Hikari Aikido Dojo

Allowing ourselves to practice as a whole expression of our multi dimensional being is a way for our Prescence to be realized and lived as the doorway to the true NOW.  If we live as if the NOW is between the past and the future, we are still living in and on linear consensus reality and think because we are being mindful we have awakened to the transcendent and vertical NOW.  Mindfulness is being aware of what possibly is in front of us, being awakened to Prescence serves just that function, not trying to be aware of objects, knowing one has moved beyond linear consensus reality one does not see reality from being separate anymore.  One is absorbed into the greater field of ever expanding consciousness/awareness of one with no-thing.  The continual defining of life and the entrancement that it elicits keeps one from letting go into the freedom of non-attachment.  One can move beyond the circle that their life may have become, to feel oneself being meditated by the greater source.  Our lives can stay in the circle of habits, emotional attachments, and any conditioning that we have become accustomed to as defining our life and not recognize the evolving spiralic unification field that we emerge from in each moment.

Our practice of Randori allows us to move beyond the struggle with ourselves and the presumed other we are practicing with and realise we are truly one from the same source as is all created life.  As long as we are struggling trying to make things happen we will stay in that circle of assumptions and not see that unless we let go into the NOW we will not let go of our fears of the unknown, what might happen if we step out onto the world of vulnerability and truly be living in and from Prescence.  Then we truly live our humility for we have nothing to hide and know we only live from the greater Source.  The outer game dissolves, it was only held together by not stepping into the fear and the unknown to see through ourselves transparently.  Through Randori and the simplicity of transcending victory and defeat, the duality game of the tao, we start to now exist through pure existence not the filtered reactionary, fearful, ego which served us blindly but now has to allow Source to live as it is, through its own directness and clarity as our Real Self.

Everything we have learned from our Aikido practice is synthesized and brought to dynamic life through our practice of Randori, or to hold chaos.  We can truly learn how to move with life’s flow and meet many levels of creative, artistic expression not only in the martial sense, but awakening our spiritual life from our essence.  Our Soul makes contact with purpose from the transcendent One.  All of our practice and work we have devoted to our art is culminated in realizing the NOW and the freedom from the life of the mind that imprisons most of the planet.

If we stay awake to open ended Spiritual Prescence, NOW is always accessible, there is no where else to go, we move into our inner life of evolutionary contact with the eternal Spirit that is our Source and lives us as our Beingness.  We can now see our life transparently as contact where we, as the human side, has reached the limit of the known and where we must let go into the unknown if we are to make true contact with essence.  We have moved beyond merely conceptualizing “about” existence and are now lived by existence freedom purely.  Letting go of our possible addiction to have an “image” in the mind to think we are alive frees us from the reductionist viewpoint of linear consensus reality which allows us to start seeing through the eclipse of beliefs, conditionings, concepts that have shadowed our life obstructing our original, inner Spiritual Light Source Nature inherently flowing from the Heart of IAM.

Recently my blog post EQUANIMITY and AIKIDO FOR THE MODERN SOCIETY was published in Aikido Journal.  I want to thank Mr. Brandon Clapp for sending the essay into them, I don’t know Mr. Clapp personally but I wanted to acknowledge his interest in our blog.  I also want to thank Mr. Stanley Pranin for considering the essay for publication in his great journal for our wonderful art, thank you both, Sincerely, Will Gable

In our practice of Aikido we are relying on a universal pole of connection of principles that while practicing them allow us to let go of our fixation on the horizontal linear consensus reality that seems to prevail in our common everyday interactions.  Instead of stopping in the midst of an attack we maintain the principle of movement in relation to the momemtum of the energy field that is moving towards us.  Movement helps us release ourselves from the stagnation of static thinking which tends to lock one in place, again, principle transcends ego, and allows us to move beyond what the mind thinks it wants to do in relation to the situation upon us.  We need to have reliance on the universal subconscious that spirit in its magnificient genius has bestowed upon us to collectively be able to learn many principles and simultaneously apply them without thinking to the situation at hand with continuous movement being at the forefront.

Recently in class Brian and I were demonstrating this as he was attacking me with a concentration just being on my arms and hands, I totally relaxed in the exercise but he was seriously trying to make my upper body go where he wanted it to go, that might have worked if I had stayed in place, but I was continously moving at his speed.  The movement was completely destroying his every attempt to effect anything stationary, he was myopically focused on what he was trying to do and I was simply moving, and he was unconsciously trying not to fall or flip at the same time.  So this effect of total body movement as momentum is an example that can be replicated over and over because uke is only strong in one relationship, down the line of the attack, again, a linear, limited approach to control the situation.  If only a tiny amount of energy is inserted amidst the attempted committed attack from almost any angle off the line,  their body goes into catastrophic failure in its attempt to survive.

