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Old 05-04-2012, 02:30 PM   #4
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 2,697
England
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Re: Intelligent Fools, Dragons, and Princesses

Hi Ross. Yes. I as you may have noticed can say plenty.

Regarding the spirit of loving protection and considering it in a deeper sense. Spirit. Your true spirit.

We could start there for example. Your true spirit is of loving protection. This goes along with Ki. The fact that I say your true spirit implies we may have other than true spirit and yes indeed we do.

As with all self development disciplines it is a matter of reawakening yourself. I personally use three principles I call the three 'R's' Realignment, Rehabillitation and Restoration.

The spirit and thus with it the Ki need rehabillitating (reawakening) realigning and restoring. Thus back to the spirit of loving protection, true spirit.

Now in Aikido and the path of developing such things we ahve to face many barriers within ourselves and rid ourselves of many false views etc. Before doing so we may equate the spirit of loving protection one way and then as we progress see there is more to it and so on and so forth.

Thus we reach different realities on the same thing and the more real it gets the more depth we see in it, the more nearer truth of it the astounding and simple (yet logically not) it becomes and logic itself disappears. For we see more as to what the spirit of loving protection actually protects us from.

So the view is to look at it as something with a role, it does something, it does something extraordinary. That is the true function of your spirit.

On the point of budo is love I have a different view too Ross and so I don't equate it with war or on the battle field etc. I can do but to me that is minor nor major. No, to understand how love can be budo or what is meant by true budo is love I would have to show you the line of 'reasoning' I use.

It starts with wisdom. Wisdom being the views based on love and goodness and thus wisdom rules out logic which is based on intellect and right and wrong and such ideas. Thus I say logic is the enemy of wisdom and satisfies only the ego.

So then we come to the study, the disciplines of looking at things from the viewpoint of love, of compassion, of humility from which we may see through the illusions of negativity and return to calmness and stillness. We can then also view and see them in existence too.

Thus we discover the ways of love and goodness, their principles, how they are in harmony and indeed also bring harmony to scenes in life which of itself brings harmony too. So first we have to relearn about love and goodness too, to rehabillitate it in ourselves, to realign ourselves to it and to restore ourselves. All part of masagatsu and agatsu. All part of the path.

True budo is love: Let me take you now to the five minds of budo. Developing these five minds is once again a matter of practice and the three 'R's. But note they are called the five minds of budo which means budo has five minds does it not? Five stable viewpoints. Five disciplined views.

Without love and goodness you cannot achieve these stable positions and viewpoints and ways of seeing. Senshin itself would be self evidently a super discipline, a mind, a budo and it itself is of love.

Intellect and logic cannot see this and never will for it is not of the ego mind it is of the true you.

Zanshin is of the spirit and thus could be called the budo of Ki.

Hope that gives you a brief idea of from where I am coming.

Peace.G.
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