Hikari Aikido Dojo

Moving from SILENCE STILLNESS we may notice after each session there is a definite opening for us to be listening in a lot more carefully as to what has been revealed when we touch what can be called UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS.  We have allowed ourselves to let go into the higher matrix through the doorway of the Unknown.  This takes courage for a person at first after they start to realize what it is they are practicing.  We are opening ourselves maybe for the first time to the possibility of seeing into the Source of our life from the vertical realms that transcend the linear consensus reality that most people have never questioned.

With each session we can further let go of who/what we had conceived of ourselves to be.  In so doing, we can open ourselves to be re-set with a  fresh new view revealing new levels of awareness.  Consciousness informs from the vertical quantum realms from insight and revelation of the Spiritual and the ego/mind seems to learn from the sequential or linear or what is considered Newtonian.

There is an old saying, that goes, “we must die before we die”, so what is it that dies?  We have been with a  friend or relative who has died physically and in the process of letting go of the part that dies, the body/mind, we may have listened with them as to what they thought they had or had not done right or wrong in their life and had remorse or professed their love at that moment for us or others.  I can relate to this as I did this with my grandfathers and them with me. Let us not wait until we die to the psycho-physical to say or do what we need to, in our relationship to others.  Through Silence Stillness we can embrace the death of “what is not” by awakening the Witness and from the Prescence of “What IS”  let go of the stranglehold of its survival agenda in all its forms.  It is the seeming isolated world of form that is the major distraction from trusting the formlessness of the Spirits power which can’t be seen but is Sourcing all that emerges in the manifest whirl of world.

Once we awaken to the vertical  in consciousness/awareness of the NOW, we have a chance to step outside of this mortal shell, “death, where is thy victory?” We now have the awareness to have CLARITY, or standing free from “what is not” clear enough to see from the realm of non attachment truly.  Remember, the “home that is nowhere, that is the true place,” if you take the word nowhere and break it down to the root, it reveals itself as NOW HERE.  So, the true NOW is our true place or doorway to the INFINITE as our Source because INFINITE SOURCE is always HERE NOW, except that we may not have accessed contact because of the distortion of finite vibrational definitions with which the mind tends to become attached and distracted.

Layering meanings on the Universe can get in the way of Reality revealing itself AS IT IS.  We, in our attempt to make sense of why we are here have amassed many philosophies, theories, and concepts about the nature of existence.  In the practice of SILENCE STILLNESS we have created an opening to accept “what is” and let ISNESS reveal it’s nature to our consciousness as UNITY.  To allow the harmony of “what is” to touch us with its profundity as LOVE which is the realization of the support that is accessible once we open to it as our SOURCE AND NATURE.

Our involvement with our Art of Aikido has as its Primary Principle, that Budo or the way of the Spiritual warrior is Love,  from our Founder, Moreihei Uyeshiba and all other Principles follow this profound realization from his enlightenment.  That we are to Unify ourselves Spiritually and forge our Lives with a commitment to “awakening”,  through disciplining our waywardness in the world to the Principles of the Universe and live our lives as examples of Free, Open, and Existential Truth and Light.  That we realize that the Universe is and has always been intrinsically living AS EXISTENCE  through the ISNESS that it is, ETERNALLY, UNDEFINED.

This week on our Blogtalkradio.com show I interviewed two students in the Aikido class, one was Sharon Quinn, the host of this show along with me, Will Gable, on the Edge of Truth.  The other was David Melton, long time student, friend and colleague.  Both are actively practicing Kihara Aikido at the Hikari Aikido Dojo in Edmond, Oklahoma.  We welcome you to listen as I interview these practitioners and their experience on and off the formal mat of their experiential Spiritual journey as they transition through creativity and discovery of their Consciousness evolution through Awareness. Sincerely, Will Gable

This is an interview with Will Gable, Sensei at Hikari Aikido Dojo in Edmond, Oklahoma.  This was broadcast on April 17, 2011.  I was interviewed by Sharon Quinn who is the host of the show.  We have a blogtalkradio.com show every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. for thirty minutes.  Our show is the Edge of Truth which is listed on blog talk radio by that name.  The show is the beginning of a series of talks that about Aikido and the Spiritual realizations that can emerge from the practice of the Art.  I have listed a blog talk section above on the header lists of the website, it gives times, date and phone numbers if you would like to participate.  We also have an archive of past shows discussing Spirituality without any religious implications.  Please join us.  Thank you, Will Gable

Again, I would like to thank Mr. Brandon Clapp and Mr. Stanley Pranin for publishing my article, SILENCE STILLNESS, in their great publication, Aikido Journal, thank you both, Sincerely, Will Gable

SILENCE STILLNESS can run counter to what the self survival mind demands because it has no survival agendas.  In our high tech, hyper adrenaline, life styles we are caught in the “need to know” instant gratification orientation and most will take nothing less as they are “online” with the global communication nets and so linked in people seem to have a hard time truly slowing down their life energies.

