Josh Gold
“Each moment is made new!”
Morihei Ueshiba
“The definition of madness is to repeat the same errors hoping for a different outcome.”
The technique continued to fail but he kept trying to justify it instead of making adjustments. Waffling about how, “This is what I was taught…” and the superiority of his new school, he insisted we keep on doing it even though it kept not working. His increasing frustration became evident in his frown, tension and pent up rage.
Was he really taught this garbage? Or did he misunderstand? How do you think he will fare in real survival situation?
The old teacher tried to offer some corrections that did work but clinging to his ego the younger man refused. He felt he was being shown up and his blood boiled. “How dare the old fool beat me with something that doesn’t work?” “How dare he extricate from my technique with such ease?” “How dare he mysteriously make this great technique fail?” “I wonder how he does it?” “What mystically occult powers is he using?” “How dare he show me variables I don’t want to learn?”
Never imagining that it could be plain common sense based on years of hard, dedicated experience, the young man made an effort to revert to the passive-aggressive false piety he had been taught at the long stagnated cult where he believed he was learning a “better style.” Soon the class ended. He proffered no payment for the old man’s time. The only purpose of this random visit was to test himself against his old teacher. Finding himself wanting he felt blighted. More so with his own artifice.
The generous old sensei had no style. He was a survivor who had learnt one of the secrets of survival: Adaptation. Years of training and real life situations had taught him to survive by noticing what is and then adapting. Adapting breeds humility but this core did not show in the direct and gruff exterior he sometimes made an effort to soften for the sake of the immature who could not cope with the burn of direct, hard-fact sincerity.
He well knew that there was nothing to feel bad about when you miss the mark. Simply continue to self-correct in training. That’s what’s training is for. Ruthless honesty. Unlike brain massage, it saves lives. That’s what he tried to impart even though this approach did not accrue large numbers of students. People today seek instant gratification more than they want the work of self-correction as an ongoing Way of Life.
Training is not a contest, but an opportunity to truly learn from continuous self-correction, mutually providing progressively modulated attrition as a service to your training partner’s improvement. The process of self-correction, often uncomfortable, captures the moment and opens the eye of the soul. The best results are found in cultural exchanges and training with others. Whilst no one has all the answers, everyone has something to offer and such ‘cross-pollination’ of mind and spirit augments core values expanding the mind.
Pathological narcissism is a dangerous trap to fall into. Maladaptive rigidity is a cause of significant distress and functional impairment. It kills new learning and increased refinement of skill.
In the psychology of commerce and politics this type of determinedly obdurate, insane, neurally ossified, calcified persistence into a lose-lose failure spiral despite the evidence is named: ‘The Sunk Cost Bias’ (1). It leads to failure through lack of adaptiveness. Ossification of the attitudes. Hardening of the categories. Such as a bad marriage.
Aikido training which is correctly conducted promotes the freeing up of body-mind connectivity energy facing adversity.
In Chinese medicine stagnant chi breeds disease, healthy chi flow reintegration of functional harmony. Flexibility is life, such as we begin as babies. Rigidity is death such as rigor mortis.
Maintaining flexible newness of body, mind and that which connects them is our primary self-care duty.
The last moment is gone. Yesterdays epiphany can become tomorrows stagnant morass. The past is forever gone. The future may never be. Only the moment is real.
At each millisecond the universe is made new. The ability to know the moment at each moment, as it is in the moment, is critical to our essential destiny as sentient beings if we are to survive to navigate the impending severe cosmic weather than the currently relative peaceful sojourn we now enjoy, affords a dormancy we cannot, as species, afford.
You can only capture the moment in the moment, not by thinking of the past. Letting go is required. This takes courage. Don’t worry, not only will you survive that fearfully blank satori but you will gain from the ‘mind-that-let’s-go’ meditation in action. Breathe freely.
Training, sincere training, is training in capturing the moment instead of living in the quagmires of long gone memories, habits, hopes, clung to opinions and wishes which may never be. Learn from failure in training, there is no point in clinging to a dead opinion that has no basis. Catch yourself each moment of self-deception and acknowledge it. Then do something different! Try it. Make it a practice.
