Continuation of Mastery In Its Complete Form
Photo of my college track team. I was a scholarship and champion track athlete and really wanted to be a professional athlete, but something happened that changed my trajectory.
I started committing myself to mastery at a young age. I had been an athlete until 22 years old, and then something life-changing happened. I was faced with a decision, and I could keep down the road I was on, which led to unhappiness, discontent, and sickness. Or I could alter my course, devote myself to “life change,” and start making different choices. I did not know the term “mastery” yet. I had no word for what I was feeling or seeing, but what I did choose was a complete life change and commitment to a new philosophy in life.
This commitment led to over 30 years of independent and graduate study, asking questions about mastery. I was most focused on spiritual mastery and mysticism for my studies. I asked questions about knowledge, especially mystical knowledge, knowledge beyond the senses. I looked at mysticism comparatively, across time periods and across cultures. I even examined shamanic knowledge in the Amazon Rainforest.
During my graduate studies, I had the opportunity to study Sanksrit and Pali and expand my knowledge of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhism. Later, after graduate school, I continued by including Tibetan Buddhism as well. I spent time learning about Hinduism, reading portions of the Upanishads, the Vedas and the Bhagavad-gita in Sanskrit. My graduate degree was in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and I specialized in indigenous religions, consulting ethnographical literature and recorded oral stories to understand shamanic knowledge systems in the Amazon. I also gave 2 years to learning the Quichua language. I was an instructor of World Religions in graduate school, which gave me opportunity and resources to explore other religions as well, and learn how they view knowledge, reality, and mastery.
After graduate school, I began learning technology more seriously. I was most interested in using technology for educational purposes. We owned a martial arts school for a few years, and I began learning about marketing, promotions and media creation then as well. I started learning how to make websites, use social media, and create original visual and written content. Paul and I began learning more about documentary media, including the interview process, photography, and video. The entire time, I was working to master the internet, technology, and how to strategically and skillfully use the web and social media with purpose.
Then, in 2013, we founded Groundwork Promotions and in the beginning 1-2 years, we were experimenting a great deal with media creation. I allowed myself to be the subject of our work, and that is when I came upon the Self-Creation process. I found accidentally, through the use of media, I was accelerating my own growth, development and understanding of myself and my mastery process.
So, what did I learn about mastery in my studies? Why did we found Groundwork Promotions? How did it lead to my understanding of the Self-Creation Process? And why is fitness (physical development) so important to the whole equation?
Those questions will be answered in another blog post.
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There is another very powerful element in my life, which greatly impacted my studies and pursuit of mastery, and it is supernatural in nature (meaning nonordinary and beyond explanation) and I prefer not to discuss it in the Groundwork Promotions (GroundworkStyle) blog. But it is so significant in my life, it deserves to be addressed somewhere else.