If we are to awaken our spirits awareness/consciousness, we need to slow down the tendency towards distraction no matter to what level it seems to be pulling our attention.

This is where SILENCE STILLNESS can be a powerful ally.  Living in the midst of probably the most vivid, distractive culture in many millenium one is being bombarded constantly by the multitude of vibrations running through the air, with all the stations vying for our allegiance of attention.

To foster the necessary filtering of these vibrational distractions, we need some process to draw our attention away from the compelling syntax that is the allure for the numbing of the body-brain-mind which is online with the life force except that the pull is towards what seems to be an “external world” only.  With this pull our attention is focused on mainly sight,  sound and a kinesthetically aligned experience and depending on the distractive factor of each or all of these dominant modes of input, we can be get lost in the world of the senses, complete with all the (CEP) convenience, entertainment and pleasure you can handle and indulge.

This may be of little interest to the already intoxicated self which is caught up in the mirrors of illusion that the whirl of the world seems to spin out at light speed.  But, if one has felt disenchanted in living only through this sensory overload then one can fall back into the peace of SILENCE STILLNESS.

If we keep being led around by the self/ego/mind we may have interesting and compelling experiences and yet the mind is always being stimulated by the next distraction in one’s inner and outer landscape of events.  This is akin to an animal that is keenly alert through pure instinct and yet has no real awareness of anything,  just being led to the next sensory distraction.

We can come to the awakening that we can open ourselves to levels of insight and revelation if we will start to shut down this ego/brain/mind for brief and maybe prolonged  sessions of just being SILENT and allow the STILLNESS of our being to emerge so we can access the Peace of the Spirit.  Once we truly are awakened to this possibility and experience this fully accessible dimension of SILENCE for no reason, we will start to move to this dimension for the PEACE that is already there on the edge of the HEART’S vibrational nexus.

While practicing our art of Aikido, we are slowly refining our connection with this dimension while we are moving in the dynamics of Spiritual Principles.  Most people watching wouldn’t necessarily think this or even perceive that this is one of the possible outcomes of the practice.  Since Principles take ones attention away from one’s intention when they moved onto the mat, “you can’t come here and do what you want to do”, if you keep doing what you have always done you will end up doing what you always have.

The practice of Principle starts to take us away from our ego/mind structure where again, Principle transcends Ego, and we find ourselves entering a dimension of effortless solutions to some of our “predetermined assumptions” about how things are, especially when one has never been moved around with not even a fingers insertion.  Once we start to feel through our center consistently we begin to let go of trying to make things happen and see the magic that is present once we access the SILENCE STILLNESS within from our letting go of our structuring of the world whirl.

Once our distractive assumptions are transcended and included continuously by what I call, “Self authentication” where the individual is validating their awakening to the reality of the Principle realm, and can now start to Witness themselves in SILENCE STILLNESS OF AWARENESS.

At this nexus, one is able to see the futility of living their life from just the survival end of the spectrum, yes, we can access this realm for that purpose, but to use the art to actually move beyond the mind, the very mechanism that keeps one asleep is how we can use the martial arts to study consciousness through allowing ourselves to trust greater insights into who we are and what we can actually awaken to once we let go into the unknown, which is when you stand at the point of having contemplated your conditioned Identity and have let go of the major attachment to what is potentially standing in the way of you starting  your Spiritual journey.  Thank you, Will Gable  (@copyright 1980)

NOW we are existing from our real nature which is BEING.  BEING has no need in understanding our separation because it is what is here whether we or any living form lives here or not.  We, in our self survival mode have no idea of BEINGNESS, self survival does not value BEINGNESS because it has no value for something that doesn’t further the self to survive.  That probably sounds opposite to what one would think, one needs to survive.  BEINGNESS, because of its own nature places demands on one, not by any force means,  if one is  to awaken to it,  the discipline of contemplating and understanding what is not BEING to the point of seeing that what is not cannot exist and be one with BEINGNESS.  BEING cannot be  realized if one is struggling and suffering from being distracted by what is not, that is part of surviving only and BEING is “what is” and is not distracted by survival, although it is the doorway for the ego-mind to let go of its struggle to survive.

