The Challenge of Commitment

Who is "The Master?"
Maybe it would be better to start with "What is a master?"

This is from the A.I search just now:
1. One that has control over another person, a group of persons, or a thing, especially. The owner or keeper of an animal.
2. The owner of a slave.
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And now from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1993:
fr OE Magister, akin to L Magnus, large. 1. A male teacher. 2. ..a person with a degree higher than Bachelor's. 3. a religious leader 4. a worker or artisan qualified to teach apprentices. etc...'consummate skill, great figure from the past whose work serves as a model or ideal, one having authority over another, one who conquers or masters. on and on with no reference to slavery or animals. 

Honestly, it did not seem a definition search comparison between on-line and a hard copy on the shelf would be so poignant, depressing, and appropriate to the topic of 'the challenge of commitment.' 
     I could cry. A master seems to have become a DEI liability or, like the billboard for Kansas State on I-70 which shows a happy black youth in cap and gown, captioned in huge italicized letters, "We've got this, World." Yes indeedy, the graduating class of 2025 from KU will take care of everything, starting with an AI search for all the information they need. We begin as masters and reverse engineer what we do as mastery. Is that it?
     The Master, was a 2012 movie written and directed by Paul Thomas Watson and brilliantly presented by Joaquim Phoenix as a troubled subject of Philip Seymour Hoffman's depiction of an L. Ron Hubbard type "master." In this case, a guy who, like the Scientology guru/sci fi author, has far-reaching ideas and techniques about the problems of humanity and how to solve them. The movie is nearly perfect in every way [If you like that sort of thing] in its depiction of the complex relationship of an accidental student and a determined teacher. A question lingers behind every scene, "Who has the power in this relationship?" Go watch it again.
      When do you bow down, press face into the feet of the one who knows and say, Take me, if you will.? When do you recognize the master, the one who you have realized is above, perched, positioned to grasp, identify, and lift up the one who is below. When do you say to yourself, I am below this one. This is right. It is right to submit to this one. It is right to commit to this one. When does the realization of that relationship finally cause you to put aside your ineffective tools and the half-baked results they brought, and humble yourself before one who has to love you because they have come to be above you, to lift you up. When do you put aside the rusty tool of bogus pride, "I've got this World" and say, "I never did and never will get this. The world has me, and I don't know what to do about it--behold the master and the call to commitment!"

7. The Atonement is a total commitment. ²You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another. (ACIM, T-2.II.7:1-2)
     "No, man, no, I can't do it."
     "Sure you can..."
     "No--It's not there."
      "Do you WANT to--I mean, if you Could do it, would you?" 
     "I guess so, I mean, why even think about it?"
    "Let's not pretend you can do it. Forget it, no need to try. Let's pretend pitiful is the goal--now, even though you can't do it, or you'll get creamed if you try, forget all that--do you want to. No risk." 
     "No risk? Okay. Yes. If I could just end up there, no risk, I would do it."
     "Good. Now let's pretend there's a magic friend--somebody else's, not yours. You are just sitting there with no friends, but this magic friend of someone you know just likes to do stuff. Fulfill wishes, for no reason you know of."
     "Okay. Magic friend--easy enough."
     "Say to yourself, "Magic friend, do that thing I can't do--but I want to, but I won't even try because I'll get killed." 
     "Okay. Done. I said it."
     "I'm the magic friend. Just go with it. It's just words. Tell ME like you mean it."
     "Okay. You just like to fulfill wishes--I want to do this thing, be over there but I am scared shitless. No risk, no strings, here I go, 'magic friend, save my ass and keep me alive in the process. No 'shards of a shattered ego' lying around to hurt people"
     "Done." 
     
