Martial discipline enhances awareness, and initiates the process of ascending to full consciousness. The principle of ” sharpening the sword”, is a metaphor for the realization of a mind free of affliction.
The cultivation of physical skills are triggers for attaining the state of consciousness that is free of the fears, needs, and obsessive desires, that limit one’s ability to respond to life’s challenges with spontaneous clarity. The path begins with observing the breath while developing the nine attributes of the Physical body:
- Flexibility.
- Balance.
- Strength.
- Speed.
- Coordination.
- Rhythm.
- Endurance.
- Agility.
- Form(structure).
These physical principles are fundamental to the development of effective combat skills and the sharpening of the mind-sword. Though some practitioners will be more proficient in some skills than others, all must be assiduously practiced.
The next layer in the body-mind continuum is the emotional body that binds us in conflict within self and with others.
Having practiced the disciplining of the physical body, we see the role that the things that we fear, need and desire ravage our lives and limit growth,thus seeing the psycho-physiological prison that retards the refining of mind.
The instinctual body is next, in which we observe the impact of the fight, flight, freeze syndrome. We recognize our instinctual, antagonistic relationship with the world and other inhabitants.
Next we encounter the challenges of the mental body…one looks at the mind and observes it’s deceptions about life as has been presented by the deceivers with their fairy-tales about life.
In the spiritual body we watch the watcher…seeing the flower without being distracted by inner chatter about the flower. Knowing the force without false ideas about it’s source.
In the cosmic body one melts into the universe. The work in the physical body, triggers the energy of the centers that open the portals to unlimited power.
Finally one realizes the Mbungi state…..NIRVANA!
A monk once asked an ancient man of wisdom, “What is the way?” The man answered, “The way of the free mind.”
Awakened Warrior 