Regular
Aikido training serves to balance the body-mind connection and to
harmonise the faculty of intention.
It heals the deeply rooted psychic flaws and psychological inherited
illness which predispose our species toward unconscious reactivity,
violence, abuse, bullying, violation and imposition.
With that, over time, it also restores the inner circuitry to do away
with unfounded fears which lurk in the unconscious corners of our psyche.
This step is a personal and social necessity which must be addressed
before we can hope to progress, evolve and flower into our true potential
as spiritual beings in a world all too often ruled by reptilian values.
Aikido is more than merely another anachronistic ‘Japanese Martial
Art’.
And whilst, as with all arts world wide, we rightly honour its origins,
it must be understood that to pigeonhole it into a box as another ‘style’ of
aggression or contest would be to totally misunderstand it.
Aikido is the opposite of aggression and contest and enacts the principles
of reconciliation and practical harmony in the face of the ultimate
challenge, imminent violence itself.
Aikido is a healing art.
We often hear practitioners refer to a 'style' of martial sport. What
do you mean by the word 'style'? Is it a calcified fixation to a rote
way of habituation in training? Is it a stubborn refusal to mindflex?
Is it a belief, opinion or ideology? Or is it a religious sort of a
fixation in mimicking something or another instead of researching and
improving? Who needs styles to calcify the mind? Why insult your own
intelligence by even using such a stupid word to describe a lack of
thought and questioning?
Sure, at a basic, warming up level, Aikido may sometimes appears to
be an ineffectual, ‘soft style’ of self defence, to the
unreceptive.
The strictured mind sees nothing more than a flowey, dancey, fluffy,
co-operative sort of jujitsu without the struggle and wonders why there's
no bashing and clashing or rigidly predictable way of doing things.
And that is precisely the point: to be able to practice to respond
to aggression without struggle and yet not become a victim, to retain
integrity whilst successfully surviving attack, to literally reduce
violence to nothing where it belongs, leads to that consummate skill
which is able to neutralise aggression without the use of aggression.
In other words it is creative, not destructive and, for humans, a sustainable
ideal to aspire to, as by now, even the dumbest of simians knows that
to return violence with violence is sub-human behaviour because it
leads neither to peace nor freedom, but to the escalation of violence
with all the injustice, barbarism, murder, devastation and debt which
no amount of rhetoric can hide.
It is not trite to say: 'Everybody loses a war.'
It is a repeated fact of history.
And the purpose of history, if anything should be to learn from, and
not repeat it's errors.
Aikido then, is a study of Eternal Universal Principles through the
active practice of the Movements of Nature and The Universe, as it
is.
The marriage of Heaven and Earth to give birth to Harmony and Great
Beauty, the Principle of Life, Creation and Sustainability.
Aikido exercises the body, the mind and the harmonising of intention.
You overcome challenges in training and you draw your own conclusions!
There are no gurus and no dogma in Aikido.
Until you are predisposed to question everything, you will not make
progress in Aikido because it is a path of discovery and not a comfort
zone to hide behind.
This is serious living research and not just an idle game of the ego
so as to somehow imagine the vanity of betterness over others.
It is the study of the origins of existence, our present state and
our destination as conscious, sentient beings in a vast existence which
is our natural home.
But not merely as a fantasy, blind belief, rote quoting or a parrot
like academic level of intellectual hypothesising, but as direct experience
through self purification and clearing the mind of excrescences so
we may become able to progressively see into the very nature of existence.
And learn to navigate it with simplicity.
Such a path is fraught with danger for those who cling to and identify
with preconceptions, notions, dogmatic ideas, formulas or hubris of
any variety.
Nor can it be of use to those attached to the concept of ‘detachment’ or
any other concepts for that matter.
THE UNIVERSE IS AS IT IS AND NO OTHER WAY.
We are but specs composed of minute quantities of dust, fluid and air,
a handful of atoms in the ocean of infinity.
And we somehow have consciousness.
Unless this consciousness is made clear it is worse than useless.
In the face of the Universe's vastness and very real total power, opinions
become worthless, but discovery is not only possible, it never ends.
The gifts, the teachings and the ‘philosophy’ of Aikido
are the circumstances of life itself.
Aikido is not separate from life, nor does it require cloistering.