This is also a demonstration in the vertical dimension of how one can move beyond their linear, horizontal life conditioning, habits, beliefs and instead of staying in the mindset of those arenas, waking up the circular, spiralic dimensions that practice of Aikido can bring into ones life.  We can think the spiritual dimension is some place far away, our universal nexus is our contact in our spiritual hearts with the source that created us, that contact starts to awaken when we can let go and “trust the process”, when we can let go of what we think is going to happen and make our initial move into the unknown.  Aikido provides us with a metaphorical structure to practice from just about any level of consciousness, over the years I have seen demonstrations from almost no force being involved, to serious animalistic portrayals.  I have always said, we need to be able to calibrate our involvement relevant to the situation at hand, this is where Principles effected simultaneously are an extreme advantage because we are running on the subconscious which is faster than conscious.  This allows us to move wholistically and thus very efficiently.

We are able to show the levels of possible evolution practicing the art and how a person practices it tends to show their individual level which hopefully evolves with their involvement and understanding. There are people who are truly innocent and have never been in any kind of altercation, it has been our experience that it has been hard for them to even want to harm anyone, but this can vary as no one has the right to harm another,  another yogic evolutionary principle that was established by the founder in the universal principle of non-harm or ahimsa.   Some of these practitioners seem to have already established this principle in themselves and so like the more evasive aspects of the art.

As we practice our art of living from Aikido principles we tend to expand more internally, but, as long as we are predominately focused on the defined “external”  world or whirl we tend to cut off the connection we could have with the universal spiritual nexus that we are spiraling out of if only we would loosen the grips of our attachments to continuously try to control at least this level of reality with the limited concepts of linear consensus reality and hold onto them at the expense of awakening to the awareness that precedes and is inclusive of all levels of interpretive experience that is open ended intuitive Spiritual Prescence.

          We teach quality martial arts of @KIHARA AIKIDO AND SHINDO MUSO RYU JYODO.  The monthly fee is $60.00, with no contract!  Session times are Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6-8PM.  We are located on the West side of the building at 1810 E. MEMORIAL ROAD MEDICAL BUILDING, South of Memorial Road.  Thank you, Will Gable

     “Spontaneous practice and living come from freeing ourselves from the mechanical conditions of existence, PRINCIPLE TRANSCENDS EGO.  Will Gable @2003

     “We can finally find our home in the Heart of Aikido and relax truly into the path of least resistance where we can openly allow the essence to smooth out our concepts about anything and awaken to the Prescence of Love as our True originator.  Will Gable @2005

     “So the information and consciousness that is being gleaned is transmitted via our kinesthetic sharing in which we are communicating on a multi-channel processing dialogue which is felt in the silent levels of intuitive guidance.”  Will Gable @ 2006

     Living as the Prescence as our authentic self brings about the state of equanimity in the body mind. We no longer have to try to stay centered, our wholistic condition is centerless center, a circumference that seems to extend into a fathomless but solid feeling condition.  We are included in a greater life that is connected with the essence that is the source of all.  In our practice of Aikido we are always practicing from this essence even if we haven’t practiced for any great length of time, by being inclusive of another’s energy field and harmonizing with them as one with our energy field we have in essence transcended ourselves within the Principles of allowing and yielding to their field and so let go of resistance and truly start understanding the powers available that previously were not apparent when we based our practice and existence to only what we could see with our eyes.

     The assumed solidity of physical vibrational existence seems so real because everything feels like it is so dense.  This is one of the elemental stages that we have to go through in Aikido, which is the element of Earth which teaches us the grounding, stabliizing and integration of our physicality as it relates to our practice.  Once we have learned our lessons on this level we can let go of trying to muscle our way through our katas, then we can move into the next level which relates to the element of water which starts to loosen the constraints of the Earth level so that we can start practicing some fluidity as it relates to the Earth phase which can limit us if we stay strictly on that level so we can now allow earth and water to mix so they can create another platform for our next transition.  If we don’t move on we can think kata is our only level of practice, I have practiced with people who haven’t and they seem to be afraid of practicing a lot of randori which tends to show us where we truly are practicing, either trying to not get got by always muscleling out of the situation or trying to over control the situation by not committing to the attack, and only expressing what I call “controlled commitment,”  which is not helping either person to understand because when one is in a real street scenario, everyone is trying to bust your head.  This is difficult to get out of, because when these people train others, they demand that you have to break their balance “their way” or you are not going to get their approval and this leaves one most of the time without any real internal authentication to base their practice around.  Our speed and quickness can be controlled based on the level of the person we are practicing with, if they are new we definitely want to be slower and as the person goes through their understanding, speed and power can be added so as to gradually help them perform the technique with as much equanimity as they have realized to that point.

