Truth

Integral to martial traditions is the association with personal growth and fulfillment. Ancient masters were appreciated as fully actualized entities. They were respected for breadth of knowledge, depth of insight, and for having actualized a center from which all they did emerged. In addition to having great martial skills, they were sometimes also poets, artists, musicians, healers, strategists and scientists...perhaps all of them.

You see, back then martial arts was not about kicking somebody’s butt as a basis for self worth. It was about finding the center of You, and establishing your identity from the inside out while maintaining balance, perspective, and restraint.

Today, following such a path has become nearly impossible.

While we are not Pavlov’s dogs ... we are primed to respond to any number of verbal and visual stimuli, even to the point of losing hold on reality. Influence mongers constantly mine the efficacy of words and images as stimuli ... and propogate entire industries to harness those relationships to our behavior. Unfortunately, many of us have become the cart.

Society bombards us with influences from our earliest youth, it’s part of the human condition. The velocity and intensity of today’s bombardment is unprecedented in human history. A new religion has dawned ... the worship of thought. Whoever controls the weight of thought, ultimately controls the will and resources of the people. Institutions like government, corporations and political parties, which were once derivative of the people’s authority, have now taken charge. They have mastered the art of manipulation, effectively putting themselves in the cat-bird seat. (Click here   for a look at how the battle for your mind plays out)

That is ... if you let them.

As a martial artist, never surrender the quest for truth. What starts out as diligent effort to perfect technique in the martial arts, evolves in the crucible of of a master’s spirit, to be an uncompromising search for truth. That, historically, has been the path of liberation for martial artists. The ultimate self defense, and the underlying purpose of all your efforts and training is actualization and protection of truth. As you work diligently to this end, always be mindful of those who will spare no effort, investment, or technique to take that away from you.

Just as truth will carry you to liberation, the absence of truth will steal your liberty.

To that concern lies the motivation for you to make your stand with truth ... today!

What the dissimulators already know is that finding the truth takes hard work, and time. They’re counting on your not making the sacrifice, and defaulting to their spell. They bombard you with streams of snapshot opinions, misportrayals, half-truths, and outright lies. They already know you and your loved ones will spend an enormous amount of time plugged into TV and listening to the radio, and have convinced you that doing so makes you “informed”.

Not! Don’t fall for this. In this visually oriented society, when you buy into someone else’s lie, you’re creating a stream of images which take your consciousness from reality and away from truth. They already know that mental images, stimulated by injected misportrayals have huge impact on beliefs that people walk away with. Studies have shown where an image accompanies objective text narrative, it is the image which sets the residual impression in the mind of the receiver. These same studies have found that when the image directly contradicts what is in the narrative, the perceiver remembers what was in the image as the basis for belief, and ignores the contextual facts. That means ... if their magic is working the way it should ... the lie will become your reality, and you won’t even have the ability to recognize the truth when it’s staring you in the face. It also means that when the truth eventually surfaces, it will no longer matter. The devil’s work has already been done.

Try to see the big picture ... what is really being decided, what will the decision cause to happen, who will benefit, who will pay (or suffer)? That’s thinking three dimensionally ... it roots you in the here and the now ... where truth is everywhere.

Here’s something that will help you get started ...

Protect the Vessel.

Be excellent.

Do better