I Am My Own Master

Spiritual Lesson #1

I just had an aha moment about training your brain and it looks different than I thought.

The exercises you need to do to be your own master are sneaky, mentally challenging and repetitive. This is the opposite of being spontaneous and creative, which are the type of activities I preferred when I was younger.

It’s a 2 part process:

1. First you need to establish yourself as the master of your ego and body. Being the one in charge takes practice and is a totally different mindset than how we are raised to be.
2. Then you need to have a show down with your habits and patterns, eliminating, improving or overhauling them. All of your actions now need to reinforce #1, that you are the Master.

Because we’re not taught spiritual practices growing up, we basically have to start at the beginning learning our spiritual ABCs in adulthood. As a side note, the other thing we’re not taught is self care. My parents have been in the rat race ever since I’ve known them and every year it got worse as we strained to keep up with invisible measuring sticks at ever retreating goalposts. Self care is the first thing sacrificed.

What’s the first type of spiritual exercise everyone always tells you to do?

Meditation.

Why? Why is the answer always, “Start meditating!”

You might be thinking meditation is all about being able to immerse yourself in quiet and build a channel with your higher self. And it definitely does this. But let’s step through it from the beginning at your first attempt to meditate.

Here’s the scenario:

You finally decide to try meditating. You sit down a little anxious like, close your eyes, and wait. Then a thought pops into your head. Nothing important, just something you need to remember to do today. You make a mental note. Now what were you doing? Ah yes. You settle down again to do this awe inspiring meditation. A thought pops into your head about a…