Becoming  aware of awareness we start to realize that who we think we have become is truly in the way of realizing BEING.  Seeing our whole life as having been a fabricated conceptual attempt to adapt and survive in an environment that we truly don’t understand and so our adaptation has been to live through conceptual models in our minds which are not based in what is, rather distractions coming from these models in the form of all of our survival impulses that keep us entranced and entertained as “our life”.

My discussion of BEINGNESS is to open up a dialogue for one to assess ones belief structures, assumptions, survival mechanisms for oneself, which is to help one to realize what they could be seeing as themselves if they have never considered this before this moment.  Potential issues like, did you actually want to go to the church of your upbringing or did you go because your parents took  you and you were indoctrinated into it?  I have met people who told me they believed in the religion they were involved in because their parents told them it was the right one!  That doesn’t seem to be a conscious, informed, researched choice or even if one wants to be involved in any religion or belief structure of any kind, but many people end up in these dogmatic, fragmented, splinters of belief structures and spend their whole life as basically a brainwashed patron who devotes their life and monetary support to an institution that they didn’t choose.  This is an example of how people are not involved in their lives consciously at least in the ground floor of many arenas such as education, relationships and living out their lives from “what is not” and only conceptualizing their existence.  An example of the education end of that is getting an education to work in a field that your parents want you to be in because they are in it, they think it would be best for you, they vicariously are living through you or because it supposedly makes a high income, again, living from someone elses conceptual model and not from the ground of ones being.

We can spend years, decades involved in activities that if we looked closely at them we wouldn’t be active in them at all.  We do change, but change to what is the question.  As long as we are immersed in our self identity, we can stay aligned with energies that are simply keeping us involved in the exterior world to the point that our life may have become a serious drama and we are living from the perspective of only life and death.  This is being caught in the web of duality to an extreme, if we have no way of transcending duality we can live the rest of our existence from this linear reality and never consider there is another choice.

In the previous essay, A HOLE IN THE UNIVERSE, whether or not one is sincerely committed to the realization of Absolute Truth, not relative truth of facts about life, the alignment and commitment of our life force to realizing the absolute Truth for ourselves is the first major step we can take to help take us beyond the everyday duality we seem to encounter in each moment. Taking the time to either meditate or contemplate can help us bring our distractions of everyday down to a more simplistic focus, one that is centered, that concentrates on the breath, body movement and is inclusive of what seems to be wanting our attention in mind. Eventually, your life is realized as a living Meditation, no interior or exterior, only Wholeness.   In our practice of Aikido, we have inclusive  levels of all of these seemingly separate aspects, practicing to help bring these three areas of our lives of spirit, body mind into a simultaneous blend of harmonious, vibrational expression practiced slowly so BEINGNESS seems to come forward as PRESCENCE and we have brought our self survival mode of struggling with “what is not” into the clear Light of Consciousness to see that the absolute principles of Truth, Love and Non-Resistance are our way to clarity of understanding and the opening to BEING.

Allowing ourselves to “transcend and include” which keep us on the edge of being in contact with your free awareness/consciousness will show us that no matter what we seemingly have come up against within ourselves, we can see that whatever it is, it is already “inclusive” within Awareness and so remain in the Awareness of it and let it be seen for what it is.  If you seem to get locked into a mode where you don’t seem to be making progress with your inquiry, sit back, relax, breath deeply, basically we are all coming up to energy complexes that may have been in ones spirito-psyche-soma for a while, stay with your contemplation, let the issue, whatever it is, to allow Prescence to reveal what insights it will.  Focus on the inquiry issue through the foundation of Silence Stillness.  Thank you, Will Gable

Living in and from our Inherent Nature of Truth and Freedom, what have we become free from?  We all seem to assume we are someone, a self, that we call me, and create a self identity around it.  I have discussed this in general in the previous essays, who and what we have become may be like a phantom self that is in doubt, empty, struggles and suffers the assumptions that we have placed on ourselves as being this self identity.  If we want to move beyond this self created identity, we need to be able to inspect it enough to see we didn’t have full consciousness or awareness in its creation and it was created in environments in which we had little to no control on what was created and most likely didn’t know anyone involved really that well, so among strangers, even in the seeming family we grew up around.  So, is any of it truly you?