Spoiler alert, the student has all the power, (until they give it to the master.) The student chooses the master (after the master chooses the student). If they don't know they have all the power, they will strike up a relationship that conforms to the AI definition--beast master, slave-owner. 
     ACIM could also be called ADAI, A Description of Irony. The half-baked student  holds all power over the mighty Father-God-Creator until the student admits they need help. They want help and  will commit to the better way. It is often is a case of driving with the brakes on--the wanna be student craves the promise held out by enlightenment which is a happy, purposeful life of ease and grace but clings to the self-persona that longs for release from what they have rather than what they seem to be. There's no way forward here without first person singular.
     I have pursued an abundance of modalities aimed at self-improvement, even freedom, release, and enlightenment. I'm still the same thing plus more experiences. The problem is that "I" want to change or empower "I" to have the enlightened life. "I" have no intention of tossing the steering wheel to someone else; that seems like suicide. This whole idea of staying in control is the problem, but it seems like a smaller problem than giving control to some other thing that will eventually betray me, no doubt about it, got all the proof starting with birth when they drugged me into oblivion so they could pluck me out of the birth canal like the electrician recently extracted a comatose bat out of my attic with a pair of pliers. I am afraid of being used, that being a best case scenario.
     The 'practice makes perfect' strategy can achieve "mastery" given enough "commitment" to the necessary steps and an awareness of the pitfalls. Master of the World even, like Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, or Gandhi the Mahatma.
     Jesus the Christ, by contrast, did not submit to a strategy. He volunteered to vacate the Right Hand of God to do time on earth--apparently because that other 'Morning Star; named Lucifer, was cast here like lightening. The Christ would have arrived at roughly the same time for an opposite purpose. The Luciferian morning star came to get control of the situation while the Christ-impulse came to undo the concept of "getting control" and instead "give control" to the One that actually runs all strategies and circumstances.
     I recognize that it can be repugnant to the Course student to drag the right hand of God into it because it is symbolic of religious fatalism, punishment, and queasy memories of eternal damnation--that is a personal problem. Whatever mythic verbiage one uses to express a 'master worthy of the steering wheel' will work. "Lucifer" by any name is still the ego in ACIM. "Sin" by any other name is still a mistake that functions as an anvil around the neck until it is recognized as a mistake. The paradigm of traditional Christian constructs  is intentionally parallel to ACIM symbolic language in the same way that Lucifer and Jesus are after the same thing--both want control where it truly belongs. The Christian referent is not an accident in any dimension. The Euro-Western world has done with 'masters' what they did with Dodos, Carrier Pigeons, buffalos and the people that pray to them before hunting. Christianity was our last stop on the Master-Teacher line and it has been effectively sterilized. Choose your master, If you are in a body, he has already chosen you--so there is the "choose again" strategy. Blah blah blah. Even in first person singular there is nowhere to go. 
     I ran into Peggy, an old art class chum in the last week of the last year in college. I had not seen her since my freshman year when we sat near each other, exchanging cynical comments while we did art stuff, portraits and blind contour drawings and other elective activities. Four years later, Peggy glowed. The sarcastic smirk was transformed into a sincere smile. She was happy and told me about it. Of course she did--it's called evangelization, telling the good news. 
     A jaded, sarcastic ex-cheerleader from Knoxville High goes to a frat party and meets a guy in an Izod shirt, khaki pants and docksider shoes who tells her [with point for point accuracy] how she feels, how unhappy she is, why she is that way, and gives her the way out. She is amazed at his prescience and takes the next step. he puts his hand on her head and says, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior." She feels faint, undone, she says yes and is changed--permanently, easily, gracefully. There is nothing else for her to do but let Jesus the Christ steer her vehicle through life.  She tells me it's easy, just say it and mean it, or just say and don't mean it. 
     I apologize for coming to this crossroads once again and falling short. I don't see any difference between Peggy's born-again experience and the meeting of an ACIM student with the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or The Master--whatever language the student's special condition can tolerate. It is all the same. So far I can cry at the beauty of escape and believe in its reality, but I am still so many years later, unable to say, "It is finished, Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cAFs65o1U
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAQiAQROi7g
​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN49cvR05Nc

​​I remind myself to not shoot the messenger. There's no way to get past the world's most uncomfortable moment except to go through it.