Nice 👆🏼

Amused mastery.

ELI5: Amused Mastery?

It's when you're so much on top of the situation (you master it) that you're amused by the underlings trying to rock the boat and that you actually display that amusement.

The Way of the Superior Man doesn't used the words "amused mastery" but has a few examples.

“Perhaps you have been working toward some financial goal, and finally you have succeeded. After months or years of effort, you have creatively earned a large amount of money. You feel happy, full, successful. You feel great. You come home to your woman and want to share the news with her.

“I just made a million dollars today.”

“That’s nice.”

“That’s nice!!?? You know how hard I’ve been working for this.”

“I know. It feels like I haven’t seen you in months. Did you remember to pick up the milk on the way home?”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. But who cares? We could buy a dairy farm now!”

“I asked you to pick up the milk three times this morning, and I put a note on your briefcase. How could you forget?”

“I said I’m sorry. Look, I’ll go get the damn milk...”

Why is she being this way? Because she simply wants to deflate your success? No. She is challenging you because your success doesn’t mean shit to her, unless you are free and loving. And if you are free and loving, nothing she says can collapse you. She wants to feel you are uncollapsable, so she pokes you in your weak spot.

Of course she knows how much this moment of success means to you. This is precisely why she is negating it. Not because she wants to hurt you. But because she wants to feel Shiva. She wants to feel your strength. She wants to feel that your happiness is not dependent on her response, nor on you making a million dollars. She wants to feel you are a superior man.

It’s a tall order to be this free, and in your more mediocre moments you will wish your woman would settle for less. But if you are a man who is living his fullest, willing to play his edge and grow through difficulties, then you will want her to test you. You may not like it. But you don’t want her to settle for some bozo who depends on his woman’s response to be happy. If you are aligned with your mission, you are essentially happy, even though times cycle between difficult and easy. You don’t need your woman’s strokes to fulfill your mission. It still feels good when she strokes you, but you don’t need mommy anymore, telling you what a good boy you are. And your woman doesn’t want you to need mommy. In fact, it sickens her.

If your woman is weak, she may settle for a weak man, and therefore play into your need to feel like a good boy. But if she is a good woman, a strong woman, she won’t tolerate your childish needs for a pat on the head, collecting bigger toys, and being king of the mountain. A good woman will love the childlike part of you, but she wants your life to be guided by your deepest truths, not your untended childhood wounds. She wants to feel that at your core you have grown beyond the need for kudos and million-dollar toys. She wants to feel your self-generated strength of truth.”

So she will test you. She might not be fully conscious of why she is doing it, but she will poke your weak spots, especially in moments of your superficial success, in order to feel your strength. If you collapse, you’ve flunked the test. You have let your woman deflate you. You have demonstrated your dependence on her for external validation. Even if you just made a million dollars, you are a weak man. Your woman cannot trust you fully.

If you remain full and strong, humorous and happy, your truth unperturbed by her testing, then you pass the test.

“Honey, I’ll get you some milk, all right,” you say as you sweep her off the ground and lay her on the couch, laughing, kissing, looking deeply into her eyes, and “milking” her happiness with the confident loving of your caresses.”