“Regardless of the method you use, the feelings you have about unusual experiences seem to determine the success of your experiences. Not only are the skills and techniques important, but the feelings with which you use the techniques— what Amy calls metaskills—are also crucial.
The most useful and special metaskill is a form of heartfulness: compassion for yourself and loving interest in the things you experience. I have no idea how to learn or teach this feeling, though I know that it is more important than any of the other paraphernalia or skills.
This detached heartfulness is powerful in your dealing with the most seductive of all trance states: ordinary reality. How wonderful but how difficult it is to remember that you are an infinite being interested in life and death during everyday times, especially during difficult moments or concerning relationship issues.
In such special moments when you remember your whole self, you can go deep into the mundaneness of ordinary reality and enjoy its mystery. Waking up entails remembering your whole self in the midst of trance states and problems and making sense out of them. It does not mean being without problems.
Everyone undergoes the cycle of discovering, being fatigued, sleeping, and reawakening. The warrior, however, tries to break this cycle by remembering his entire self at all times. When he is in the world of daily activity, he is at the same time on a mountaintop, just as when he is asleep, he is awake.
The skill is an ability to pick up on secondary processes, but the metaskill is compassion for yourself and the experience.
In dreaming, it is crucial to notice what is happening and also to sustain the view of your experience. In the martial arts, fighting is a skill, but love for the universe that organises that encounter is a metaskill.
The metaskill in the martial encounter allows everyone to win. Likewise, process work has skills in it, as Amy has shown; the compassion or ruthlessness with which the work is done is the metaskill that defines the work.”
