There's a cold going around and I've now got it. Time to bang up the vitamin C and visualise myself cough/snuffle free!
The tree in the picture is one i pass most days with the dog. She likes to play in that area and so i feel this tree has strong energy. I use the tree as an analogy in a lot of my teaching. Right now I'm aware of a friend who is training with a group that i personally dislike. Its tempting to say something but it could lose a friendship to satisfy my ego.
Each person is the trunk and they may take this branch or that branch as long as it feeds the trunk. If it is false, then the branch will wither and you have to return to the trunk to continue with your growth. Of course some people think that by being on a particular branch they have reached the destination, but there is no destination as its not yet been determined.
With my school, we spent quite a few years exploring the competition side, testing our skills, our methods and developing them, returning to the trunk with the energy to make it grow. I have lost count of the number of times i have been beaten in the boxing ring, the mat or smashed with the stick. I'm still here though but i've seen countless drop off.
The school continues and develops many branches , some of which are used or not various students. Each students path may look the same from the uninitiated but its not and nor do we force it to be. Saying that there are certain truths that cannot be forgotten as the trunk needs the branches to brink back the light from photosynthesis and the water drawn by the roots.
Some trees don't grow big and strong but have a dazzling plume that makes it look pretty and desirable. This tree is short lived and the story of the Emporers clothes is not so far removed from the point i am making.
A student of mine was asking questions about knowing which techniques to apply at what given time. It was a developed question but it was tangled in the classical mess and so was his training sohe had lost sight of the goal. There's always a vision of what you are doing it for, lose that and you get caught up in the fancy flowers. If you have your goal determined then there is a clear path that cuts through the mess.
2 comments:
When you stem a comment like you mentioned about your friend training with another group and you identify it as ego (I agree with that). Where does the 'energy' go. Because you have to vent that somewhere. Do you tell others? Or do you just put it in yor 'cup'?
It's essentially waste because it is caused by ego so if you put it in your internal cup then you are filling your cup with waste. Therefore you should vent right?
Stress and worry can also fill your cup and this cup needs periodically emptied. Crying is a good way to empty that cup. Are there any other ways?
If a friend has egg on his face, only a friend will tell him when he needs to wipe it off. If the friend holds you in regard, he will not be upset that you told him. The egg may turn out to be a spot, or a worthless fashion accessory, or something else more valuable, but if he holds you in regard, he will appreciate your concern, thank you for your guidance, and, where appropriate, open things for further understanding. If he's a friend of yours Pat seems likely to me he will hold you in esteem and appreciate your input on your concerns. If the concerns are terminal to relations, then maybe to say nothing is best (if the most valuable thing is friendship). I lost a friend to heroin once, I didn't agree with what he was doing, he appreciated my concern, but his addiction took him on a different path to me. We were good friends even while he knew my disapproval, but our lives veered off in different directions inevitably... We're not in touch any more, although l spoke to him perchance a couple of years ago and he is clean, now a drugs councilor in Glasgow and together with a girlfriend and her two kids. Things will go the way they go ultimately, but at least if you say what you feel you want to (where it's something you care about), people have the opportunity to know you, whatever their decisions may be.
I like this tree metaphor in the post, and the lesson on purposes are bang on for me.
I also think what the anonymous poster said has merit to it.
In response to it: another way is not to keep the waste. Energy only has to go somewhere if it's retained. In consciousness this happens where a person invests their identity in particular processes (believes). The totality of a person's consent constitutes the whole of his identity (ever thought about that before? - who I am is what I agree to be involved in (identify with) whether this is actively, or passively). For a persons identity to be absorbed in the impulses of reflection and imaginings is inevitable (given the stage of our social develeopment) and perhaps without end (to be human is to reflect and imagine, and act beyond these). But identity has at least five other avenues of potential absorbtion at the interface of what's happening (think sense modalities). When the first of the six avenues(1 mind, 5 sense modalities), is closed (i.e. when identity neglects absorbtion in impulses of reflection and imagination), there is no issue on what to do or how to respond. The more a person's identity steps outside of this first avenue the more flexible it resides in relation to the inevitable flow of absorbtion into imaginings and reflection, and the less there is any friction and no need to retain any waste. The practice of this activity is impossible! Yet well worth striving for IMO. Some beliefs are more useful than others for particular purposes.
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