     Equanimity, being the sattvic balance point within us when we access the place of allowing the flow of the situation to be what it is, similar to zero point discussed earlier.  Once we start moving and practicing from this internal feeling then we can move into or around and truly flow with most insertions of momentum, at that point, it won’t matter if one is being attacked with just an arm, leg, or the whole body, movement is movement, and momemtum is momemtum, true commitment to one’s demise has commenced.  As this arises, we need to stay as close to equanimity within ourselves as possible, hopefully our practice has shown us the value of absorbing their energy and becoming one with them.  Now we are staying in equilibrium with them as we are going to use their whole body and mind to reflect back to them and it doesn’t matter what this looks like, if they have thrown themselves and we are out of danger, we don’t need to run to them and try to affect a technique on them, we need to leave!  This is simple self preservation if we are not trying to prove ourselves to someone who has randomly attacked us, we should be moving to safety as quickly as possible instead of engaging the situation unless the confrontation has escalated to more dangerous levels.

     This is a fine line in communicating to people what they need to be doing after they have affected an effective move or technique, we train people to complete an effective technique in practice, but there is a need to know when to apply this to total immobilization and when to leave the situation once the evasion has been accomplished.  This is where awareness in the moment comes into play, the aggressive energy may have come out of nowhere, when evasion has happened, is there any need to stand there and try to figure it out?   This is why we have always practiced our art slowly so as to more accurately access our true kinesthetic input to the subconscious as we practice from the principle of “fast is slow and slow is fast”, this allows us to practice from the profound context of “what is” in the moment, not conceptualizing about it , dealing with it as it is, no matter what form it has taken.  Many of the practitioners have used this in combat and in their daily life, it seems to bring equanimity into play so one deals with the situation at hand or “what is” from a more profound effective wholistic prescence. 

     I am writing this post around the subject of equanimity because this is a vital point that we need to access in ourselves, it seems some people don’t have this contact which is awareness, psycho-physical balance, clarity of judgment, and intuition all functioning simultaneously to be able to understand the situation that one may be in at the moment and make spontaneous decisions moment to moment and let as little of the adrenaline based reactions make less of our decisions than our centering.  Being able to discern the escalation of a situation in the moment is invaluable, we stay as calm, centered and responsive as possible and deal with the situation in relation to what we feel we need to do instead of jumping to conclusions and try to forcefully make their body do what we think it should be doing.  Once kuzushi is effected, their body has to go through its own rebalancing cycle, if you have never had your balance taken effectively to the point where you don’t know what happened and find yourself on the ground it might be of interest to practice with a style of aikido that does because one can consciously attack someone and not get one foot down and then be physically airborn, I know I have taken numerous unpredicted flips and falls over the years from testing the uke role and practicing on the edge of creative discovery that helps us self authenticate the martial art we are practicing so we may stay in equanimity to find our true confidence.  Thank you, Will Gable

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In our practice of Aikido we are always adjusting our interpretation of how we will move in relation to the energy force that is moving towards us from variable perspectives using either very fragmented, technique stopping and thinking or moving with a principled, relaxed, effortless, intuitive approach which moves in harmony with the energy force line and let our total being move with it so as to understand where it wants to show us its terminal solution.  We again are staying in our zero point of simplicity in allowing the power line to show us where it wants to go.  In allowing this to move where it is going we are staying in an “open ended” disposition to what is appearing in the moment of the interaction.  This open ended disposition allows for many fascinating discoveries in the aikido practice, one of the main ones is to keep us in contact with what I call “the juice” or creative source where we don’t continually go back to the same katas all our practice time, we open ourselves to “what is” in the moment and find our universal hinge so to speak where we are simply revolving around how our intuitive felt sense is guiding us to stay in the juice of spontaneous creation.

