LIVING THE WARRIORS ROADWAY
Developed/Written by Oscar De Los Santos
Transcribed/Edited by Joan Bell

SECTION 3, VOLUME 1

The Four Masteries

The Ancients saw that all knowledge essentially falls into four categories.  The pursuit of this knowledge led to the discovery of the four masteries.  Due to our failing biosphere, our failing society and culture and our failing planet, many of these teachings have resurfaced  and may be found under different names.  For our purposes, we will maintain what is not an exclusively Toltec tradition and keep the words of the four masteries within this context.   The four masteries thus are the Mastery of Awareness, the Mastery of Dreaming, the Mastery of Intent and the Mastery of Love.  Technically there are only three Masteries, the fourth, the Mastery of Love can not be conquered but is rather one that a Warrior must Yield to in order to learn it’s secrets.

A Metaphoric Way of Seeing the Four Masteries

(This is not to be seen as an accurate account of the development of the Four Masteries, but rather a way of putting them into some context.)

Once there lived a very intelligent but ordinary Shepherd boy.  One day while tending his sheep he came to the edge of a cliff.  Looking down he saw his whole village for the first time.  He marvelled at the pattern that the roads and houses formed and realized that the people themselves would not be aware of the patterns or would have planned these patterns.

From the height of the cliff looking down, he realized that he could see friends about to meet one another without them knowing it.  He could see events about to unfold which, from the ground level would be imperceptible to those involved.

He wondered to what degree he himself, at that moment, was part of that pattern that he himself could not see.  The pursuit then to discover what he could not see and that patterns that his life formed became the route to the first mastery; the Mastery of Awareness.

He discovered as he expanded his awareness by taking in more details, that he was able to understand more and was able to perceive how things fit together.  He understood that nothing was separate from anything else.

As his daily practise of becoming more acutely aware increased, he noticed that there were certain things, certain obstacles that stood in the way of his ability to expand his awareness indefinitely.  These became his natural enemies, these things he found within himself and in due time he learned to conquer these through various techniques.

One day while resting under a tree he fell asleep as was customary for him to do at this time of day, however something remarkable happened.  Although he was asleep he was also very much awake.  His awareness training had brought him to a state of lucidity.  Thus he then discovered the second Mastery; the Mastery of Dreaming.

The Mastery of Dreaming opened a whole new world and universe to explore, discover and understand.  He learned that the techniques of awareness training he had learned during his waking time also applied to the dream time.  He also discovered that somehow these two worlds were related and that very little divided them.

After much exploration, the subtle force that divided the two worlds became impossibly thin, to such a degree that he was no longer able to distinguish one world from another.  This was not a question of reality and non-reality or which one was more real, but rather which was his place of origin.  He discovered that all these different worlds had different rules and that the only constant was himself.  He discovered that various parts of him were imbedded in different worlds and that he could move or shift some embedded parts from one world into the next.  That made everything real or made everything a dream.  Because of the natural confusion that this created he had to learn to navigate through the realms by choosing what realm he wanted to crystallize in.  This was particularly difficult because certain worlds had magnetic or sticky properties.

Sometimes he found himself locked in a nightmarish world and other times, in various paradise spaces which were also difficult to leave.  It was concern for his sheep that forced him to learn how to re-integrate himself in the world that had the sheep in it.  That was the world he had become most familiar with.  Thus he discovered the third mastery, the Mastery of Intent.

He discovered he had to cultivate enough personal energy to muster intent and that once intent had been used it could not be undone but could be counter-intended which required twice as much energy.  Through this practice he discovered that death is an illusion because there is always another world to wake up into.  Certain behaviours and attitudes conserve the energy needed for intent and others expended it.  The impeccable behaviour which he applied to his life in order to conserve personal energy to move intent is what forged him into the first spiritual warrior.

His life was no longer measured in days but in moments; not places but states of being; not being trapped by space or time, having or getting, living or dying, everything became a continuous streaming emanation from some unknown source.

While traversing the many worlds, realms and kingdoms of eternity, anything and everything was his, he could intend it, create it or become it.  There was a great dissatisfaction in his perpetual play for all the beings that he conquered were dreams within dreams.  Nothing was impossible any longer.  This led him to seek significance because everything else could be given any meaning which revealed nothing.

