The OASIS experience and the path of mastery — Part 2: Freedom from the World

By Louis Bourgeois

As we discussed in the introduction our path of mastery aligns with the 4 stages of genius and, in general, the evolution of consciousness. The 4 stages of genius are: preparation, incubation, illumination, and expression. So, as you look at your life as a whole, you can see that the first stage of your life, childhood and adolescence, and the consciousness of the Tribal Mind, was the preparation process for the rest of your life. It is critical to view this foundational process in a positive light, even if it appeared to be, in perhaps many ways, a difficult time.

The wounding of the East (using the metaphor of the 4 directions in our book The Circle of Life: The Way of Transformation) is directly related to the process of awakening, or illumination, in the West, the dark night of the soul. A simple way of saying this is that we receive the necessary impetus in our early years that will fuel our spiritual journey later in life. Preparation for awakening requires frustration and failures. Often the path of mastery calls for our devastation, a complete collapse. So, as you work with your life map, you can begin to reinterpret certain events and relationships.

We share a few quotes from The Circle of Life book:

“It is a compliment of the highest order when one finds that he or she cannot go farther, and that life has become an irredeemable tragedy” Robert Johnson “Transformation”

“As long as you do not know how to die and come back to life again, you are but a sorry traveler on this dark earth.” Goethe

“Inevitably, any major transformation of the psyche involves a long process of de-structuring the old self, before there can be any construction of a new one.” Sam Keen “Fire in the Belly”

“Reversal is the movement of the Way; disaster is that whereon good fortune depends; good fortune is that wherein disaster lurks.” Tao Te Ching

We named Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in our list of resources. We see how our insecurities and failures to find security and love/belongingness in early stages of our life became the driving force in our search for meaning. An early pointer, in one form or another: “when the world wearies and ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.” The development of the egoic mind is part of the conditioning that we all used for our protection. The sense of the ego is to deny and project. When things went badly it was necessary to deny pain, deny responsibility, and then use the defense of projection, blaming others.

But the real harsh truth of this process of denial and projection is that we learned to deny and project our authority, our power, even our divinity, onto others. The Path of Mastery is all about reclaiming this authority, this power, our divinity. Our journey through the West, the dark night of the soul, can be a long and arduous journey. It is likely that this journey for you is yet the dominant stage in your life. The OASIS Experience and the Path of Mastery is designed to offer you the guidance and support that you need, and that you deserve. We understand what is described in the quote below as “the raft to the far shore.”

One of the very greatest quotes that we have found on the process of transformation, from Karlfried Graf Durckheim’s “The Way of Transformation.”

“The one who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to a friend who offers him/her refuge and comfort and encourages the old self to survive. Rather he/she will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him/her to risk him/herself, so that he/she may endure suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a “raft to the far shore.” Only to the extent that a man or woman exposes him/herself, over and over again, to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within. In this lies the dignity of daring.”

Here is the beginning of the second freedom, Freedom from the World. As we complete the process of blessing our past, and everything in it, we become ready for a magical reversal of the mind.
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The OASIS Center for Conscious Living near Cuenca is offering weekly classes beginning in mid-July focused on the “Path to Mastrery.” The following is an overview of Lesson 1, “Freedom from the Past.”. Those interested in participating can contact Louis at louisb333@hotmail.com.