Auto-Ethnology (Warning full of self-help babble and martial arts stuff)

“The way is in training.” Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

There’s nothing like a humbling experience to gain insight into one’s nature. Perhaps that’s why so many ascetics have sought to become mendicants, or practice self-sacrificing habits such as fasting and material abstinence. It’s difficult to cling to illusions of self when you are constantly being disillusioned. It’s impossible to be distracted by glittering objects and escapist behaviors if you have none.

The state of feeling shamed or humiliated is internal. What I mean is, nobody can make you feel ashamed except yourself. The effect on the psyche is to further depress the emotional and spiritual strength of the individual being tried. By humbling oneself, or by being humbled, one is forced to look internally to discover those mechanisms that are flawed, such as they permit the outer world to have such a destabilizing effect on the internal order. A very strong person can hardly be humbled. They understand that the circumstances surrounding life are always variable, and more importantly, subject to interpretation. The strong choose to interpret all external circumstances with a good deal of dispassion and detachment. Yesterday I was a successful (insert pastime/occupation), today I am a beggar. This kind of strain is typically too much for most of us to bear and recover from readily. Which is ironic given that it’s the destiny of all people. As we age and die, nearly everything is taken from us. Entropy is a given. For most of it’s a brutal shock to the system, like putting too much pressure into a machine, revealing the weak hoses that burst under the strain. The end result is that the mechanism can remain forever broken and dysfunctional, or it can be repaired and strengthened; the weak hoses replaced with reinforced ones, to continue the analogy.

I recently had a humbling shock. Like other realizations I've had about life this one occurred through the study of the martial arts, a more or less constant pursuit since the age of eleven. I have often felt, after so many years of study, self-discipline, and effort, that I am entitled to a degree of effortlessness in my training and growth. I’ve worked so hard for so long, I reasoned on some level, that I should therefore be able to learn faster, easier, or better than those around with the same amount of time/effort invested. Why I arrived at this conclusion I don’t know, having often had quite the opposite proven to me time and again, as my efforts haven't always resulted in the quickest application of the techniques that I’m supposedly learning. Yet, there it is, the feeling that somehow I'm more deserving of improvement without working as hard.

And so I'm forced to learn the hard way. After months of inactivity I return to my training to discover that I'm capable of being caught by someone far less experienced. I was in disbelief. I saw what was happening, I even knew how to prevent it. For some reason I just didn’t react in time. I didn’t apply what I knew. I failed.

We all fail. This particular time hurt because of the circumstances. I'm advanced (relatively) in my chosen art at this time. My opponent was a novice. I was in a new school with many unknown elements and all the techniques I know were done slightly differently, and had different names as well. My opponent caught me cleanly and quite beautifully. In reality, it should be a pleasure to forfeit to such a demonstration of technique and ability from any training partner, but especially from one so new to the sport! I should have felt grateful for having been shown a weakness in my game. Instead it hurt because I'm training in a new place and with new people (to whom I felt I must prove myself, display my worth, and otherwise justify my rank and status). Under other circumstances I’d have felt wonderful at having had the opportunity to help a fellow training partner. Instead I envisioned him as gratified at having humbled me, at having revealed me to be less that I cared to present. I couldn’t divine the good in the situation at all. I made excuses: my lack of condition due to recent inactivity, his application of a technique that’s illegal where I used to train, my unfamiliarity with the style of fighting they employ. It was all pointless. I simply got caught.

This brought about a cascade of recognitions about my other failings. All my weaknesses were drawn under a critical spotlight. Aside from my physical failings I recognized the fact that I am (to name just a few): completely self-absorbed, pedantic, egotistical, self-satisfied, vain, long-winded, unrepentant, stubborn, emotionally inaccessible, greedy, demanding, forgetful, mooning, and thoughtless. I could go on but you get my point (and I must reserve some shred of dignity here).

The upshot is to have arrived at the moment I did, where I realized the ability to feel better about these and other aspect of my life is within my power. It’s a matter of choice. I remembered that I must follow the model of those who choose to have greater inner strength. I must resolve not to let myself be hurt by feelings of inadequacy in my training. I can do so by foregoing any expectation of adequacy. I don't practice the martial arts to justify my sense of accomplishment, expertise, or self-worth. I do it because I love to do it. My quality is not measured by my performance, but rather by my steady application of intention, by consistently electing to improve. That is the measure of the practitioner. This recalls the cliché of “nine times knocked down, ten times get up.” So I chose to get up again, to take the lesson I was given, and be grateful for it. Even if I got it from a white belt. Especially because I got it from a white belt. Regardless of the source, it was a lesson I desperately needed to learn.

In reality this insight into my training is the least of the benefits I’ve garnered from this experience. I’ve also come to realize how my failings have affected my relationships, particularly those of a romantic nature—all the most recent ones that I’ve had. In each I was too distanced from my own feelings to be able to connect in any real way with the people who were trying to get to me. They were knocking, ringing, and some even banging down the door, but nobody was home. This pained me greatly to acknowledge that my own selfish behavior had caused hurt in these people. I took from these people the physical comfort they offered, and little else, all the while offering little more than the physical in return. Is there anything more painful than to truly see our reflection and note the monsters we sometimes permit ourselves to be? It sucks to hurt people by accident. It really sucks to look at how often we do it on purpose, while making believe we didn’t. I have resolved to never enter into another romantic relationship without being fully available in all senses. I'm not going to be unfair and offer less of myself to another, because in the end I hurt myself most, when I finally have to look at myself. When I finally have to realize that my solitude is my own creation; the havoc I wrought around me is just the bitter icing on the cake.

So in the end of all this, what can I do but say thank you? I will go to class and give that white belt a big sincere hug because he doesn't know what he’s done for me. He may one day, but until then I will do my best to help him, and others, the way he helped me. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to utterly smash him all over the mat until he achieves greater self-awareness. Just kidding. I’m going to do my best to be available in every sense in my training, to absorb and share as much as I can in my training relationships, as I will in all my other relationships. The way is in training.

posted by goat hill dreamer @ 10:31 PM