So, like I mentioned in Evolutionary Aikido we need to contemplate each arena until we fall through it, like a hole in the universe, the place of our inherent spiritual freedom of beingness that we know as our true home.  The home that is nowhere, that is the true place.  In other words, where we have moved past our conceptualization of life and our habit of living concepts like they are us, they are truly powerful and yet when you can envision something in your mind that doesn’t exist, this can lead us into not knowing the difference of what is and what isn’t.

I received several emails asking how one can actualize what I brought to light in The ME of Undertanding.  First off, we “need to desire” that we contact the truth of existence in our own life.  If we do not have this sincere desire for Truth we probably won’t go any further in our spiritual investigation.  This isn’t about anything or anyone else but YOU!  In my own experience everything seems to work together if you have the burning desire for Truth, things, people, situations may fall away even though you don’t try to make them do this, certain aspects of your conceptual existence have held them in place and as soon as they are undermined through seeing through them, we become free from who we thought we were through our own mistaken conceptual creation.

We can be likened to a big ball of twine that started somewhere at sometime and we continually kept wrapping this ball with and as our life experience never questioning what it was all based on.  When we start to awaken to who we thought we were,  we are unraveling ourselves, our reactive life, our emotional stances, our self concept, image and how we think we really are as the persona we depict in the world, so unless we can get a grip on one’s self identity, we will continue making the ball of twine larger and tighter and cutting off the flow of ones possible contact with our Source origin.

I usually don’t use quotes, but, I will in this scenario, “ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”.  My question is, free from what?  This question really has never been answered adequately, even though the scripture is very straightforward in its expression,  from my experience with people no one ever questions what are we free from when we awaken to or realize truth.  And, to get it further to the point of awakening to truth, what does that mean?  Obviously, this can be a very wide and varied possible point of view rebuttal, because that is most likely how it will be reacted/responded to from everyone.

We can assume that awakening may have to happen somewhere out there in the world because again, most live in a linear consensus reality that is fabricated from one’s past beliefs about anything, conditioning from family and society, and just in general, emerging onto this planet that one knows nothing about except the “heresay” of the day about supposedly what is going on here.

So, we need a stepping off point where we can let go of our conceptual survival mindset which is the eternal NOW as mentioned in the essay NOWPRESCENCE.  One of the email questions was “what happens to you?” when you start letting go of your conceptual self to the point of recognizing that you see through your self created self.  If one has gone through  numerous sessions about different aspects that one has created in the twine example above to the point of holding firm in their contemplation where they can get to the ground floor of the chosen specific issue then they can taste freedom of the truth which can be felt or experienced as a “conditionless condition”, in other words, it is not dependent on anything, there is no opposite to Truth which is an absolute and  it is not of this self survival dimension.

It is your Original Nature which are only words pointing to a possible contact with “beingness.”   The answer to the question “what happens to you?”is that the “conceptual you” never existed except in your assumption that it was you and was continually being reinforced by you desiring to get what you wanted or needed to continue your conceived survival.

The situations that have arisen in one’s life that we experienced that we never understood may have been frustrating because we had nowhere to go or at least that might have become our inner dialogue or we listened to the threats and or criticisms that rained down on us and we didn’t know where to turn.  We needed an inner retreat which most of us at least attempted to create for ourselves which for the most turned out to be only reactions to pain, repressed emotional networks and gaps of mainly, misunderstanding.  We may have turned to someone  to sooth the agitation or at least have someone to talk to who might help sort out or understand what one had experienced.   Even if we explained the event to someone it is still based in conceptual terms that probably were spoke to sooth both people but really had no valid way to understand it themselves.

In our practice of Aikido we learn to deal with a situation from an attack format so we are having to directly experience what it feels like to handle the situation with the Principles that are taught, along with kata.  Since we are dealing with the situation directly, we have a direct semblance of situations that possibly can arise, if we look at this closely, the interaction is a way to keep going after an issue and finally through the spirito psycho physical approach of transcendence come to a flow understanding of how to deal with the attack in a way that is congruent with transcending what one would have done with their default approach and that could be disastrous, to self authenticate for themselves being able to resolve the issue with a totally different wholistic insight with their whole being.

This approach can be used to get beyond and eliminate deep seated internal conflicts by allowing ourselves to transcend who and what we thought we were and start living from the beingness that is the  ”hole in the universe” that was always realizable but not as long as our life was being ran by concepts that we didn’t know existed that functioned as our operating system.

