for the voyage. Along the way, they would make perfect adjustments to any changes in weather or currents.

Curious as to how this was possible, some Westerners asked to be initiated into their secrets, and over the decades such travelers managed to piece together the system the Islanders used. As these Westerners discovered, one of their principal means of navigation was following the paths of stars in the night sky. Over the course of centuries, they had devised a chart comprising the path of fourteen different constellations. These constellations, along with the sun and the moon, described arcs in the sky that could translate into thirty-two different directions around the circle of the horizon. These arcs remained the same, no matter the season. From their own island, they could map out the location of all of the islands in their area by locating what stars they should be under at particular moments at night, and they knew how this position would change to another star as they traveled toward their destination. The Islanders had no writing system. Apprentice navigators simply had to memorize this elaborate map, which was in continual motion.

During the day, they would chart a course by the sun. Toward the middle of the day they could read the exact direction they were headed in by the shadows that were cast on the mast. At dawn or at sunset they could use the moon, or the stars sinking below the horizon or starting to rise. To help them measure the distance they had covered, they would choose an island somewhere off to the side as a reference point. By following the stars in the sky they could calculate when they would be passing by this reference island, and how much time remained to reach their destination.

As part of this system, they envisioned that their canoe was completely still—the stars moved above them, and the islands in the ocean were moving toward and then away from them as they passed them. Acting as if the canoe were stationary made it easier to calculate their position within their reference system. Although they knew that islands did not move, after many years of traveling this way, they would literally experience the trip as if they were sitting still. This would account for the impression they gave of looking like passengers in a train viewing the passing landscape.

Their sky chart was complemented by dozens of other signs they had learned to read. In their apprenticeship system, young navigators would be
taken to sea and made to float in the ocean for several hours. In this way, they could learn to distinguish the various currents by how they felt on their skin. After much practice, they could read these currents by lying down on the floor of the canoe. They had developed a similar sensitivity to winds, and could identify various wind currents by how they moved the hairs on their head, or the sail on the outrigger.

Once they approached an island, they knew how to interpret the paths of land birds, which left in the morning to fish or returned at dusk to their homes. They could read the changes in the phosphorescence of the water that indicated closeness to land, and they could gauge whether the clouds in the distance were reflecting land beneath them, or simply ocean. They could touch the water to their lips, sensing any changes in temperature that indicated they were approaching an island. There were many more such indicators; the Islanders had learned to see everything in this environment as a potential sign.

What was most remarkable was that the chief navigator hardly seemed to be paying attention to this complex network of signs. Only an occasional glance upward or downward would indicate any kind of reading that was going on. Apparently, Master navigators knew the sky chart so well that with the sight of one star in the sky they could immediately sense where all of the others were located. They had learned how to read the other navigational signs so well that it all had become second nature. They had a complete feel for this environment, including all of the variables that seemed to make it so chaotic and dangerous. As one Westerner put it, such Masters could travel hundreds of miles from island to island as easily as an experienced cab driver could negotiate the labyrinthine streets of London.