by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
….Back to the analogy of the Apprentice-to-Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful mountaintops: Remember you’ve now come a long way, relaxed to much & have seemingly tumbled back to your starting point.
It was a dramatic event. Before you knew what was really happening you have stopped falling & are no longer tumbling downhill. Now you are still at the bottom – where you began the journey long ago. You notice it ‘looks and feels like’ the psychological state many have called ‘rock bottom’. It feels that way.
But now you have dusted yourself off, checked you’re bruises and broken bones over you can now see you seem to indeed be back to the ‘randomized cultural abyss’ where you started your journey between ten and twenty five years ago. You at this stage of your development (Not yet a Master) trust your immediate surroundings far to much – or should I say the ‘meaning imbued’ into your surroundings.
This natural for most for remember – you are not a Master (of Life) yet, you are an probably an experienced Apprentice – perhaps you are even a mature Journeyman. A Journeyman to a Master is of course a seen as a more primitive state than the Apprentice who can become a Master (of Life).
For the Journeyman lacks the constitution (tools) to ever become a Master (But of course we need them still & a Master knows this intuitively. But let’s say for simplicity you are not so ‘bad lucked’ to be a forever Journeyman – let’s say you can become a Master (of Life).
Again let’s go back to where you found yourself at rest after falling back from your journey to the fabled path where you spotted the peaceful, Masterful mountaintops in the reachable distance. The truth is when you woke up from the tumbling down, you were now no longer the exact same Apprentice you were immediately before the fall. Your history precludes that possibility. It must do as the inputs are much different, so must the output. You are not the same person, you are not the same Apprentice. The Master looking from the future knows this. But a forever Apprentice or a forever Journeyman will not know this at all – for his mind is not at t ha level of being able to see through surface appearances.
But this situation is where Life throws up a ‘fork in the road moment’. It is by nature a psychological fork as much as a physical one. It’s of belief. It is akin to the ‘what you Think becomes you’re Actions and what becomes your Actions becomes your Reality thesis (that saying is True – but of course Life Coaches/Internet guru’s have twisted/murdered all these good old type fables). The (psychological) fork in the road goes like this: From that point after the fall, you can either ‘roll over & die’ (do nothing at all) or ‘load yourself back into the stock barrel to be fired back into battles-scape (of Life)’ and possibly towards being a future Master (of Life).
If again later in the journey you chose the wrong path in the road (i.e. you agree to stay an Apprentice or at best a Journeyman) you also choose a path of not being to ever become the Master. If you choose the ‘path of the Master’ you are on the ‘right fork of the road’, I.e. the path to possibly become a Master (of Life).
Of course it’s worth mentioning that Yogi Berra (the famed American baseball coach) also said wisely “if you see a fork in the road ahead – take it”. So in truth you can take the right fork (towards being a Master) the left fork (An Apprentice or Journeyman) or (as Yogi Berra warned of, & p.s. to the non-American’s – Yogi Berra is his real name & he is not the ‘Jellystone Park’ Cartoon Bear that steals pic-a-nic baskets) you can sit the grass next to the fork in the road or back at where you fell back too (falsely) avoiding the stress of making a decision.
But let’s assume your smart enough to “take the fork in the road” as Berra said. What is the difference between the two situations he talks of – ‘the barreling towards the forks in the road of life or the ‘roll over & die’ situation where you avoid life entirely?
The one that ‘loads themselves into a the barrel again’ and then also chooses the Masters path at the key ‘fork in the road’ has proven they are future Master material’ – for they intuitively know not to trust their kneejerk feelings after waking up from the fall backwards to what looks very much like that old randomized abyss of the beginning of life’s adult journey (perhaps) ten to twenty five years ago.
The future Master chooses not to take the ‘beaten down, in-the-moment, go-to advice’ – that is of choosing the options that stop
You from becoming a ‘Master’. The future Master has (psychologically) a healthy ‘dissociation’ between themselves and their minds ‘chatter’ (bad superficial advice).
I hate to admit it, but life seems to be indeed akin to a War (and I would contend is at least as much ‘attritional’ as vs a series of ‘shock & awe’ battles). Sun Tzu (The Art of War) had many fine points on the matter in fact. In wandering the wrong forked path after a blow to the mind and spirits, anyone can easily forget life’s ‘War-like-ness’ – & I think even a future Master (of Life) can even still fall prey to ‘aimless wandering’ – but perhaps I am being to optimistic, but that’s also not a bad strategy in itself, so long as it’s based on (Enlightenment like) philosophical reasoning vs blind reasoning. I’d like to think that twenty years in a psychological rest area is not also a metaphorical black hole of mediocrity (as eighty years as an Apprentice would certainly be).
The War of life is about embracing the rough & tumble, showing your battle-scars with pride. Then you are reminding yourself that you are at (some various kind of) War – with at least large attritional aspects. While a soldier in the ‘War of Life’ (hopefully to be a Master) you then must agree (as a soldier does by definition) to ward off the often ‘beaten down part of your mind. After all – a soldier worth their salt doesn’t like a ‘chatterer in the ranks’, especially while under enemy fire (to act like this would be seen as Treasonous or at least Court-Martial-able).
Isn’t it sad we don’t always hear of ‘Life’s battle cries’ hidden amongst the rest areas of the mountain’s foothills, and in the ‘randomized abysses’ we all came from, and in particular after a ‘heavy fall’. But then again if everyone was a ‘Master’, then it would also be true that no one would be – for ‘without shade their is no light’. Whatever the Truth is, Shakespeare was onto something, for life as it is and has been lived here prima facie on Earth, is surely some kind of weird alchemy of both tragedy, comedy and history – and we all need to create genuine meaning out of it all, much to the chagrin of the future-present-past slings & arrows that abound.
THE END
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Anton Martin Smith Writer 