True Faith

"I feel so extraordinary, something's got a hold on me, i get this feeling i'm in motion, a certain sense of liberty..." ~New Order song, True Faith

The name of that song inspired some philosophy in me back in the day. What exactly is True Faith? What i came to back in college when i was wrestling with the concept is that True Faith is to Know. That is a lot deeper than the things we believe. Even deeper than some things we think we know in that mundane day to day kind of way. We feel that we know that the earth is solid, it is fundamental to our world view and when someone lives through an earthquake to witness the earth churn and pulse like liquid, if frequently leads to therapy. Fundamental beliefs, things we thought we knew shake and are not as firm as we thought. I don't know that this chair i am sitting on will not collapse beneath me but i act as if i do know it. Can we acquire True Faith? Is it possible to know anything in that enlightenment type of level?

Most religions offer us things to believe in that it takes faith to believe. There are those who are reading this i am sure who will claim that i am wrong and that they know for a fact that their religion, relationship with the gods, their personal salvation, etc. is a fact that they know to the core of their being. That does not work to prove anything to the person who has not had the experience and frankly, there are lots of people out there claiming that they know religious truths that contradict a lot of other ones. There is a faith there, sometimes a faith that will lead individuals to do heinous things in the name of what they believe.

I have sought out this True Faith for a long time, i have thought it was a call from somewhere just beyond the borders of my conscious world that beckons me to come and find it. I do not have True Faith in that and i only believe it sometimes.

I am not going to get to True Faith in this blog and if you think you have it bless your heart and i hope you are right. But, i would like to look at a couple of things that suggest to me there is more going on in the universe than we can just observe and that we can actually look at with a scientific eye and observe. These things are just really, kind of cool. They suggest to me at least that we are all connected and a part of the universe in a deep and fundamental way.

The first is sacred geometry. There are sequences in the universe that repeat everywhere. They are ratios that exist in our bodies, in seashells, in hurricanes, in the arms of galaxies, on the coast of New Jersey, in the spin vectors of particles... everywhere. They repeat everywhere. Same ratios. Like a fingerprint of something. I can make assumptions poast that if i am inclined, but we can observe the ratios and look at them. An awesome stone carver friend of mine has a metal caliper that finds the Golden Mean on your body, in a leaf, in anything because it is everywhere. That is really awesome. I cannot say anything about it past that with certainty, but i can say and look at it in the world. I don't have to blindly accept it because it is there and can be measured and seen, over and over again.

The next for me is light. We are made up of stars. What we ultimately eat is light. It is what fuels are bodies and is what we are. Eating a lot of colors tends to be pretty healthy diet and i think that is because you are eating the spectrum of color and various kinds of light energy. Think about that. We are children of the stars. I can't say anything else past that without it being assumptions and theory, but we can look at the action of photosynthesis and see how plants eat. It is that energy of the sun that fuels the plants that ultimately fuels everything. Beautiful.

Is it True Faith? Nope. But, it is rational faith. We can look at those two things and observe them. It is not the enemy of faith to be smart and to deeply question everything. I like proof. There are a lot of things that i believe that i cannot really observe or give you definite observations of, but with these two, you can look at them. Don't take my word for it. Look up the study of light, check out the Golden Mean. Really cool stuff. I cannot prove this objectively, but to me it suggest that the universe we live in is beautiful and amazing. I am happy to be a part of it.

Unfettered

I want to figure out what the limits of my human potential are. Reading Weightlessness by Tom Fazio has really kickstarted my training and brought everything to a new level. I have been wearing ankle and wrist weights throughout my day until about 5 PM. When they come off i feel superhuman. Not only that, it is a giant second wind. The actions and efforts of the day fall off me with the weights that fall to the ground. I have also been working a lot on doing planches. This is an exercise that i used to look at and feel that it was impossible to achieve even as i watched it on video after video. They seem weightless as well. After a month of practice, those things all seem within reach.

