Manifestation vs. Mastery

[Theprofessional]

Hi. So, some of my fellow "doers" out here might agree with the statement, "when you set your mind in a direction, and you are clear about exactly what you want, everything must yield." I've found this to be true with many projects I've had. When you set your mind to a clear thing and solely that thing, in time you will achieve the goal - no matter how big or scary it seems.

However, here's something interesting I've discovered over the years. Doing this will indeed allow you to accomplish wonders, and even seemingly supernatural things can happen. But after you achieve your goal, if you push forward and try to continue that same activity without a clear plan, the results will be catastrophic and it actually can undo all of the progress you made before. This sounds weird and abstract and maybe even schizophrenic, but I've found this to be the case with numerous things in my life. For example, setting my mind to having a great Spring quarter at my college, then going into Fall quarter (without a clear picture), and having awful events coincidentally take place. Things like that.

What's funny about this technique of "setting your mind in a direction" is that it does work, and you can achieve great things with it. However, it eerily goes directly against the principles of Mastery, which state that you should never be obsessed and you should never be completely focused on a single objective. Instead you should discipline yourself with continuous goalless practice and focus on the practice of whatever it is you're working on, without a clear objective in mind for end results. No need to "train your thoughts," you just do this thing for many years and eventually you will yield incredible things with it.

The Mastery process in the end leads to far more results than "setting your mind in a direction" for something, but it takes years and years before you will see any kind of growth at all with this method, and even those initial results will be minuscule, perhaps negligible.

So right now I'm caught between these concepts. Which is better - "manifesting" results by setting your mind in a direction, or disciplining yourself now with no results and seeing potentially more growth later down the road? Is there a middle ground with these methods? Thanks.

[Jacob Morres]

i think theyre intertwined are they not? when you are mastering something, you are still manifesting an end result, but you are just focused on the present moment 

perhaps maybe the goal isn't super-defined but there is a general direction - the mastery of that subject 

I don't fully understand the nuances behind the goal-less philosophy though. I'd imagine no goals wouldn't gain you mastery. What if you had no goals when practicing piano and you just learned how to hit the keys as fast as possible lol

 

Edited November 16, 2021 by Jacob Morres

[Terell Kirby]

On 11/15/2021 at 0:20 AM, Theprofessional said:

Which is better - "manifesting" results by setting your mind in a direction, or disciplining yourself now with no results and seeing potentially more growth later down the road? Is there a middle ground with these methods? Thanks.

A bit confused by this.

The law of attraction (which is what I think you are alluding to), doesn't work unless you actually put in the discipline and hard work to allow the universe to reveal to you opportunities to increase mastery in a field.

A lot of people bullshit themselves into not actually doing the stuff no one wants to do to get success. You can't manifest anything without some sort of pain / grind to get there.

[Guest EmptyVase]

On 15.11.2021 at 6:20 AM, Theprofessional said:

The Mastery process in the end leads to far more results than "setting your mind in a direction" for something, but it takes years and years before you will see any kind of growth at all with this method, and even those initial results will be minuscule, perhaps negligible.

Mastery is the result (or in other words, the manifestation) of setting your mind in a specific direction.

It also seems like there is a conflation between motivation and inspiration going on here. I'd suggest learning about the distinction between those two.

[Jacob Morres]

By goal-less i think it means outcome independence/detachment, not actually goal-less 

[Theprofessional]

@EmptyVase  What do you mean conflation?

[Theprofessional]

@Jacob Morres Maybe. I'm just confused because in the book Mastery by George Leonard, he explicitly states that "goal-less practice" is the way of mastery. I've read the book several times and this piece of information has always bothered me. On the one hand, I understand that repetition is the best way to learn something, not paying attention to the outcome. But also, there can't be any repetition unless you know what you're working toward in the first place.

[Guest EmptyVase]

3 hours ago, Theprofessional said:

@EmptyVase  What do you mean conflation?

May I ask, what would you say is the distinction between inspiration and motivation?

[itachi uchiha]

Mastery is better and more good than manifestation

[Theprofessional]

@EmptyVase motivation is short term, inspiration is long tern

[Guest EmptyVase]

@Theprofessional

Alrighty, this might click for you now.

Motivation is: you do it for the sake of getting something in return. There is a motive behind it. And it's also connected with past, present, future thinking. This entails the belief that you will feel better once you get the desired outcome of your motivation, which is not wrong per se, but highly conditional and impermanent. You tie your happiness to something extrinsic.

Inspiration is: you do it for the sake of doing it - it is goalless. It's almost like non-dual motivation: the doing is the getting something in return. There's no difference between the two, in terms of how joyful they are. Put simply, you do it for fun and/or for the love of it. It's timeless. And it points to a deeper, more engaged way of being, which leads to inspired action.

Notice how there is 'spirit' or 'in spirit' in inspiration and 'motive' in motivation? Pretty interesting to trace back where the words are pointing to.

Edited November 20, 2021 by EmptyVase

[Theprofessional]

@EmptyVase fantastic insight, thank you.