Mastery

I have mastered a few things in my life and none of them mean anything. I am still mastering, more than ever.

Mastery is in the moment. It’s a living thing, a dynamic and ongoing state. It has no stasis. Whatever you achieve falls away immediately, which brings more opportunity for mastery.

You master nothing, which makes you not a master but nothing, too. The more you are nothing, the more mastery you exhibit. There is no you and no master, only mastery.

Each moment is the beginning of the next. There is simply intensifying presence.

Mastering your life is a process of forgetting yourself.

Fire

I am lighting another homely fire here in honour of my father. He is in the winter air this evening and I am firing it up with spirited flames.

I am heating my house with his lingering presence, and it is warming my heart. He is in the timeless ether and I am reaching into it through alchemic elements at this particular time.

As always, I have music in my home and love steaming in my bloodstream. I have patriarchal power in my pen, my father and his father in my growing work, and fiery passion in my words. I have it all here tonight.

I have nothing holding me back because I have learned how to stop doing that. I have healed and moved on, come home to myself and become my own caring parent. I have given birth to and raised myself to full fruition. I am authentically an adult, finally fully a man.

I am moving so fast now that I have stopped moving altogether. Like a supernova, I am standing absolutely still in the twinkling skies. 

I am blazing through the heavens like a shooting star holding a fragment of eternity in my self-consuming spin through the galaxy.

I am lighting up the horizon for those with eyes to see.

Catch a fleeting glimpse and make a wish.

Alignment

If you want to achieve anything, bring yourself into alignment with everything. If you want to be happy, do the same.

If you want to know who you truly are, employ that exact approach. If you want to soar to new heights of effortless attainment and at the same time journey to the centre of your being, while enjoying an ongoing feeling of thrilling fulfillment, come into absolute alignment.

Alignment is intelligence.

Alignment is a surrender of the self. It is a relinquishing of all attempts to control. It is the dissolution of the sense of separation, and is, thus, the reunion with the experience of oneness.

It is a return to the truth. It means getting back into the flow, allowing the stream of life and all existence to move unhindered. It is not ego-bound. 

No wonder it brings achievement. No wonder it is blissful. Now wonder it takes you up as much as it draws you in.

Alignment is a coming home to being nothing. This is how it is everything.

Alignment is alchemy.

Imitation

The universe has created just one of you, just one in all of existence. Your specificity is assured and asserted, a special gesture of creation. 

No matter who has lived before and what they have done in their lives, you are still obligated only to your uniqueness, your own singular self. Your job is not to imitate in any way. You are bound to your own being. 

Your work is to be yourself. Your salvation is in fully realising who you are.

Each individual is here to fulfil their particular function, not to follow the way or precedent of anyone else. If someone suggests that you simulate them, they are not a true teacher. 

A master turns you back onto yourself and leaves you to find and define your own personal path. A sincere source of insight knows that you are your own source, and they insist that you live your personal and incomparable piece of perfection. 

Imitation is for frauds and fools.

New INSIGHTS Book Chosen

A newly-written book needs time to sit before it gets published. The author needs time away from it, too, before he can re-enter it as a reader and editor.

The book I finished writing a couple of months ago, book 15 in the INSIGHTS series, and I needed these things respectively, and so I took a break from the keyboard, and read some of the nine other titles lined up in the sequence.

There were the four books written between SEXIER INSIGHTS (book 10, which came out in November 2014) and the just-finished one, all of which made possible successors.

Then there were earlier books, like the one straight after TRUER (book 4), or the one three after that, which, I realised on revisiting it, is very strong. But then, so are all of them in their way and their place.

So which one would come out next, making a suitable symbol for the anniversary of my setting out twenty years ago and coining the phrase ‘being yourself for a living’?

For a while I had wanted it to be the one before the latest, written in 2015, because of the title, but I was also still partial to sharing the one immediately before that, also written in 2015, as it travels through India and climaxes in Thailand.

I looked at the whole series in a way I had not done before, by re-reading more than half the unpublished titles, and now having fifteen in total (including the five already in print). I began to suspect strongly, though, that the latest one would come out next. Still, I suspended judgement. Then I revisited it with perspective and I knew for sure. It’s the one.

I’m a couple of edits and a cover design away from announcing the title, but I can say that it is a fitting one for the occasion, and the book is brimming with where things are at.

New INSIGHTS Book Update

2016 marks twenty years since I set out on my own and coined the phrase 'being yourself for a living' as a description of my experience and, while I was at it, a vision for humanity.

As part of this twentieth anniversary, I will be releasing a new INSIGHTS book, the sixth in the series, the title of which is still to be announced. This is owing to anticipation-inducing tactics, but also to me still deciding which book it will be.

There are five titles out so far, and ten more written, from which I am working to choose the next sequel. There is the one I recently finished writing, and the one immediately before that, produced in the second half of 2015. Both have an immediacy to them, and both have names that fit with the occasion and the significance of the anniversary.

Then there are others earlier in the series that have been waiting years to be put out into the world. They will all be released in due course, and I have been reading through them, looking at the whole body of work in a way I had not done until now.

Each book has a theme, its own shape, and a place in the growing picture. It's fascinating and fulfilling to see them slotting together. Which one will be released in 2016?

The answer is coming.

Reflection

I see myself reflected in the mirror

I see myself reflected in the tap

I see myself reflected in my lover

I see myself in the object and the gap

I see myself reflected in my feelings

I see myself reflected in my thoughts

I see myself reflected in my actions

I see myself in my books, of course

I see myself reflected in the window

I see myself reflected in my friends

I see myself in the past and in the future

I know myself in the now that never ends

 

Story

I looked at your breasts and then at your face. I have no regrets, they both have their place. I looked at your heart and saw empty space. I strode through the mall with a natural-lit grace. 

I finished a call from a friend near and dear. I sat down for lunch and ordered a beer. I valued much more my just being here. I saw him aspire to live like I steer. 

I wrote in the sun and this is what came. I drank in the light and remembered my name. I felt my heart open to more of the same. I let my life lift to new heights of my game.

I got so excited it surely was showing. I got the full feeling of knowing and flowing. I loved where I am and where I am going.

I thought of your breasts and my cheeks started glowing.

Trying

Trying is a quick route to tension and trouble. As soon as you exert yourself, you induce anguish. 

As soon as you aspire, you set up a struggle with the way things are. If you are already in hell, it won't make much difference if you turn up the heat, so trying might seem entirely fitting for you, perhaps even somewhat redemptive, in the short term anyway. 

But when you are in tune, even the slightest attempt will tell you immediately that you have gone wrong. 

 

Things should arise from within you and synchronise with what surrounds you. Your job is to be present, that's all. 

This is where creativity flows best and easiest, and it is where you are most harmonious with the world. You act on your inspiration and connect with your context, effortlessly, entirely in the flow. 

Trying is not in the flow. Trying seems appropriate when you are out of synch and want to induce a solution. Trying seems appealing when you are unfed from your source and need to compensate with external attention, accolades and assets. 

Trying is ego-driven and ego-affirming. It seems like a solution when you are the problem. Trying cannot work. You need to stop doing it.

You need to get back to being.