With my martial arts training i think the ultimate goal for me is to become completely unfettered. I always talk to my students about the various gears we have in our thoughts and minds. We have a distinct shift when we switch between these and it stops us for a moment and slows us down. I want to break these down and have seamless transition between all of these pairs. Some notable ones are between hands and feet, left and right and the biggest from a martial arts stand point is the great gulf between attack and defense. I can see the look of those shifts on my training partners. I can also feel them in myself when i hit one. Often times if you watch people fight, they will tend to throw some punches , then throw some kicks. When you can transfer seamlessly between your punches and kicks you become a fighter of another level. You force your opponent to fight a war on two fronts. If they have not broken down this division through training, they will have to pause for their brain to catch up as they shift thought between the hands and feet.

Even watching professional fighters you can see the gap between attack and defense, except in cases of the elite. Most often you will see one person attack, then the other. When you can intercept and attack into the attacks that are coming at you, you have achieved another level. When someone is not prepared for this and you make them defend when their mind is in attack mode, they really cannot defend themselves. You cause a hiccup in their thought process and shut their brain down for a split second in which you can steal the attack from them.

I want to be unfettered in my acting as well. Improv theater training is a great way to train this as well and i do believe learning and excelling at improv theater has helped me be a better fighter. To be a master of improv comedy your brain must be free to flow and react to any situation. You say "yes, and" to whatever comes at you as you must in a fight.

This is my quest. I am not about a life of mediocrity or the mundane. I want to always excel and learn and improve myself, that is truly what it means to be a warrior.

Training & Defying Gravity

Music rings in my ears and pulses through my body as my hands and feet fall into canvas with a thunder born of muscle and aggression and focus. My nose is filled with the smell of sweat and glove leather as i dance and weave, evading the attacks of invisible opponents that only i can see. There is no text messaging, no questions about logistics of business or festivals. My body grows stronger as it struggles to survive and receives messages that presently, it is not strong enough to do what is being asked of it. I live three minutes at a time. I am free.

I am an addict. I cannot get enough of the sweet release of endorphins as i punch and kick and elbow and knee my way through a workout. I am never more alive than when my whole system strains and works to become more than it was the day before. My good friend and training partner Brad of years ago who was a fighter told me that i was in the shape he would be in when he was getting ready for a fight. Bruce Lee said that a warrior of life must always be in fight shape because our ring is the street and there are no bells or schedules to let you know when a fight may occur. I took that to heart and i train now to be in shape every day and any day that the need may arise.

When i am working out i am free. It is not just physical but it is a spiritual situation. I have been finding that lately, thanks in great measure to The Tribe of Motivation that we started on Facebook and a book called Weightlessness by Tom Fazio (i highly reccomend it) i am in the best shape of my life. I find myself doing planches and muscle ups which at one point in time seemed impossible. I have been going about my business on a daily basis with 5lb ankle weights and 1.5lb wrist weights strapped to my body. When they come off i feel like i am defying gravity, like i am John Carter of Mars.

I have notebooks chronicling my workouts back to 1997 and it was the same then, that is when this life of training began. And why? What is it about hours in the gym that keeps me doing it? I decided long ago that i never wanted there to be something that i could not do because of a lack of fitness. I would not be unable to play hockey all day with my friends or chase after my little cousins or play Archery Tag with our cast for 7 hours straight. My training has prepared me for all of these and i for the most part really do never tire. Make no mistake, i CAN keep up with you. And my life is more full for it.

It is also about finding my human potential. I was given this one life and i want to find out what its limits are. What can i do? What skills can i learn and what feats can i perform? When i see something amazing being done by someone i am not content to watch, i want to do it. So far, i have found no limits and i am feeling weightless nowadays.

Mostly, it is about Thoreau. "I went to the woods so that i might live deep and suck all the marrow out of life and not when i come to die discover i have not lived." That is from memory, but i think it is pretty close. Walden changed me, fundamentally transformed my outlook and i have been truly living ever since. Thank you Tribe, thank you Thoreau, thank you Bruce Lee and Guru Dan Inosanto, and mainly thank you to this great amazing mystery of life living itself that has granted me the grace to partake for whatever walk i have here in this earth. I will not squander it with mediocrity.