Innovate on purpose then go back to core basics. Then evaluate between that and that what works best. Repeat. There is no arrival to perfect technique and mimicry will not achieve it. You need to dig deep inside yourself and let that core essence express uniquely from your essence. Let yourself shine. The ‘perfect’ technique is often imperfect but sufficient to the moment it is needed. Then let it go. It will never work exactly like that again. Begin again. Practice!
A navigator must unequivocally KNOW actual and factual conditions, not hope for or imagine otherwise. The only value of the past is in the distilled essence of experience, learning from errors, self correcting and surviving using skill in action in the moment it is called for. Wishing will not stop the storm before it is ready to stop by itself. Skill will weather it successfully.
The clear sight of factual knowledge will enable you to navigate the real and remain afloat. Or survive an emergency situation.
The moment is real. “Talking about,” the moment, or, “thinking about it,” IS NOT THE MOMENT. Clinging to an idea of “the moment” is definitely not the moment but monkey mind entangling in its own spaghetti.
Dynamic, prudent, circumspect and wise interaction with prevailing conditions enables survival in the face of change.
Change is the only universal constant. Full presence requires the replication of universal conditions: The type of focus it takes reconciling of intense energy captures the moment. Often when you are, “in the zone,” in the moment, you may not realise it until afterwards, but the goal is to always live in the moment. This does no imply the mindless state implied in the bad translation of “no-mind.” Only the dead have no-mind. Mind is a condition of life. CLEAR mind is the goal. Conversely “mindfulness,” used by others to describe the same condition. Clarity simply is. Lucidity is simply clear.
It is the excrescent chatter that is the problem in all things. The delusion making factor. Clinging to conceptual opinions is the mind infection that forms cults through a mind of lack, insecurity and fear of the unknown. Clingy attachment to obsolete, dead habits then suck the complacent into lose-lose trajectories. Look at the history of all cults, having lost the apprehension of the moment, they create immense and unnecessary suffering under the banner of goodness.
Why, “The Moment?” The Universe, existence, knows no other time. Only now! The actual lives and dwells only in the moment which is always changing. The universe is akin to a symphony of energies and currents resonating right now.
Stand still, and you will be swept away, look back and you will turn into that metaphorical pillar of salt.
You can only be alive by dancing with the moment, as it is! But to know the moment as it is you require lucidity so you can notice what IS, is the moment. This comes from repeated practice until it becomes constant practice. Skill in action. All action. Life is action. The only stillness possible anywhere in existence is in the midst of intense activity. Peace only found in creativity. Stagnation is not ‘peaceful’ but the root of all suffering. Attachment to stagnation, more so. Seeking to escape the activity which is life even more so.
A subtle well maintained, gentle attitude of mind, irrespective of external intensity is the seed of true and lasting peace in the randori of life’s abundant variety is the only, “nirvana” or, “heaven” that can exist. There is no escape from facing our own true self, warts and all. This seldom comes naturally but requires cultivation in regular, dedicated practice.
Then you can dictate your own dance instead of being buffeted like a cork in the ocean and making such excuses as, “destiny,” or “the will of some deity,” or something else.
This is why clarity, lucidity or the much maligned word, “enlightenment” was sought after by the ancients. Not as an escape, but a FINDING of your core juxtaposition within the universal dance of energies. At each moment as a skill of thriving. Thence know your true mission instead of the distraction you deep down know is not your true soul journey too many people submit to, suffer a life of ennui and then die without meaning, purpose or contribution. (• After enlightenment Buddha was asked, ”What have you attained?” And he laughed and said, ”Nothing – because whatsoever I have attained was already there inside me. It is not something new that I have achieved. It has always been there from eternity, it is my very nature. But I was not mindful about it, I was not aware of it. The treasure was always there, but I had forgotten about it.”)
Those who can not, or choose not to face, or cope with the rigours of self-correction, resort to violence and become bound to the consequences that then follow and continue to follow until the lessons about the futility of misdirected efforts are learned. If not violence to others they violate their own integrity by a life of denial.
