Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote:
Dan,
I wish I could simply dismiss you, but even if I stopped reading Aikiweb completely, some of my senior seniormost sempai train with you, so at best its like an elephant in the room with a tablecloth over its back, and some pictures, flowers, etc.
I guess one of the things about me is, I prefer following systems to following individuals. I have loyalties to individuals - but I seem to prefer training with individuals who offer me a path to a system that I can convince myself is "legit." I haven't been able to come to this conclusion with you and your system, because you are both uncomfortable with owning your system and making it "Dan Harden's IP Method" and you are unable to publicly discuss your training history.
I understand the latter issue...I don't expect you to share your training history publicly and I don't think that would fix anything. I think what has been going on in the past year or so is that you haven't strongly defined your own role in the martial arts communities you work with. You haven't provided a compelling story of how you developed the system that you teach. So others have started to define a role for you and everyone comes up with their own story.
i.e. it isn't that you don't discuss your lineage publicly - it is that your friends and associates do. And you haven't actually managed to get yourself into a place where your lineage doesn't matter.
Thanks for listening.
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Thank you for taking the time to explain. By the end of my response you will go back to dismissing me. I cannot offer you what you seek.
I would simply say:
You're still in the box.... that I have escaped from.
Why would I go back to systems that produce men that face me and want to change once they see?
Ueshiba got free of systems and refused to be trapped by them.It was the same with Bruce Lee. I refuse to be trapped.
As far as your lack of interest in me because I don't define our defend
"a system?" that's fine. All I can offer is that at the end of decades of training in them with Asian legends.... men come and there I sit....waiting, and take their system apart and show them what is at the core of martial movement.
How is it that teachers from Aikido, and Daito ryu as well as Taiji and Win chun tell me I am addressing the heart of their budo?
How can that even be possible.
a long list of people here on aikiweb have flat out stated that the people who follow me are idiots and other unkind descriptions of their judgement.
I ask you. What if those who have come and trained...were right after all?
It is the study of the foundation of all the great arts that is the key to truly understanding them, and defeating them.
It is freeing and joyful and healing and it gets better as you age. But to my knowledge you will never find it taught...contained within in a system.
And that said...how is it that everyone who trains with me, can go back to their systems and train this while doing them?
Because what I am teaching is the foundation of those systems. Sometimes you have to step outside in order to really see what is going on.
It's called a vantage point.
And it is why I see...what you cannot see.
Dan