Dualism

Apology and fair warning, this is going to get heady and philosophical.

The philosopher Spinoza said that the chief problem with Western Philosophy is dualism. That is the categories we make that are mutually exclusive with each other and they have cause a lot of problems for us in the West. Mind/Body, Self/Other, the individual/society, etc. etc. Taking mind and body for example, they look like completely distinct and separate things. Mind is a non-extended something and body is matter that exists physically in the universe. We think they are related somehow, but there is a problem figuring out how this non-extended something interacts with the body since typical though usually is that somehow our mind directs the body. It is a problem, at least for philosophers who worry about these sorts of things.

There are lots of kinds of body, or let's use the word matter. We don't have a problem figuring out how they interact with each other because they are all extended in space and have mass. It is easy to see how a car interacts with the telephone pole. Even though are different kinds of matter, it is not a mutually exclusive dualism between car and telephone pole.

This statement of Spinoza's woke me up philosophically. What i happened to be studying at the time was the great philosophers who all had their personal tome. Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature," Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," Hegel's "The Phenomenolgy of Spirit," etc. etc. So, i of course wanted to have my own, mine was going to be "The Codex of Energetic Monism." OK, not sure exactly but energetic monism was the crux of the thing. The idea was and i still believe this, that there is really only one kind of stuff ultimately and it is energy. Matter is just energy in a slower state of vibration and we can see this with all the energy that is locked up in any atom. This is not super important for where we are going, just pointing out where my head space was.

The difference with my theory, and i am sure it is not just mine, there really are not any original thoughts out there, was it did not try to solve the mind/matter problem by just making everything either one or the other. People have tried to solve that problem by saying that things are either just all thought, or just body (chemical reactions n the brain = thoughts, brain states = mind states.) I don't like those kinds of explanations. In the beginning we were beings, undifferentiated and then someone came along and started to classify. We have these thoughts that seem to exist outside of space, and we have these bodies that seem to exist in space, they are two different kinds of stuff. Saying we are either body or mind forgets that we made that distinction in the first place. I was looking for that state that happened before we made the split, which is an illusion, it is a useful illusion but an illusion just the same.

Now, mind/body is only one of the dualisms that affect our lives. Subject/Object, Practical/Spiritual, Local/Global, etc. They are all illusions. You do not have to be bound by the term. When i am learning a practical martial art, it is also very spiritual for me, really the practical and the spiritual are the same. When i am helping a group of five students, i am helping the world. You are not separate from me, and you also are. We don't have to worry about it. Separating self and other, body and thought usually leads to denigrating one side of that equation which leads to one half of the thing. For a long time we have thought of the thought as pure and the body as banal, and thus arise all sorts of issues with female body image, feeling guilty about sex, etc.

If we can bring down these dualisms it would solve a great deal of our problems and ultimately i feel like they are at the root of a lot of our problems that plague us today and throughout history.

I welcome your thoughts. This is something i have thought a lot about and really makes up the core of most of my beliefs. Have an amazing day, and see your fellow humans as your self too.

How long nail polish lasts

As a boy, there are just some things i don't know.
I had no idea, for example, how long nail polish lasts.

As a whim, with salt air in my nostrils, and joy on my lips
and alcohol in my veins, pink fluid transformed my toe nails
into something they had never been.

As a boy i had no idea what i was getting myself into.
That is the kind of knowledge we are just not informed of.
The flakes are still there and it has been three months.
I had no idea what i was getting myself into.

I had no idea how long nail polish lasts.
Sometimes it last longer than a friendship,
but not as long as memories.

There are still four flakes clinging to life
on several little piggies.
They are fading like the memories
but the memories are still there,
they still make me smile.

Life is a journey and not a destination.
I don't avoid the journey because it may end someday.
I am happy i had the nail polish and the memories.

My Whisper

It was a long long time ago
when the animals could speak.
I felt something like a whisper,
From a forest, deep, shadowy and bleak.
The call, if indeed it was a call
Was alluring, enticing, a shadow cross my soul
Like a desperate angel fall.
It was an almost heard something,
Elusive, at the edges of my mind,
That is ever-present, daring,
By that something i'm defined.