The Universe is not about to change to please anyone’s narcissistic fixations. You will break fighting It. Alignment with the Universal Harmony is inevitable but we are free to choose this trajectory or resist it until we can do so no more. And inevitably surrender from exhaustion instead of as a responsible choice.
That all existence is connected is more than a religious or philosophical theory. Science, as it progresses proves this universal principle almost daily. “Entanglement” is a poor label. Fundamental Unity is more correct. (The once myth of Indra’s Web, the universal holographic principle which living creatures, systems and our brain/neural structures cannot help but reflect, has now been photographed in the inception patterns at the centre of the universe using the Chandra X Ray Observatory. It is no longer a myth. Take look at subjects such as: * Holonomy, * Holonomic brain theory. * Butterfly effect. * Holon (philosophy) A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. Polytopes. MitakuyeOyasin)
All practice, indeed life and evolution is a constant adaptation and realignment to the real as it interacts with the whole which is in eternal flux. How can we cure hardening of the categories before it starts to kill us? Perhaps by choosing to adapt through self-correction in perfect practice and ascend in clarity thereby.
In the present moment, fully present you are most alive.
This happy state does not come from ease and stagnation but in the meeting of the challenge principle of the universe however it may present itself. Things are as they are and this moment is your mission, your teaching, your journey and when you give yourself permission to take responsibility you gain the power to make it your grand adventure.
Stress can then be made into fuel for your journey instead of suffering. Pain is merely change moving faster than you are acclimatised to. The faster the change, the more violent it appears, but whatever the rate of vibration all aspects of existence are in a state of combustion. Life force gives you energy when you cease to resist and adapt actively in to continuous and compounding newer habits that become combined to resonate as a holistic guiding principle, a flexible lens into the pure fundamental principles of existence through direct observation, instead of stuck in blind belief.
Taking responsibility for the choices we make will enable augmenting navigation skills on life’s journeys. We can, drift, react , blame, make excuses for they way life seems to treat us. Or we can choose to take charge of ourselves. But this require a deepening of personal connectedness.
In the dojo’s most demanding training you, nolens volens capture the moment. This is the opportunity the dojo provides to better enable life itself. A good reason to persist in regular training is that it alters the imperfect details of neural coordination of body and mind and in refining their function thereby adds to our awakening mindfulness. As any athlete knows skill in action can be evolved and refined.
Whatever your “dojo,” be it Aikido, piano, gardening, football, chess or anything at all that you find improves your skills as a human being, do it.
Now here is the key: Don’t give up on your goals. Tweak some part of your modus operandi and try again. Small moves until you find The Way!
At the core of true Budo which Aikido epitomises, teaching emerges from within as you respond to what’s going on in and all around you all the time and learn to live a fulfilled life that is not merely existence marking time in futility, but thriving and bright, not only despite, what life throws at you, but because of it.
The “techniques whilst necessary on the journey, are peripheral tools that can lead to an awakened attitude that is deep and powerful and in tune with the Great Ocean of existence. The dynamic meditation of the dojo is an opportunity to capture the essence of the the moment and in touching the Universe thereby, find the keyhole that unlocks success.
(1) Definition: Sunk Cost Bias: Continuing to invest in something that’s not working because you have have already invested a lot in the past.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SunkCostFallacy
When somebody’s sacrificed or invested a great deal in a cause or project, they tend to become irrationally dedicated to it. This applies even (or perhaps especially) when the costs invested can’t be recovered. More of a cognitive bias than anything.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sunk_costs.html
Sunk Cost Bias: How It Hinders Your Life and 4 Ways to Overcome It: http://litemind.com/sunk-cost-bias/
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/business-english/sunk-cost-fallacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpnxd31y0Fo
http://au.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment/10-ways-to-handle-divorce_10.html
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‘In the unpracticed mind there is a confusion of many possibilities.
In the experienced there are few.
To the beginner each moment is new.
This is the secret of the arts: always be a beginner.’
a Zen Teacher
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