A master and a beginner share some of the same characteristics. Proof of this can be observed in the fields of painting, music, dance or martial arts.
For example, a painter may start by painting specific shapes at the beginning of the learning process to painting something that doesn’t necessarily look like anything in particular. In fact, some may view it as something painted by a novice, when it may in fact have been painted by someone who’s been painting for many years. An expert jazz musician may play a tune that in some ways sounds like a person that just picked up the instrument. Martial artists are taught set patterns to learn body mechanics, but may abandon them after years of practice.
The same happens in spiritual practice. A book that contributed to your progress now sits on a shelf or has been passed on to another. The opposite may also be true. A passage you read may have had no meeting at all last year, but now hangs on your refrigerator door.
It is the inner shift that paves the way for us to go deeper in all areas of life. Through this shift we are allowed to experience the form and the formless. Sometimes even at the same time.
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