Principle transcends ego
I want to start this discussion linking to the last session in relation to the insights that have come from being able to practice and move from just “being awareness”. First, simple awareness almost always escapes most of us because we are caught up in the mind field of distractive thinking, or the heaviness sometimes of imbalanced emotion that consumes the possibility of just being consciousness awareness in any moment.
Now, one may ask what does this have to do with the practice of Aikido and how can you apply this to self defense or anything for that matter. We seem to start our journey in Aikido practice from some wide parameters of movement and as we travel along our parameters get smaller and tighter in relation to what we are trying to do in becoming a more efficient practitioner. With this we start to become aware that the more we practice from our integrated principled perspective wholistically and trust this un conditioned condition, the more we can let go into the “unknown”.
I have mentioned this previously, this is the nexus point where linear(time) and vertical(now) intersect, and the more we can let go of the linear the more we can move into the vertical and transcend what we thought we were doing and living into realizing where we were all along, the present. In our study of Aikido the more we move from Principle as one unit of awareness the more we let go of our conceptual preconceptions of what we are practicing in the dojo and living from in our lives.
Living from Principle allows us to start to let go of some of the unconscious habits that can bring about self destructive behavior that can distract one for a lifetime. If we can use our Aikido practice to start this understanding of ourselves in relation to whether we are unconscious or are we functioning from consciousness and awareness, we can awake to habits that are for the most part unconscious and let go of them. Spontaneous practice and living come from freeing ourselves from the mechanical conditioning of existence. Principle transcends ego.
I use the analogy of a new, interested, person appearing in the dojo door and I know when I start speaking to them I am seeing their limited, conceptual life that they are living from in one form or another. Recently, we had a new person who had several years of martial arts training in body mind movement visit the dojo, in as little as fifteen minutes he could see that his previous practice was not schooling him in Principle, so when we performed demonstration with him and he used any muscle at all that he actually was made aware in the moment that what he was doing was futile. He didn’t understand fully what was happening but he had several aha moments which are very valuable if one is aware enough to garner the experience.
Living in the unknown allows us to see that we can’t always control everything in our lives, especially the unexpected encounter with violence whether physical, mental or emotional. But we can keep practicing our relationship with our core beingness no matter if it is on the mat or daily life and this opens many new doors of insight so that we can see these possible situations if they do arise from the light of as pure principle as we have experientially realized.
We come together to practice with each other to awaken to our spiritual human existence and this starts to show us from our depths of beingness when we are resisting “what is” in the now. Clarity at last comes from unconditional calmness of living as the beingness that is our true nature.
Thank you, Will Gable
April 7th, 2010 at 6:15 am
Yes, the wide crazy place of being scattered here, there, and all over the place is the ego’s playground distracting us from our center point – that “place” where our verticle FLOW meets with the mind and body for a time/space horizontal expression…
Then, as the wide movement draws to its centering point, we realize almost no movement is the movement that’s at the heart of our perfected Aikido. Call this the unknown, call it the dance of Awareness, but by any name this is our Spirit meeting Mother Earth in our body-mind where our movement is Principle transcending ego.
Lovely post. Thank you.
All to Love, Sharon