Static. When listening to the radio you can choose AM or FM. AM radio stations have to be fine-tuned. When tuned correctly there is no static. You’ll have a clear signal. An FM radio signal is always clear, no static at all.

Similarly, your mind is either in a static or clear state. Ask yourself, are my mind and thoughts tuned to AM or FM? A static-ridden mind can never navigate its inner-world. It is doomed to live only within its outer world.

The ones called spiritual masters are called masters because they have mastered their minds. But what that really means is they have mastered their thoughts.

The beginner is told to just sit silent and notice the wind the trees the things about them sounds. What is really being taught is simply to observe, this takes thoughts away from the ego. Because it is the ego which constantly floods the beginners mind with a firehose full of thoughts focused upon the external world, memories, plans about what to do next to pursue all the desires of the body. A little snippet of peace can be experienced by the beginner by simply sitting and observing. This is passive training.

If the beginner student is drawn to more observation practice, then that student is ready to move to the next level of inner practice.

The next practice level is an active (willful) mind-thought training, rather than simple passive observation of the surrounding outer world. The student is instructed to place certain thought streams within their mind. At the beginning, this will be very difficult. The student will require much encouragement and the instilling of physical, emotional, and mental discipline. The progression then begins for the student at their own pace. The student will experience increasing peace and calmness leading to the desire to maintain and deepen the new required mind set. The completion of this training level is signaled when the student realizes that his/her entire life-path is controlled by the constant torrent of thoughts in his/her mind, including, memories, feelings, bodily prompts, that are all ego designed prompts to take constant actions in their outer world. The successful completion of this phase means that the student has gained the power to short-circuit the bodily egos control over his/her life.

The next level for the student will be increasingly self-directed. The student must deepen the centering within his/her minds thought stream using powerful questions in a meditative state to awaken the student’s intuition. Wise instruction and teaching coming to the student from his/her outer world, and the growing intuitional power will bring on awakenings, realizations. These will deepen and instruct the student from within. the successful completion of this phase is signaled by multiple awakenings that will ultimately culminate in an actual state change within the student’s consciousness. This state change is called Enlightenment.

With this the student has become master. Master of what? All aspects of the student’s human life and beyond can be consciously navigated once the student knows his/her one true identity.

And that is the hallmark of any Master.