EVOLUTIONARY AIKIDO
As we practice our art of Aikido, we are either staying in the mode of practicing what is traditionally offered or we are moving beyond this to find what the art truly has to offer now that we see our real relationship with the pillars of the art, the square, circle and triangle if we are to move on with our openness and experimentation, with these foundation principles.
We need to see they are based on the linear, not the spiralic, which is the vertical connection that is the evolutionary connection with the spirit. If we can loosen our attachment to these powers that be, we are able to see insights into other, subtle applications that can lead us on the path of evolution and awakening to potentials lying await within our practice.
Practicing from the edge of knowing into not knowing is one of the only ways I have been able to keep the art openended and alive. I have mentioned this in prior essays but in order for us to keep our zero point of spontaneity and creativity for aikido we need to have stepped off into a “hole in the universe” and feel willing to practice and live from a Principled existence without, again, having to label it all the time, to open to the inclusive total process in each moment without trying to do anything to make something happen, only to move and flow with ‘what is ” and allow the outcome to be “as it is”.
In my practice of this approach, one has to understand that you can be thrown from moment to moment in staying “honestly” open to the immediate interaction. This keeps it fresh and alive as most demonstrations are in the tori uke kata format and are depicted mainly from a linear perspective. Our randori benefits immensely in that control issues are brought to the surface which are reflections of ego minds attempt to survive in its framework of its limitations to hopefully start to be understood and allowed to dissipate or slowly be consciously seen for what it is “trying to do”, most of these are unconscious energy complexes that one has been conditioned to live from and the person does not even know they exist.
Loosening these random walls of resistance can allow the person to start an evolutionary approach to their aikido practice and their life and start to “trust the greater process” , what may begin may not be what they thought was going to happen when opening to the unknown or ones continuous inclusive awakening, that transcends and includes each moment.
So, this translates not only in practice but in our everyday existence, we begin to be aware of our resistance to any circumstance, does it create a knot in your gut, does one fly off into a rage? These are obvious indicators of a not so clear energy consciousness about whatever has supposedly triggered the reaction, even down to a button that is supposed to work in ones expectation but doesn’t.
This is where the total process of Aikido comes into play, because of the profound nature of our art which isn’t based in competition, but principles, relaxation, centering, sensitivity, just to name a few and spiritually witnessing and observing ourselves in relation to our fellow Aikidoists and how we react or respond to them reveals us to each other as to how we are or have evolved through our involvement.
A few of our practitioners have visited other dojos of other martial arts and have left the practitioners speechless because they don’t practice from Principle, especially multiple principles applied simultaneously, which is quite profound and cannot be understood by the ego mind which is what a lot of arts are filtered through, instead of transcending the survival mechanism from the start of ones practice.
I make a point to say to practitioners, “you can’t come here and do what you want to do”, one needs to move beyond the self that one thinks one is because that is what we are becoming aware of, at least in our practice of Aikido to let go of it once we start to understand its agenda, not study our art through its assumptive, unconscious, control grid that wants to own everything as a possession.
Through letting go of our resistances to what is arising we can at least start having a clearer understanding of how we are involved in our Aikido practice and how to make greater use of it in our life as a whole. We create innumerable stresses by staying non responsive to issues that have arisen and we take no notice other than that is the way it has always been for oneself.
”That you are a self that is someone is the real issue”, someone who must survive, have all things their way, get everything they want or they will react out of total unconsciousness because that is how “they are” or have programmed themselves to react, only there is no awareness that this is what has happened and is called “their life’ or “their story” and they will defend it even though they don’t really know how it came to be. This is what we encounter everyday all over the planet, agendas derived and driven from “passing on the culture, lifestyle, religion, politic, family traditions” and never question it and wonder why we stay in the sometimes disastrous situations in which we find ourselves.
When we are free enough as consciousness awareness we can start to allow these things to arise and see that maybe before we would possibly become unhinged over something that now we may look at as absurd. This is the power of the trance dance that most of us go through in our upbringing, accepting things the way they are and never questioning them, maybe one is frustrated by it but doesn’t know what it is. As mentioned in the NOW PRESCENCE we need to be aware enough to not feed the issue with reactions, we need to transcend and include the minds tendency to want to possess it and commit it, whatever it is to memory and then we live out of the memory of the past, which isn’t living in real time or the NOW.
This is fundamentally what we are doing most of the time, relating the past through memory because the mind never lives in the present, it can’t, if we live from the mind/survival mindset we are always living in something that has already happened. Everything happens in micro milliseconds and ends up being tape recorded by the subconscious which is always on guard for us. So, nature has control of us as long as we haven’t become aware that its primary agenda is for reproduction and survival, but has nothing to do with evolution and our spiritual possibilities.
This is a pivotal place where we can through our Aikido practice, supplemented with meditation or contemplation of what has or is arising, we can trace it back to where it might have seeded in the initial energy resistance to become a complexity that is held in the unconscious to potentially sprout many roots of unneeded emotional defenses, skewed thinking patterns, and energy consciousness that is unbalanced or not clear.
We may have to go through long periods of getting to the root of each situation by contemplating the issue and remaining perfectly “still” in body and mind so we don’t add anything extraneous, only what is arising inside to in-form us from inside through our insight, facing it directly, no analysis, simply see it to its core and let it arise and let it go in source as free energy consciousness without all the reactive unconscious drama.
When we can use the contemplative process and take the issue, no matter what it is, to the very depths of what can be realized from what arises and let it be “as it is” we can possibly get past arenas of resistance in our lives that may have held one hostage in the sub or unconscious realms way too long.
You can sit in a comfortable, straight backed chair, ansa, or seiza, you have to experiment to find what is right for you. As you sit in contemplative silence, do not let your mind wander, stay on point, focus on what issue you have picked to contemplate, stay honest, don’t resist what is arising, it may not be what your ego/mind wants to hear, it may be what brings the aha moment of a major breakthrough insight.
Whatever is realized, sit with it, don’t run to the minds memory storage and say you have it, it could take many sittings to bring one to source or being on any one issue. Once you have reached where you can go no more on the issue, feel the freedom of your beingness, that is what one is using the exploration for, whereas before, from the view of the survival mindset, one may not have even considered looking into the issue. Bring this beingness into your Aikido practice and your daily life, where you can access and live the freedom that is your Inherent Nature. Thank you, Will Gable