TRUST THE PROCESS
In our practice and involvement with the Spiritual Principles of Aikido we find ourselves at the crossroads of the linear and the vertical realms of experiential knowledge and the application of this direct knowledge within our everyday lives. We practice from many levels of ourselves simultaneously, giving up some of the defaults we thought were very much our core, only to find they were based on merely assumptions not only in the martial applications we have practiced in the past, but also our physical/psycho/emotional lives and where we had leveled off as our life expression.
To bring about change within the individual we lead them towards what I have termed to “trust the process” which means to open themselves to the process of “self authentication.”
Finding out through Principle how they can let go of who they think they are through the experiential platform that Aikido provides. We all go through our lives living from emotional positions such as guilt, shame, being stubborn and really never question these places one tends to live as a real expression of who and what we are. We may have been consistently assaulted with elements of blame, abuse and many other neurotic behaviours that tend to become predominant in one’s psyche/soma and spread their nasty elements that become who we think we are and possibly never get past them over a lifetime.
As has been stated before in previous essays one needs to step beyond themselves into what is termed the UNKNOWN. This takes the awareness that one has plateaued and is possibly stuck in negative emotions that are constricting the individual’s consciousness into living out emotional positions that are accepted to be normal by society although they may be looked upon as limiting or neurotic by the psychiatric community. If we can start to see these constrictions from awareness/consciousness then one might be able to step back in awareness to see that one is caught in a emotion or thought complex and start to be able to observe it. If one can observe the thought, then one is not necessarily the thought. Once we begin to see beyond what is normally assumed to be who we are, we can let go into what we are beyond the linear models that have held one spellbound. This is where we can start to “trust the greater process”, although, we might not be able to define what that is specifically, we may have noticed that we are able to let go of the possible obsessive distractions that have absorbed our life so far.
One of these arenas that seems to distract one effectively is unexamined belief structures that can be in any part of our life, personal, religious, political to name a few. These beliefs are for the most part adopted from others, institutions, and can be formed by the individual unconsciously because of experiences that the person felt were more significant than others and assigned presumptive assumptions to these experiences that may have only been reactions to certain situations.
So, we can form beliefs around just about anything, which leaves us living from preconceived conceptions that can lead us away from our center in relation to Prescence. As long as we don’t get lost in conceptualization of existence we can stay in Prescence to “what is” and see that we can through Awareness be able to use conceptual ability to achieve lots of our intentions, but we are never the concepts, they are only tools of creative possibility, not our True Nature. Thank you, Will Gable