Eighty

"The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within". - Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace, Translated by John Stevens.

The practice of Aikido isn't always comfortable for me. Introspection is a large part of what Aikido practice forces me to do and I've had to learn to overcome my natural reticence to delve too deeply into my own innards, so to speak. Training strips away layers of falsehood that have been built up as a child and continue to be added as life progresses. So it isn't about "getting there" in any formal sense, it's more a process that continues as long as I live.

Part of what Mary and I do in classes we teach is find ways to make students confront their inner selves in ways that make everyone, us included, uncomfortable. Once at a seminar we were teaching Mary had everyone pair up and take turns whining at each other. The result was quite illuminating. The majority of the students there jumped into the exercise with gusto and while no one was comfortable with it everyone later agreed that they learned something about themselves for having done it. Two folks were so put off by the exercise that they left the mat until it was completed. Hearing them whine at each other as they walked off struck me as somewhat ironic since that was the object of the exercise in the first place. The point of the exercise was for students to excise a natural reaction (whining about an adverse situation), bring it out into the open where it can be seen and so remove from it its power to immobilize.

Discomfiture provides me with a counterpoint to the comforts in my life, without which I would surely less appreciate all that I have been blessed with.