As one maintains this zero point of interpretation they can start to practice what in our ryu is defined as “chaos randori” or how to hold chaos.  Then this becomes ones disposition in practice and not just one step kata.  So, as one allows this to become their guidance one can further let go into almost anything coming at them and practice very synchronistic, dynamic approach as their disposition in life, highly sensitive, insightful, with multi channel processing in any instance.  We have at this point allowed our discipline of the overall process to actually be our approach to living and have started to become the art.

     To start to allow principles and the overall art to guide us with balanced intuitive and intelligent expression opens us to living Prescence to whatever is arising in the moment, moving in relation from our beingness to the energy that is presenting itself in any moment.  Are we aware enough to see where we are trailing off into the past or the future?   If we have not awakened to our Prescence then our mind full of past or expectant of the future is guiding the show, the only way is to stay at the nexus of the linear and vertical and stay present to where “attention” is being led or we are can stay aware and in Prescence and start seeing that each moment opens us to the possiblility of transcending ourselves so we can at least not let the mind and its ramblings consume our consciousness and distract us from living from the true NOW. 

     This is the same in randori, we get distracted by fragmenting our possible flow with the interaction of trying to do something of familiarity, although that might be effective, we don’t want to get into a rut of doing the same thing in each interaction.  The value in staying in Prescence and centered is we don’t get into over reaction to what is arising, we stay open to it and let it teach us the lesson of truly not resisting “what is”.  This is whether we are uke or tori, this fosters a wholistic, spontaneous display of non-resistance so both practitioners can feel to their core the unification process in its essence.  At this level of practice we begin to move from the freedom of the unification of our awareness, being, and sensitivity and when synergised allow one to let go of caring where anything is going, throwing someone or being thrown becomes a profound lesson which most of the time elicits one laughing out loud as one is in a chaos mode and the profundity of the outcome is so surprising that the laughter is a “aha” moment or satori.  This is the “juice” that was mentioned earlier in this article, staying at the source of discovery and creativity, so as to transcend anything we could ever have planned as an outcome.

     One cannot make this epiphany happen,  this is the outcome of allowing the process of non-resistance to smooth down the edges of life and the assaults on many levels that have built up in oneself and to see clearly that we created these by our own resistance, unconsciousness, and innocence.  So, now in allowing what will happen to happen, we have opened ourselves to a much needed friend, not just the one on the mat, but to trust, we see that from trusting the process of Aikido we can open ourselves once again and play life.  We can enjoy “living on the edge” by trusting ourselves and others and to be able to flow with our life stream and allow it to teach us the lessons that we might not have accepted before we awakened to the juice.  Thank you, Will Gable

As we move beyond our conceptualization about our practice, we start to see whether we are growing in awareness consciousness and whether we are staying in this free condition or we are allowing ourselves to stagnate or to move with the flow of the understanding of ourselves in relation to emotions that may arise that we haven’t experienced before as this can bring one to a standstill.  Can we use our discipline of Aikido to  keep ourselves in ones vision of freedom so that we can stay non attached to an assumed structured outcome.

Through our practice we can see that from the view of zero point we have open, adaptable, options on how we are going to allow the power line that is presented to us to go where it wants to and find it’s own terminal solution.  If we try to make it go where we at our force level of expression want it to go we can definitely get in the way.  If we use force we need to see that it is a limited expression of what the ego thinks it wants to do or is “planning to do” which clearly takes us out of the potential higher flow of energy openess that allows us to stay relaxed, calm, centered with no more intent than to ride the wave to it’s own destination.  Once we can practice from zero point consistently then our practice has reached the point of being in the evolutionary flow since we are now practicing from consciousness/awareness as our practice, we have allowed ourselves to “trust the process”  totally and this opens us to expansive flow and interaction from which we start to allow the process to be what we are as conscious spiritual artistic expression.

Through this open, free, disposition we can easily see when we are leaning towards possibly getting in the way of allowing the interaction to “be as it is” and let it open us to what we have to learn from being open to the process as pure principle without force modifications, any insertions would only be to further the kuzushi and to keep the uke off balance so as to see where they will self destruct.  From our practice of this vision we have to trust that our movement is in the flow of the interaction so as to see how far we can go with only effortless power as our internal guide.

