Do we prepare the house for the arrival of the master?
Yes, that is a good analogy. With a caveat, as must be the case with all analogies.
The house is the personality and the body. The arrival of the Master is the event of the Realization of our True Nature. And if the house is indeed in good shape the Master can stay and live there. Otherwise, she cannot.
The personality must be in good shape. The basic physical needs and stability must be addressed first. Then there must be sufficient psychological maturity and strength, that is: sufficiently free from false beliefs and false ideas (imagination) and negative emotions, and a degree of detachment must be present.
Then, if the house is clean, if the realization occurs it can “stick”. If the personality is “dirty” the realization will not stick. The master will buzz off. Just like surfaces do not stick together if there is dust or dirt between them.
It is common that there is an Awakening before Spiritual Realization settles. It is a glimpse for the seeker.
The Glimpse reveals what the seeker is seeking. Until then the work was all done in the dark; for a “me” that does not exist in the first place. If the personality is still unbalanced the Glimpse remains a memory and then more work is required until the personality is clean enough. Then realization can occur and “stick”.
After the Glimpse the process of elimination and cleanup becomes a priority and steps up a few notches. Fueled by the seeker’s desire to see the process through.
The caveat of the analogy is that the “arrival of the Master” is not something in the future. No Master arrives. No real “I” arrives. The Real never went anywhere and you were never separate from It. That is the limitation of the analogy.
Inevitably, due to the very nature of the mind and identification the seeker can project it into the future. After all, the suffering is present and does not go away, so we must hope and project that at some point it will not be there. But that perspective can change.
What Is Being Sought is here and now. Always and everywhere. That is the crux of the whole drama.