Through practicing our art from Principles applied simultaneously, we are consistently moving beyond our default whatever that may be and circumventing the ego-mind survival programming and allowing ourselves to understand the survival mind from a completely different perspective.  One that allows us to move in a different way in existence that can bring about the freedom that was mentioned earlier but now can start to function for us as our real self  or what we might experience as staying in the place of the unknown, so we may be able to stay in Prescence and be creatively open ended to “what is” and live in Beingness and be able to discern when the survival mind is trying to dominate and separate us from Existence Freedom purely.  Thank you, Will Gable

Who is it that understands oneself?  There has to be some aspect of understanding that allows one to know when one is absent and when one is present.  Once we have understood ourselves to the point of letting go of who we “thought” we are we can step into the realm of our beingness, not to be defined,  only to be realised as our next level of evolutionary awakening.  One’s real self cannot be negated for it is the doorway to the light of understanding.  Still, there needs to be the aspect that contains all that one understands, the realm of one’s IAM.  Once one goes to the Heart there is sincerity and innocence from the core of sensitivity of the Divine.

Any and all that we awaken to is to be transcended and included, once we reach the level of thoughts being absorbed in the light then we can rest in the womb of the light of understanding, we have moved beyond again, linear consensus reality, but now instead of just “witnessing”,  our ME that we are is pulled to the edge of the doorway where one is touching infinity and yet still has separation.  How can one know infinity unless there is separation, how would one know the infinite unless one has been separate?

We can look at the ME as the moderator of relative and infinite understandings, there has to be intelligence that is aware that is staying awake to personal Soul and Infinity contact.  Even if ones consciousness is absorbed there still has to be some aspect of life and source that has to discern and discipher what one has or is experiencing that is aware and intelligent enough to understand the space into which one is evolving.  The ME of Understanding is the flow of intelligence from the Divine that one lives from upon awakening to ones State of Prescence, when attention turns back on itself in Awareness.

Let us imagine Prescence as the sun shining and our lives as being the eclipse of the moon which is obstructing the light of the sun in our Spiritual Heart and who we “think” we are has emerged as an attempt to survive in the supposed world that seems out there.  So, if we live from that point of view, whatever form it has taken, then we are like someone fighting against something we can’t see in the darkness, swinging wildly, trying to understand what has happened, modifying, moving things from one side of the room to the other and thinking we are truly changing our lives.  So, in our attempt to modify living in the life of the circle, we are constantly on the circular treadmill and are making ourselves dizzy with the effects of being unconscious.  All of what we are attempting can bring us material success in the world and yet if examined, we can feel a great chasm in that we are trying to bring in happiness and stability from the outside and that will never happen.  Moving from the square, triangle, circle, we now move into the not so tangible realm of the spiralic which moves beyond these powers in nature to transcend them in spirit which allows them to be as they are, the most powerful geometric forms in our lives that we base more of our life here on than we could possibly think and to use them as the incredibly strong principles that they are as our basis to help us realize our spiritual lives through our practice of Aikido.

To step into the unknown as our true creative source and understand that what we have created as the known about anything is actually what is not real, our perceptions and concepts about what we think are real are really separated from what actually is.  We are living in a virtual reality of conceptualization and thinking we truly are living in reality consciously.  So, in order for us to live from reality we need to let all that we encounter truly “be as it is” and understand that any definition we place upon it is just us trying to organize the thing to fit into our conceptual mind in an attempt to keep it in its place  so we can feel safe about it instead of contemplate it and follow it to its source.   Our existence at this level is just the mind viewing any and or all things encountered in the context of safe or dangerous, the mind is ultimately a survival mechanism by nature.

To let go into the unknown, into beingness, we may have reached high levels of conceptual understandings but they are still based in survival even at sophisticated intellectual attainments.  Again, we are knowing about things seemingly around us that look separate from us because we are still mentally conceptualizing about the thing.  As one awakens into the unknown, insight becomes ones mode of relationship and the mind may be held in abeyance only as a useful tool of consciousness as one transcends what is not in each moment and is living  from what is,  as consciousness/ awareness which is existence freedom from the primal conceptual survival mindset.  The ME that is understanding is now free of the contracted conceptual attempt to define the life force and the forms that life has created and lives free in its relationship to the Radiant Source Condition that was already the case prior to any appearance.   Thank you, Will Gable

NEPAL

Again, I am writing to thank Mr. Brandon Clapp for his interest in our Aikido blog and for publishing my essays, NOWPRESCENCE and THE ME OF UNDERSTANDING  in Aikido Journal.  I also want to thank Mr. Stanley Pranin for considering the articles to be in his great Aikido publication.   Thank you both, sincerely, Will Gable

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 Nothing.

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.  Thank you, Will Gable