That low whisper promised answers
But to hunt them i must dare
In the deep shadows of something,
In the woods of melancholy, despair.
I roam, oh i wander and i roam,
As the woods encroach, surround, haunt me, grey and gather
Til there is no place feels like home.
Seek and search the wood for the voice,
Deep and deeper, leaving no stone unturned,
For the voice that makes the whisper,
For that speaker i do burn.

On some days, between the whispers
I can't even hear the call.
My spirit at times distracted
By toil or by a pretty face enthralled
Is given reprieve, oh sweet reprieve
As the dark groves retreat, withdraw, disperse and leave me
To give me hope which i believe.
In these moments my walls come down,
Heart and love, sweet hope entice and enter
Carried on curves and lips and lust
Into my deepest center.

But i am a lonely hunter,
Loving the thrill of the chase
And when something new does enter
For a moment, the whisper is displaced.
The times, the sweet tender loving times
When i bask full on in warm embracing kind romance,
I feel forgiven of my crimes.
I am given a peace and ease
And i forget like a cat in the sun
As the dormant whisper goes still
That my searching is not done.

I wend my way closer to you,
Sweetest of maidens the Truth,
In deep, quiet contemplation
Far from the whisper, alone and aloof.
I think, i sit quiet and i think
As i delve, dive, decipher and scramble for answers
Midst whispers in truth on the brink.
It is a long and lonely road
On a journey up the mountain to know.
But the walk i would not forsake,
It draws me closer to my soul.

In synthesis of opposites
We often find the answer,
And i think fear of the whisper
May be my mistake, my bane, my cancer.
I reflect, sit quiet and reflect,
As i muse on my history, my fears, my escapes,
Potential pasts that i neglect,
I need a turning in my soul.
I have erected walls that none can breech
Between the whisper and my life,
Sometimes love is out of reach.

A time dawns the lonely hunter
Must own responsibility.
My heart the source of the whisper
I find inside, a culpability.
But with the call, i live, i grow and i live.
I search its subtleties, nuances, rhymes and reasons
And there is nothing to forgive.
This voice, my friend companion,
It has been open, guiding all along,
It was my interpretation
That was faulty and was wrong.

So long i have been indecisive,
Waffling, looking this way, that,
Two steps toward the whisper, two back,
Dancing both feet not in the love i’m at.
With lovers i twirl, i dance and twirl,
As excuse i use the whisper to keep my distance
Not cracking the shell for the pearl.
But this separation is false,
I see now the traps of my own devise
That have kept me moving, guessing
Failing to be truly wise.

Indecision moves within me
And i always vacilate
Between these roles i have made,
These complex categories i create.
Ideas have power, massive power
That shapes, creates, molds, transforms the very way we think
Our realities devour.
My own ideas my enemies
That subtle soft conspire to undo me
And lead me hither and yonder
To conundrums willingly.

But all of this is illusion,
A philosophical game,
When i truly hear the whisper
There is no need for confusion and shame.
In my time, in my life, in my time
This long enduring, winding, weaving, endless journey
The whisper says all will be fine.
That’s been the secret all along,
It’s just as simple, has been from the start,
That the truth is not some secret
That is hidden from my heart.

It is a long, long time ago
And the animals can speak.
I feel something like a whisper
From a grove i approach humbly and meek.
That call, and indeed it is a call
Is alluring, enticing, a light within my soul,
That voice is everywhere and all.
I can hear it now, clear as day
From within me and without, all around
Ever present and answering
It’s with my destiny bound.