There is great power in being neutral as we can now move in simplicity and be highly effective without having to force change.  We now stand at the point of living from spiritual insight to move ourselves along the way of understanding where we are being able to see clearly where our spiritual nature has been guiding us all along.  To wake us from the unconscious complexity to the simple, from duality to nonduality where we are now being opened to move beyond our conceptualization of life to living from awareness.  I know this word has been bantered about in the last few decades so I will relate to it the best I can.

When we start to learn “about” a new subject or activity, we can either be adding this information to our ego/intellect as more prized knowledge and not take it any further or one is inspired by the activity/art and actually is transformed by the art.  Over the decades I have been involved with many fine artisans of many fields of expression, some were very mechanical and many were real artists who seemed to be constantly transcending themselves and learning from a distinctly different realm than just the “machinations” of their craft.  The intrinsic nature of their musings actually seemed to transform their lives and lift them to another level of what I term “Spiritual”, I was even with one friend who to my interpretation had painted a vision of his muse.  I actually named the painting for him, “Muse”, he really didn’t look at it that way at first but then was deeply touched by my insight.  This living expression of art to be able to open us to our spiritual power through awareness of other levels within ourselves is actually what my spirit wants to convey as an entry for us to practice our art from awareness and not just add it to our ego/intellect and the collection of techniques.

This perspective of adding it to our ego/intellect may bring about profound ability of a mechanical nature  but fall short of actually being able to awaken us to the essence of our practice.  Conceptualization of life is easy enough to do, we have a dictionary that is about two foot thick now and to live from the ego/intellect and define everything in life from words is common interaction for us.  As far as our practice of Aikido, this can be a fine line of interpretation and expression and like the zero point nexus we can awaken to the vertical if we haven’t limited our practice and life to the accumulation of information “about” what we are, and allow the intuitive to move us from spiritual connection to transcend ourselves so as to breath new realizations into our every move on the mat of life.  We can finally find our home in the Heart of Aikido and relax truly into the path of least resistance where we openly allow the essence to smooth out our concepts about anything and awaken to the Prescence of Love as our true originator.  This awareness is how we preserve one another we will say on the mat, any violation of this can be seen at once very clearly as not living from Life Essence which from the Universe is the source of everything. The Universe is not outside of us, our lives are permeated thoroughly in its Essence,  we were born out of it’s expression of creative life potential, only our seeming confidence in what we think we know “about it” is separating us from what already is true source.   Trusting the process in Aikido to open us to the lessons we need to experience allows one to start their spiritual awakening, which will expose the emotional blocks, intellectual concepts and life programming that must be examined and transcended so we can gradually live our existence in the pristine levels of Spirit reality.  Thank you, Will Gable

OUR DOJO WILL BE MOVING TO EDMOND, OKLAHOMA AT THE END OF NOVEMBER, WE WILL BE MOVING TO 1810 E. MEMORIAL AND BOULEVARD IN THE MEDICAL BUILDING WEST OF THE GAS STATION.  WE HOPE THIS MOVE WILL ADD TO OUR DOJO MANY NEW MEMBERS, THE FACILITY IS NEW AND WE WILL HAVE ABOUT 1200 SF MAT SPACE.  ALL OF OUR DOJO MEMBERS WANT TO TRULY THANK AMY AND MIKE DARTER FOR THEIR AMAZING EFFORT TO BUILD THE MEDICAL BUILDING IN ALMOST EXACTLY THREE YEARS FROM THE TIME MIKE AND I STARTED DISCUSSING IT, AND KEEPING US IN THE DOJO FAMILY AS THIS DOJO HAS ALWAYS BEEN A FAMILY TO US.  THIS IS IN KEEPING WITH MASTER UYESHIBA’S WORLD FAMILY VISION AS WELL AS MASTER TOMIKI’S AND MASTER KARL GEIS.  OUR SESSIONS WILL START MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY AT 6:00-8:00pm, CONTACT WILL GABLE AT 495-8128 OR 921-6457  THANK YOU, WILL GABLE

      Recently I was pleasantly informed that three of our essays had been published in the Aikido Journal Magazine.  I honestly don’t know who sent them in and found them worthy of being published in this great publication but I profoundly appreciate the gesture.  The three essays that were highlighted were 1) Principle transcends ego, 2) Zero Point and 3) Aikido Essay III.

     I very much thank Aikido Journal and Mr. Stanley Pranin who probably looks at voluminous articles daily for positively considering the essays.  Aikido Journal has been my favorite site for many years as it reveals the most up to date and historical information about our art that spans the globe.  Thank you again, Will Gable