… to clarity. The road is long and arduous and it will require more than you think you have. The good news is you always have more than you before you tried, the bad news is some rain, mud and landslides will inevitably appear to cut the journey short and incentivise you into harking down at the nearest comfortable place with hot beverages and some delectable delights. If it were easy everybody would be doing it and there would be far less unnecessary self-inflicted suffering. This suffering comes from the lack of self-mastery which provides clarity. Once you can see clearly you can make better decisions for yourself and all affected, you can be present and your actions, thoughts and emotions are congruent, there will be no more feeling as you’re an imposter because what comes to every moment is not a semblance of you, a fragment of a build persona but the real you. When you see clearly you see the inner workings of things, are not easily swayed or tricked by fads and lies, there is no need to just blindly believe and obey and you can think for yourself. But mastery of self comes before seeing. Seeing is the summit of the journey.

Buddhist monks laid out 5 pitfalls of the human nature we’ll be faced with if we climb the mountain of self-mastery, 5 large types of challenges and distractions which are to be contended with. Fist one is called Kamacchanda meaning sensual desires. This is all desires of the flesh and senses, all of the worldly pleasures. Indulge in them, but not to the point where they become more important than the journey. Have a delicious meal but don’t give into gluttony. Don’t let the physical become an obsession obscuring the higher target. The second is Bypada or ill will, the aversions we carry about things people and places and we let the negative emotion interfere and paint everything we see afterwards. If the source from which we process is dirty the result will be a well. See what you’re avoiding or even actively hating and despising. The third is Thinamiddha, the dullness and heaviness we feel, the sloth and laziness, the unmotivated moping around, the place off being uninspired, untouched by beauty and horror, the stagnation which often manifests as aimlessness and disenchantment, depression. The fourth is Uddhacca or restlessness which they call a monkey mind, unable to focus and see things through, always swaying from branch to branch with no purpose. In this state of mind you cannot master anything including yourself. The last one is Vicikiccha or the scepticism and doubt, the constant merry go round of what if’s which keeps you paralyzed, afraid and scattered, doubting yourself, the path and meaning of everything, leading to worry and self-justified procrastination, wasting time and precious resources on accomplishing nothing, not ever taking that climb.

There are things to be learnt, valuable information in taking the journey by yourself. You can of course learn from the others’ account of their journeys, but some experiences are untranslatable by words or art. They need to be experienced. Take the climb and mind the pitfalls. None of them are you and they tear you out of being present. The way to deal with them is – recognize they are there, acknowledge them, accept them as they are, openly non judgementally, investigate why they are there and what lies beneath, and then release them by on identifying with any particular sensation or feeling. You’re not this body, you’re not this fear, you’re not this paranoia, you’re not this pain. It’s helpful to imagine this thing as watching them from a distance, a thing on a screen where the screen is none of the things projected on it. It’s just a current real and the screen will not be affected by anything showed. It will rain on the road, but the climb and the peak are worth getting wet for.