Stewardship

"Our minds are made up of the animals we have attended." ~I believe this is from Robert Bringhurst

We tend to love the underdog in occupation stories. In the movie Independence Day we humans come together and fight off the vastly superior technological force from outer space that is trying to wipe us out and take over our home. We set aside all disbelief that we could make a virus for their super advanced computers that will wipe them out. In War of the Worlds the alien invading species is wiped out by disease that they have no way of coping with. We like those stories. But in the real world that is not really what we support. Our vastly superior technological weapons have swept over the globe, pushing out of the way by whatever means of genocide or biological warfare we can muster the Native aboriginal peoples that are in our way. Progress must progress after all. It is usually the invading species that wipes away the indigenous species with their disease by the way. What should happen, by all logic and karmic reasons when the aliens or angels or monsters arrive, is that we should be wiped away without a trace. By our own moral system, as we actually live it, not by what we profess, but by what has transpired over human history, these superior species are within their rights to push us out of the way and wipe us out as pests in the way of progress.

We still act this way. We act as if we are the only species that matters in the Earth. There are times when death is necessary in the cycle of things. I am not a vegetarian or a pacifist, and i do believe the fact that i am alive gives me the right to eat. But, that being said, there is a way to go about that with respect. I do not for example eat veal. That is to me simply the torturing of an animal just because we find it yummy. I have the right to eat, but not to disrespect and flaunt my power in a way that tortures the beings that are lower down on the food chain. Aboriginal people knew this and they treated the animals and the plants that they ate with respect, because in a hunting world view, the food you eat is a gift from related beings. You go out in the woods and wait for the food to come to you on its time. That changes with farming and domestication of animals. We put the animals in fences and they become a commodity. They are no longer the free acting agents of their own will capable of giving you a gift... they are property.

As i said, there are times when death is necessary. We need to eat energy to survive and eating of animals and plants is part of the cycle and the natural order of things. But, there are certain things that should occur in that cycle. We should treat these beings with respect. It does not matter whether or not they have a soul or are as smart as we are, what matters is whether or not they are capable of suffering. A good hunter will only take a clean kill. Ultimately that leads to better and more healthy food as well. An animal that suffers when it dies for longer periods of time has higher levels of stress hormones and unhealthy elements in its meat. I am not saying this is why we should be respectful, but it is a side effect. We should be respectful because it is the right thing to do. We are at the top of the food chain and have a responsibility to the animals in that cycle with us.

Sometimes we need to kill animals for other reasons besides food. Sometimes, they are suffering. I remember holding my cat Ninja as the heart beat and breath slowly left his body when we put him to sleep. He had gone from a 14 pound muscular and sleek hunter of the night, to a 6 pound shell that had pain when he walked and could not keep his food down. I wept. He was my friend and my teacher and i was there with him in his last moments those many years ago. He purred. I could feel it as surely as i could hear it as he left this adventure and went on to the next one. We laid his body in a place of honor and there is moss and roses growing there now. His body has fed them and the cycle continues.

Recently, i saw an animal that had rabies killed. It needed to be done i guess. However, there was laughter and video taping and the whole thing was treated as a joke. It may have been necessary, but it should never be taken lightly. Not only that, the initial "kill" with a shovel or pitch fork did not succeed and about 5 minutes later they realized the animal was still alive and trying to move about. I was filled with rage. My people, my species bothers me on many occasions and our disregard for the other beings we share this planet with is where it is probably at its greatest.

We are a part of the great cycle, the great dance of life on this living orb that hurtles through space and time. We have minds capable of so much and thumbs that allow our thoughts to be made reality in the world around us. We need to take care of these beings. We know as children how important animals are to our psyche with the stuffed animals and the wonder children see in their pets and any encounter with an animal in the outside world. The next time you eat, say grace. Say it to a divine power if you wish, but also, and i think more importantly, say thank you to the being that put on its fleshy coat for awhile so that you may survive. It is a gift, it is grace. Acknowledge that handshake that you are given from your other than human kin that haunt the forests and the fields all around us. Say thank you to your cat, your dog, your snake or your gold fish even. They teach us about our humanity. There is a reason why serial killers usually start with animals. The killing of humans later is related, because we are all related,all the two-legs, the four-legs, the wings of the air and the gills of the sea. Get excited when you see a wild animal intrude upon the teflon coated world we live in. It is amazing. Business as usual happens in the woods.