How does it fit

Mastery:

My Journey from Physical to Mental to Spiritual Mastery

Gila Shroot

No, I am not a perfectionist, but I am looking for self-mastery. Is there a difference? I think there is a major difference. A person can never be satisfied with seeking perfectionism; however, mastery brings a deep satisfaction that cannot be attained in another manner. Mastery for me is reaching the level of Tzaddik or Tzaddakas. This is the mastery I was striving for without knowing what it was called. 

Physical Mastery

My journey started with physical mastery. I loved sport. I excelled in sport. My striving to the best of the best in all the sporting activities I enjoyed was the first signal that I was interested in physical mastery. At that stage I was 6 years old, so the word mastery was clearly not in my vocabulary. Sport kept me busy, social, and most importantly on a constant journey to strive for perfection. I competed nationally in ice-skating for a number of years and won a number of cups including first place in at least one competition. This spurred my passion for sport further.

However, the ice-rink closed and my ice-skating career ended before it took off internationally. So I turned my attention to horse riding, which I had started at around 8 years old. My horse riding was fulfilling a new way, it opened a relationship with animals that I did not know existed. I learned so much more than merely physical mastery from horse riding. It did not take me long to realize that I also was learning self-mastery and how to relate to animals. The social aspect of horse riding was especially crucial because I learned how to take my lessons on how to relate to horses into how to relate to people. While it would take me years to get better at both, I certainly learned a lot about animals and myself. I was still too concrete to move from my goal of physical mastery though. By the time I was 11 years old I had figured out my journey was not physical perfectionism, but mastery even though I would only discover the term “mastery” in high school.

Mental Mastery

Once I left primary school I realized that I did not have any more chance of making sport a profession. While it still played a significant role in my life, I began to experience more emotional problems. This set me on my journey for mental mastery. It was only in high school when I was around 13 years old that I discovered I had mental health issues. I was highly anxious and my anxiety was getting in the way of being a happy-go-lucky teenager. This started my many attempts at getting mentally healthy with many therapists and types of therapy. So at around 13 years old, I went to my first psychologist.

She introduced me to mental mastery, although again it was many years later that I gave it this label. In the meantime, I was searching for mental health and mastery in both the mental and physical realms. The psychologist and I worked diligently on mental health and she helped attain the therapeutic goals we had set. We terminated therapy and I felt much better about myself.

Then I went to Habonim summer camp. There I was introduced to the concept of mind-body connection. I was so intrigued by this concept and delved as deeply as I could into it. AIDS had just hit the world. We were being educated appropriately about AIDS and all the aspects surrounding it. Someone came from a health perspective and told us about healing AIDS through the mind-body connection. My connection with mastery was starting to evolve into something more concrete. I was starting to mature on my journey to self-mastery. Self-master was a term I was starting to become familiar with during my teens. I consumed self-help books. Anything that was connected with mind-body or self-help piqued my curiosity. Hence my more formal journey to self-mastery began. The focus was still only on mastery of the mind and body though.

I was nearing the end of my high school career and I had no idea what I was going to do. My Mother stepped in once again to save the day. This time she sent me for career counseling. After many hours of testing, finally, they had the results and I had my consultation with the career psychologist. I felt so insecure about not receiving an answer as to what career to choose that I prayed and prayed that night that I would know what it is that I should do for a career. When I woke up the next morning, I was thrilled, I had an answer…. 

Off to the meeting equipped with what I thought was the ultimate career for me, I was super confident that I had triumphed. Only to get there and discover that my answer was not only not on the list of suggestions, but I was not intelligent enough to achieve this goal. I remember the conversation vividly. He asked me what I thought I wanted to do and when I answered with confidence and enthusiasm that I wanted to become a psychologist, he explained to me I would not make it to masters-level academically. Talk about putting a spoke in my wheel?!

After much persuasion, the career psychologist explained to me that I had a “memory storage-retrieval” problem. The metaphor he gave helped me understand what he was talking about. He said, “if you picture a library filled with books on many different topics without an organizing system. Books are placed on the shelf as they arrive and not categorized and stored in alphabetical and logical categories in order to retrieve at a later date”. “Oh,” was my retort. In my head I was now absolutely committed to dedicating myself to get a masters in psychology and proving this man so wrong. It was a combination of I will now overcome this “memory storage-retrieval” problem AND (capitals for emphasis) attain my masters in psychology no matter what now.

