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Old 06-26-2012, 02:43 PM   #227
gregstec
Dojo: Aiki Kurabu
Location: Elizabethtown, PA
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,110
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Re: My Spiritual Aikido.

Quote:
Graham Christian wrote: View Post
There are three things Greg, spiritual, mental, physical.

Many are very focussed on physical only I think you'll agree. Along comes a coach (in sport) or I/P and shows there is another dimention and that comes under mental. So there you are.

Now you learn mental things and techniques and practices to enhance the physical and work with the physical. Mind and body.

Now, those who were so only into physical were always aware that mentality was there but of no import was their consideration or else it was something that was not of their volition or control.

Just something that connects you to the physical. Sound familiar?

Now you do it you call it natural. Mind and body working as one is obviously more powerful than not, that's a no brainer. Internal arts generally focus on these two and thus develope theories based on them. But like the physical guy I mentioned above they can't deny there is another factor, just like he couldn't deny he had a mentality, and like him they put this third factor down as just a this or just a that.

Now, to your original question, why do I say that all you do is physical?

Well firstly that physical guy mentioned above would be looking at things so. Then we come to the way 'you' perceive things. Those into the mental side of things tend to approach things differently to the other wouldn't you say? Their whole approach becomes different. The down side is that where I may say one person is very physical and some may say such charachters in life are ignorant, etc whilst the ones into mind are more academic, into data, data, data, intellectual. Thus I could say many are robots, like living machines or walking libraries/ Funny thing is a lot of these charachters are very unstable when it comes to martial arts. Theyre too busy thinking. I'm sure you've met many such.

Person 'A' I would say is "being" a body. Person "B" I would say is "BEING" a mind.

Now, a person unifying the two as you talk about is to me doing much better and feeling much better in themselves than the other two.

It is well known that the 'power' of the mind is greater than the body. So I call this looking at mind and body as equal in regards to affecting or effecting each other as nonsense. Psycho somatic illness should tell you something here. Mind affecting the body.

My first question to you would be if you are coordinating mind and body then what are you?

But back to your question. Spiritually I can get people to look at things, to look at mental things and physical things. I can get people to look and that is not with physical eyes. Now when it comes to creating or looking then many cannot but translate such as physical things. So I could give you a mental exercise right now which shows how you are seeing things physically even via the mind. Thus I say still stuck in physical. If it doesn't relate to what you have seen physically or according to the physical mechanical laws you are used to then you will have a hard time creating or doing or even mentally having something happen.

Anything not physical is what? What is the difference between mental and spiritual? The not knowing is the reason that such spiritual sayings and indeed principles are translated mentally and thus misunderstood. From looking at things physical and mental then any spiritual you can only call mental and thus never really understand the difference.

In fact you can have budo mind conditions, well documented, yet they actually equal, like zen, 'no mind' type conditions. No thinking, no plotting, no remembering, no history, no mind. They are spiritual and body conditions. Universal.

So mind and body is one thing but spiritual people who have realized the "reality" of mind then enter a new phase. A 'ueshiba' phase and no longer that 'old' mind and body internal thing.

That is now seen as very physical.

Peace.G.
In a convoluted way, I actually was able to follow your logic somewhat. Granted, there is also the spiritual domain, and I see a strong spirit in conjunction with a coordinated mind and body being superior to a weak spirit and coordinated mind and body, but the spirit alone will not provide for effective development of IS/IP - Actually, those of us following Dan's methods are very spiritual in our own ways; we have to be in order to have the wisdom to recognize the importance of this knowledge and to generate the committed motivation to obtain those skills

Greg