At the Edge of Atman (2014)

For fifteen years of training and practice I have felt little beyond

mechanical improvement, and given constant reminders to myself:

Elbows in, stay low, sit down, accelerate, know what your target is, see the opponent, sit down, elbows in, accelerate, balance, breathe deeply, evenly, sink, don’t hold breath, trap it at the right moment, explode at the moment of penetration, sit down, accelerate, fingertips are spears, knuckles are spears, ball of foot is an arrowhead, elbows in, back still but loose, neck loose but steady, gaze firm but not locked, elbows in, stay down, sit into it, accelerate, motions between that matter (not the endpoint), smooth it out, continue through with the motion, feel your center, tighten it as you exert, not the surrounding areas, just the center point, firm, aware of its centrality, hands firm but not tight, only thumb and pinky squeezing, same with trunk. Sink, accelerate, sit down....

In all that time, mechanics, mechanics, mechanics, and an occasional glimmer of something more. Today, I experienced just a moment of the qi center, root chakra, connectedness, the access to atman. It is not beyond words, more it is underneath them. Yet I feel compelled to record the feeling as best I can:

The center of everything in the center of me – not as presumption or arrogance: The center is everywhere, but my feeling of it is found in the center of my own physical individuality. It is connected to everything, and it is connection. It is what is all of me and outside of me. It is natural, normal. It is not mystical, but defines what people think of that way.

It is the place of confidence, the pivot point of balance, the root of peace and compassion.

But for all the elegy, it is humble, a small point that is not even a place, like the center of an onion, not to be seen or touched by dissection. It can only be realized through concentrated relaxation, tightened looseness, modest comprehension of one’s own universality. One sees why this comes only through the losing of self in some format, like meditation or intensive kata. It is the merest hint of the unity of everything, just the tip of the universal iceberg.

I do not have hold of it. It is not mine to command, but I can work with it, as long as I do so with humility, knowing that it guides me as I guide its use. It calls me to understand it better, to explore the depths it suggests. At the same time, reaching directly for it takes me farther from it. It will come in time. It is momentary, but always there. It will never let me down, to the extent that I never let it down.

I realize that I let it down a little every time I treat my body, my mind, my soul, my fellows, or my communities badly. The next step is to be in its employment and employing it during every moment of training. It would be remarkable to walk with that symbiosis through each day of life. How long the journey, but patience!

In thinking on the qi center as I have felt its little edge, it has always responded to extreme emotion, too, and in anger one can employ it momentarily. Knowing this now is like learning to use muscles on purpose that one understands were previously used without consciousness of them.

But in anger, half the equation is missing – one uses qi, but one is not employed by qi, so the compact collapses, leaving the body exhausted, the mind exasperated. Because of this one-sidedness, one does not have that important dialogue that allows one to know that this is what has been tapped or called upon.

Anger is in this way indeed a path to a dark aspect of atman – power without knowledge of its source or purpose.

Similarly, an ambition to use qi all the time seems greedy, impatient, even angry, so it works against comprehension and proper use. Patient practice, with a calm disposition, seems the only path to the good of atman. So:

Elbows in, stay low, sit down, accelerate, know what your target is, see the opponent, sit down...