My journey for mental mastery doubled in intensity. I contemplated the feedback all the way home. My mother was concerned and asked why I was so quiet. I told her I was disappointed and am determined to do psychology and become a psychologist now. She left me alone for the rest of the trip home. I kept thinking about the library he was talking about and how to “fix” my library so I could achieve my goal.

After a number of days of contemplation, which bordered on obsessing, I finally cracked the code. “Eureka!” I suddenly thought. I figured the following solution seemed so logical and simple that it just had to work: If my library was all stored chronologically without a categorical logic, then I would just take each book and re-sort my entire library into a categorical system that made sense for quick, easy retrieval. It would take a long time, but it would be worth the effort for two reasons. First, I would prove him wrong, I could do this and succeed at becoming a psychologist. Second, if my library was not in a user-friendly (although this term had not been coined by then I think) categorical system, then I would need to re-categorize everything ANYWAY (capitals for emphasis). So I decided that the best way to go about fixing my library was to first work out what categories would help retrieval. I asked my mind to come up with the answer because “we” (my mind and I) only had one shot at re-organizing. Then I decided that I would try a few different categorizations out until I hit the best solution with a sample of “the books in my library”. When I was satisfied with my categorization, I decided the best way to re-organize was to start with new information I learned. As I learned something, I would go through my library as thoroughly as possible and look for all the “books” on that subject. Then I would arrange all these “books” plus the new “book” categorically. I soon mastered this process. In my “spare time,” I decided it was really productive to re-categorize the other “books” in my library. So I rearranged all the information I had learned throughout my life to date, which was about 17 years’ worth of information. Meticulously, I set about re-arranging my library in this manner using the find and search method when I was learning new information and the re-arranging method when I had “time on my hands” or “nothing better to do”. It actually took quicker than I thought, especially considering I had started my first year of university by the time I was putting this method into practice in a significant manner.

By the time I finished my undergraduate degree I had mastered storing and retrieving. My acceptance and completion of my master’s in psychology was the final nail in the coffin of the career psychologist’s feedback. Ok, I was not graduating as a clinical psychologist as I hoped, but I was graduating as a research psychologist. I had now achieved mental mastery.

An Update on Physical Mastery

I had still not achieved physical mastery to the degree I wanted by the end of high school, but I had significantly progressed on this path. Having finished high school and sport being less easily accessible, I had a new challenge: How to finish up my physical mastery.

Transition from Physical and Mental to Spiritual Mastery

As a child, I was fascinated by Judo, which I had seen only once. When I was about 9 years old when I saw children “dancing” on the mat I was fascinated. I asked my mother what was going on. She told me they were doing Judo and Judo was for boys. Okay, that meant I was not going to get to do this now. This image stuck with me until later in adulthood. So when I was faced with a dilemma as to where to from here with sport, the answer was martial arts, more specifically: Judo. 

So I began Judo classes and moved over to a similar martial art called Jujitsu. At the end of a 6-year process, I finally mastered the physical realm! However, there was a new problem that was evolving….

Spiritual Mastery

A big part of martial arts is spiritual mastery. Combined with my volunteer experience for psychology, which was also pointing to something more than just the mental, I realized there was another level to mastery. This co-insided with my journey to becoming a Ballas Teshuvah BH’. And so I discovered the final frontier, spiritual master. Quickly I saw that the obvious answer lay in Judaism. I figured I was born a Jew and I know there is much wisdom, let me first start exploring what I was born with. 

Lead by my healthy appetite for mastery, I started consuming Torah self-help books. That is any book that dealt with the topic of mastery. I discovered a vast and satisfying reservoir of wisdom. My journey towards spiritual mastery was on its way. The self-mastery, especially mental mastery, that I had achieved helped me tremendously. I grew really fast and thoroughly enjoyed my journey. 

Finally, I had reached a certain type of destination, the pursuit of self-mastery or spiritual mastery which I had been searching for from the beginning. While this journey is lifelong (as are the other 2 as I have discovered, although to a much lesser extent physical mastery of course because it is more finite and only comes up at certain intervals now), I have never felt more mentally healthy and happier than I do at this stage of my life. I am looking forward to increasing my self-mastery over the years and benefiting from increased mental health and happiness. Simcha is probably the most apt word because I guess, after all, I was not only on a pursuit for self-mastery but also for Simchat Chaim.