It was in a moment of absolute silence, in a space between spaces that he encountered the fourth mastery.  He experienced Love and recognized it as The Source.

All of his intent, all of his skill, all of his experience traversing the infinite realms could not place him at the eye of The Source.  It seemed that the more he chased it the further away it receded.  When he was most still it was closest.  It was when he was most still he could feel it, experience it.  As soon as he reached to grab it, it would flee again.  After much chasing he decided he could never reach it and so he yielded and was overcome by it.  And so the greatest of all the discoveries the fourth mastery, the Mastery of Love, which is not at all a mastery, but is ones’ Master.

The four parts were fused into one.  Division no longer existed, it never had.  He recognized The Source as himself; a dream dreaming itself. With the fourth mastery he discovered the pearl of great price, the most profound of all great things, the reason for meaning and life...purpose.

COMMENTARY

The First Mastery – Awareness

To enter the world of the Spiritual Warrior one must cultivate awareness.  This is to be understood as awareness of ones self, the world and The Source.  There are various methods, techniques and exercises that assist in the expanding of ones own awareness.  The more aware one becomes the more present they are.  True awareness is not limited by space or time and therefore it can anywhere or everywhere.  The key is “You are where your awareness is”.   Awareness is presence, perception.  It is the exercise of seeing which is not an optical phenomena reliant on physical eyes.  Daydreaming with our eyes open, we still see images although they are not in front of us physically.  In dreaming we see images, again not reliant on our physical apparatus.  There is also imagining, visualizing and remembering to name a few.  None of these require physical eyes but they do require awareness.

The Second Mastery – Dreaming

In the west, to be considered a dreamer is not a desirable thing.  However, it is the dreamers who have brought the world so much of it’s art, music, poetry, architecture...the list is long.  The practise of dreaming is to a Spiritual Warrior is the art and science of maintaining consciousness while undergoing various degrees of duress or forgetfulness.  Often times in dreaming one is not at all aware that minutes or hours before they were not where they are now.  Learning to dream is the cultivation of awareness to a degree that permits a Warrior to remain present at the moment of death.  Death, like sleep, induces a state of forgetfulness or in it’s truest sense
mind-less-ness; being without mind.   If an individual has not cultivated enough personal presence at the moment of death they enter a lucid dream state from which they have no recollection of any former life.  This of course makes it impossible for them to make any choices concerning reincarnation or self-existence.  This is an imperative Mastery to practise simply because one could enter a nightmare world from which they could never awaken.  We have arrived here again or a place like this because we were unable to hold steadfast to true reality.  We are currently embedded in the illusion which gives the appearance of separateness from The Source.  It is our task to truly awaken.  To cultivate enough personal energy and awareness to puncture eternity and enter infinity.  In other words.....to return Home.

The Third Mastery – Intent

Free will is an exercise in volition.  Volition is an exercise of intent.  Intent requires energy and self-presence called awareness.  It is not until we have fostered enough power to choose, truly to choose that we can then decide, from the core of our being, to surrender to the hands of the Maker.  Until we have conquered our fears by recognizing the illusions that they truly are we can not surrender ourselves, our ego, our personal individuality, to return to the One.

All fears emanate from the belief that we can die, be injured or hurt.  This in turn comes from the idea that we are somehow separate from the things we create.  That gives us the sense that we are individual, mortal and finite, which we are not.  We are Spirit.....We are the Source.....We are one.  Until we accept this we continue to be Spiritual Beings at the whim of a physical dream that is quickly becoming a nightmare.  The Ancients understood that reality is a dream we dream together.  To change the world is to dream a new dream.

The Fourth Mastery – Love

No true words describe Love.  Love can only be known by direct experience and to say it can be known at all is inaccurate.  Without this fourth Mastery there is absolutely no significance to anything anyone does at all.  It is the core of life itself.  The animating principle to our existence and to all existing emanations.

To say that life was created is to say that it is finished and therefore can not grow.  Things that are not growing are dying or simply do not exist.  To say that life is an evolution is to say that it can never be finished which means we can never achieve completion.  We can never experience our true divinity which is our birthright.  Therefore as seers, it becomes self-evident that existence is a continuous streaming emanation and this is proof that things exist because of Love.  To clarify, Love as a perpetual streaming emanation is like fire.  A fire that  burned a million years ago is the same as a fire which burns today, perpetually different while always remaining the same.

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