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Old 01-05-2009, 07:31 AM   #111
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Effectiveness of Aikido in a combat situation

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
My neighbor, my enemy, indeed, my God, is no different, and the means in every case is exactly the same -- Love. Many people accept this as a sympathetic and even intellectually valid principle of the mind and heart. We are, for better or worse not merely minds and hearts, but messy, hormonal, instinctive bodies -- "this quintessence of dust." Aikido is teaching this lesson to the as yet recalcitrant body.
Up until now, the aikido "connection" business hasn't made sense to me (it hasn't made non-sense either, if you know what I mean)...but you just made it click with something that's already part of my world view (the Very Small Being from Sheri Tepper's novel "Grass", kind of obscure I guess). Thanks for this very much, Erick. That's about all the verbage I have for this very non-verbal set of feelings and concepts, which is not to say that I don't greatly appreciate the verbage of others...only if I don't say much more, it's because I'm letting it all soak in (or letting me soak into it).