The essence of Aikido is alive and lives in all things, beings, places
and conditions of existence.
And to respond with harmony and grace is the enabling of that essence
which we learn to unlock in the dojo!
Whereas the crippled consciousness reacts with fear, aggression and
violence, and thus closes down, the emerging and awakening consciousness
responds with love, grace and harmonious reconciliation no matter what
is thrown at it because it recognises every circumstance as a gift
of the Universe.
It is not what is thrown at us, BUT HOW WE RESPOND that determines
the outcome.
And thus understanding expands.
At our minimal stage of conscious evolution, it becomes self evident
that this requires constant vigilance, self observation and practice,
for in the midst of intense circumstances it becomes so easy to revert
to the tragic reactivity of our chimpanzee ancestors.
Only we have technology.
Whereas a chimp screams, beats his hairy chest, pulls a few faces and
runs about tearing branches and dragging them in order to make a point
before settling down to semi-sanity, we as presumably being human,
have to advance beyond such mindless and hormonal reactivity as as
species, if that thus far honorary title : 'human', is to have any
meaning! Well may you laugh. But in the face of the tragic spectacles
we almost daily witness, where world 'leaders' and other mad men of
violence, still imagine they are resolving something or another through
technological mass murder, be it war, or terrorism, there is no difference,
where unknown others are sent to their death for no valid reason. Thereby
inevitably exacerbating already volatile problems. Violence is never
solved by adding violence. It simply does not work that way. Violence,
for humans, is a serious disease which requires healing.
The enacting of violence of course only compounds our crippledom as
a species, our hubris and the never ending anger, hatred and the seeking
of revenge which could well bring about a global meltdown of fearsome
proportions.
To what end?
When challenges arise, the idiot in human form raises his voice or
his fist or a weapon. Or a group as mad as he.
All too often from a pulpit as other idiots cheer and feel absolved
of personal responsibility.
The wise RAISE THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS and assume personal responsibility
for each and every part and particle of life which comes their way.
And strive to live consciously!
The deferring of responsibility, like violence and the clouded consciousness
has produced tragedy after tragedy through history.
It leads to cannibalistic tendencies, for example as with the fall
of the Roman empire.
The undertaking of individual responsibility, whilst sometimes difficult
work, albeit often joyful too, transforms us and our consciousness
to a greater and deeper understanding of the Great Harmony which is
back of all existence, making us relationship enabled.
And it takes less striving to work towards aligning with that Great
Harmony than it does to hold up endless lies which run counter to that
pre-eminent Great Harmony, as it is.
The economy of existence is inbuilt into the innate wisdom of the Universal
Existence, the Ki of Life within which we live, breathe and have our
being.
There are many ‘Ways’ which strive to address such necessary
progressive enlightenment and forward thinking.
But few address such awakening in the face of this planet so afflicted
with the pathology of violence as does Aikido.
Too many either decay into the downward spiral of reciprocal violence;
or escape into a monkish glass bubble of self delusion then live in
denial of the fact that fear and violence does in fact exist.
Or manifest a schizophrenia which alternates between self righteously
pious sanctimony on the one hand and a murderous aggression toward
'them', a fear myth which grows like cancer in the pathologically fearful
consciousness.
Instead of choosing to individually be responsible for addressing the
active healing of reptilian tendencies, too many simply fall into habituated
patterns of the unconscious ape gene of fight, flight, fear, and submission
to tyranny, as being more ‘comfortable.’
Over the years I have practiced and studied many paths and ways and
also witnessed some intense and challenging circumstances.
In my view no way or path better prepares the individual or addresses
the necessary personal transformation required at this testing period
of our evolution as a species as forthrightly as does regular Aikido
practice.
The principles individually discovered through regular Aikido practice
are all embracing and inclusive of all legitimate ways, beliefs, arts,
sciences and methodologies, whilst at the same time enabling the whole
individual to respond creatively and harmoniously in the face of emergency.
Rather than opposing or seeking conflict, Aikido enhances the understanding
of all ways and leads them to completion.
It also teaches you to embrace and to dance with the inevitable law
of change, be it sudden or gradual, in a way that benefits all concerned.
This, to me, is the essence of real human freedom. And honesty.
