When an aggressor grabs our wrist, our tendency is to use resistance as our course of action. Perhaps we attempt to jerk our hand away, or maybe we suddenly start pushing, twisting or even shouting. We tend to react one of two ways: fighting it or giving in to it. Similarly, we employ the same practices when encountering difficulties in our everyday life circumstances. In Jiu Jitsu we train to not meet force with force. Instead, we practice to ‘become one with’.
Read MoreThe Old Witch would chase me in my dreams. She was terrifying and I would always flee in great fear. But the more times I saw her, the more advanced my fleeing efforts became. At first I would run and she would chase me. Eventually I took to flying, but the terrifying chase scene was unrelenting because she readily adapted to my flights no matter the destination and no matter whether on or above ground. Strangely, she never caught me. But I couldn’t shake her, no matter my strategies.
Read MoreWhen I was between 12 and 15 years old I had an event that would occasionally occur. It always happened spontaneously and it was easily the most terrifying thing in my entire youth.
I would see something, It always appeared in my bedroom, and it always took place exactly the same way. It was a spiritual being, but it wasn’t a vague wisp of light nor was it a shadow. It was a fully featured woman, clothed and sitting in a rocking chair. She always appeared the same way, seated and rocking in a wooden rocker at the end of my bed.
We had a busy house with a family of eight. There were six kids, three boys and three girls, and we only had one bathroom and three modest sized bedrooms for the whole family. My parents had the biggest room. The three girls had a room and us three boys had a room. That put three beds plus dressers in each small bedroom. My bed was positioned on a wall with enough open space at the foot for a closet door to swing open. When this woman appeared, she would appear in that space.
Read More“For as long back in this life as I can remember, I have found myself captivated when looking at people. My mother would constantly correct me saying, “Don’t stare”. But even with her admonitions I would simply engage in peripheral vision. When I looked at people with this focused stare, I saw things that opened the multi-dimensional door for me in a myriad of ways. I could do this without thinking and yet I’d become lost in thoughts I could not describe.”
Read MoreI attended three comprehensive lectures and several initiations given by HH Dalai Lama this past weekend and I was attentive to each of his messages, his reasoning, his concerns and warnings and what he said was mandatory to understanding and effective practice. I took his suggestions to heart and practiced what he suggested while listening to him, after the lectures were over, during our group discussions, in between the discussions, in my meditation time, when I was driving, when we were eating and even when I was feeling tired and ill. I tested his teachings in every application I could find and they held up well for me. They did not hold as well when they were not practiced and when they were not understood it was hard to practice them.
Read More“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked. Ken nodded his head slowly. Very slowly.
“What are you seeing?”
“Holes in his hand,” replied Ken after a very long pause. “I am seeing right through his hand and can see the mints.”
Read MoreIn my dream I saw a vast darkness. The only thing I could see were hundreds or thousands of stars, dots of light. And it was utterly and terrifyingly clear to me that they were alive. Even more terrifying was that each one of them was looking straight at me.
Read MoreGiving is a universal principle. Everyone is a giver in their life. Some people focus on the value of their giving more than others. Of those people, some focus on the value of what they give, while others focus on the value of giving itself. We want to put our attention and study on the value of giving and how to improve our connection to our reason for being through our acts of giving.
Read MoreThis is how it is when the spirit goes as the body dies — if you cling to life and abhor death, crying to avoid change, then your spirit’s consciousness will become confused and no longer operate correctly. Because of this, when you are energized at rebirth, you do not sense clear, fine energy but mostly find polluted, debased energy. All folly, greed and baseness actually derive from this.
Read More“While the discoveries of modern physics, the most successful of our physical sciences, may be described using complex geometries and mathematics, the source of many important and fundamental theories in physics is mysticism.”
Read MoreWe are living in an atmosphere of climate-denial, of divisiveness and hate. Working men and women are subjected to an unrelenting pressure — to produce more for less. In such an environment, how is it realistic to consider that we have a chance to robustly improve consciousness?
Read MoreSometimes Principles and Truths become fashionable and we lose the actualizing to temporal expression. Sometimes Truths and even Love can be used as very hurtful weapons, injuring the Hearts and Hopes of others and ourselves.
As we study and practice to be more in line with what we want our Eternal Relationship to be more about, we begin to see Principles in more meaningful ways.
Read MoreAt first glance, improvement seems simple. It’s about making something better. And viewed from that single perspective, it is simple.
It seems simple because we are restraining our focus point, limiting our perspective so that a particular level of complexity appears relatively simple unto itself. Yet, as we look at the variables listed below, the dimensionality of something as seemingly simple as improvement quickly expands.
Read MoreEveryone is trying to improve. Even people who’ve stopped trying, or who excel at being bullies, or those who encourage divisiveness. We are all are located somewhere on the continuum.
Self improvement, in a sense, is less about whether we are improving and more about how conscious and deliberate we are in the process, and what we are choosing to focus on.
Read MoreWith consciousness we can envision a place of neutral buoyancy between that which can be seen and that which is unseen. Position ourselves just a bit too far on this side and we only experience is the visible. Descend a bit too far in the other direction and all that can be seen is the unseen, that which can be experienced but not necessarily described.
Read MoreEveryday life monks and nuns don't have the so-called luxury (or punishing difficulties) of retreating to caves, retreating from everyday life. We must, instead, practice our callings within the context of family life, traffic, working a job, being a student, amidst illness, being caregivers or even living on the street. We must also practice in a world that does not support the notion of an inner journey.
Read MoreWe often think of self defense martial arts as fighting arts and skills. But my Sensei often stated, “The biggest thing you have to defend against is your self.”
This advice is also true when it comes to stilling our mind. We typically associate a mind full of active and moving thoughts as a productive and healthy mind. But is it?
Read MoreWhat would be different about the way we approach life if we were meditating — in some form or another — pretty much all the time, or at least at any time we chose? And not in some dull-eyed space cadet way. Rather, in a completely normalized, functional manner.
Martial arts helped illuminate the path to get me there, and I eventually learned how to meditate in everyday life. I can actually describe how to do it, although not in this short essay. It’s a skill I practice everyday.
Read MoreThe best practice is to look for life to be a way of practicing what you want to be more about - in everything you do.
Read MoreThe martial arts, I came to learn, eventually delves deep into consciousness. Musicians, by comparison, learn that certain tones, timings, rhythms, melodies, changes or chords can strike their listeners strongly and emotionally. They may leap to their feet in joy, or slump in their chairs lost in tears and reminisces.
Martial arts works similarly deliberately on a subconscious level . Along the way, like the master musician, the martial artist may eventually become conscious of what makes these moments or events occur.
For the martial artist, we learn to ‘connect’ deeply within ourselves, to a spot that at first is frustratingly vague and highly elusive. We hear about from the early days of our training, this instruction to us to ‘center’.
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