What is the Mystics Target?

What is the Mystics Target?

Many of the aims I have set for myself, more often than not, have revealed to me how little consistency and Will I am able to muster. The attitude I have adopted to address the discouragement that is likely to ensue when I do not reach my goal is, without having set an aim, I would simply be in imagination about being consistent and able to follow through with my aims. I value the observations I am able to make about my mechanics as a result of having set an aim, without which I would stay comfortably asleep. Imagination is one of the main obstacles to awakening.

The second adjustment I make internally is to make the aims very small and clearly quantitative so that I cannot lie to myself and fabricate success. Lying to oneself is a second major obstacle to awakening.

The most important shift for me internally is to focus the outcome of success on being more awake during the process, not on identifying with achieving whatever aim I set for myself. Identification is a third formidable obstacle to awakening.

If I aim for the sun and hit a cloud, rather than being negative as a result of “failure,” I can be joyful for the rain. Transforming negative emotions is a powerful tool to retain the precious energy that I would otherwise lose. This energy is then redirected toward acceptance and presence and in this way, the mystic always hits the real target.

“In archery we have something like the way of the superior man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns around and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.”

— Confucius

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Bronze sculpture, “Sacred Rain Arrow” by twentieth-century Chiricahua Apache artist Allan C. Haozous depicts the Apache legend of a young man who was given a sacred arrow to pierce a cloud for the purpose of bringing a deluge.