Martial Arts

Martial Arts essentially holds three stances: 1. The circle; adaptation of energy. 2. The triangle; pro-activeness of energy. 3. and the square; stillness of energy.

All forms of Martial Arts are birthed by Dragon Energy. This dance of primal instincts develops into styles of expression. Each style is intrinsically linked to a source of power within the wisdom that Dragons virtuously uphold. Every style of Dragon dance is what encompasses the various known styles of Martial Arts.

A Warrior is akin to a physician; the greatest warrior is always the one who prevents the conflict before it even begins to occur. The battle is fought in the mind, and only when that fails does physical Martial Arts take over.

You fight your reflection.

The Pursuit of Goodness.

By Ramesh Ramanathan (Co-founder of Janaagraha, Centre for Citizenship and Democracy).

For most of us, our days are consumed by the immediate: project deadlines, the day’s agenda, children to pick up. What is often missing is an underlying foundation, a deeper rationale that guides our actions.

A common exercise to help focus on this long-term perspective is the “tombstone exercise”—what will be written on one’s tombstone when one is dead (only metaphorically for most Indians, of course since Hindus get cremated).

In discussions with many people, I have heard statements that were almost always thoughtful, often large and visionary—“he helped create tens of thousands of jobs”; “she changed how India thought about children’s education”; and so on.

However, one particular statement has stayed with me, for its riveting simplicity. The person said: “He was well used by others.”

He was well used by others. While the selflessness in the phrase is praiseworthy, there is an additional trait that stands out: that of being “good”. This isn’t to suggest that being good is at odds with being great, but that living a good life is an aspiration that needs to be pursued with as much passion as any other—indeed, should precede other pursuits.

The Fall.

An illuminating excerpt from “The Lost Teachings of Atlantis” by Jon Peniel.

This book devotes an entire chapter to the history of the Children of the Law of One, from its Genesis prior to Atlantis, to the present, directly translated from the ancient texts, and my accounts of recent developments. But in the following segment, Noah just briefly describes the specific aspects of that history which led to the creation of the Children. You’ve heard Darwin, you’ve heard Genesis. Now you are about to hear another theory, the first one that made sense to me. And according to the Atlantean teachings, Genesis is actually a simplified, loose allegory, based on this.

“The historical records start with the premise that there is One Great Being (God/Universal Spirit) that is All things, including the Universe itself. It divides/multiplies within itself to create us, thus, our history begins with all of us (humans) essentially being part of, and One with God. The records describe us as being spiritual or ‘angelic’ beings, free to roam, create, and enjoy the Universe. The teachings go on to say that our beginnings on Earth, came in two steps – a ‘first wave’, and ‘second wave’ of ‘human’ (& semi-human) materialization into physical bodies on Earth. At the time, we had the ability to instantly alter our vibration, and instantly create anything we desired, with a mere thought. It was in this way that we ‘thought ourselves’ into matter, into material existence on Earth. Which began our fall from our angelic state, and Oneness with God.

You have probably heard of mythological beings such as the Minotaur, Centaur, Mermaid, etc.. The Minotaur, had a bull’s head and a human body, the Centaur, a human head and torso with a horse’s body. You may also have seen pictures of Egyptian ‘gods’ with animal heads and human bodies, or animal bodies and human heads (like the Sphinx). In the Pacific regions, ancient drawings and carvings of ‘bird headed’ humans can be found on both sides of the ocean. Why do you think so much of this exists? Many legends and myths have some foundation in fact, and this is no exception. The ancient teachings from Atlantis, reveal that such creatures did indeed exist, and that their origins were not what you might expect – they were the fallen angelic beings from the ‘first wave’ of materialization on Earth.”

“Fallen angels??? You mean like Lucifer?”

Good Fortune

An excerpt from Daniel Odier’s Tantric Quest.

Q. Why do we lose our capacity for wonder?

A. Education, society, sick love, hate, desire, jealousy, ambition, mental and material quests – all these things make us strangers to ourselves. We think only of copying, imitating, achieving new states, and whether or not our desires are fulfilled, we lose the happiness within us. Then we come to imagine heaven and hell separate from ourselves. This is a great subterfuge, which allows our consciousness to function outside of ecstasy. If man knew that he himself was God and heaven and hell, no illusions would have a hold on him; nothing could limit his consciousness.

Placing heaven outside self allows suffering to become an institution maintained by society’s dream at such a high level that we can no longer escape from it. Whatever our fortune starting out in life, a day comes when we decide to limit our consciousness, to dry it up.

Demotivational Posters

From www.motifake.com

Empowerment and Verbal Abuse.

You can see her

Eyes light up

Hoping that

He will

Love her today.

That she can exhale

And not

Take up too much

Space.

You can see

Her eyes light up

And the wistful

Hope and

Little girlishness that

He will

Be her

Boyfriend and

Take care of her

And make

All of it

Alright.

Make her right.

Her decision of him.

Samurai

I have no parents: I make the heavens and earth my parents.

I have no home: I make awareness my home.

I have no life or death: I make the tides of breathing my life and death.

I have no divine power: I make honesty my divine power.

I have no means: I make understanding my means.

I have no magic secrets: I make character my magic secret.

I have no body: I make endurance my body.

I have no eyes: I make the flash of lightening my eyes.

I have no limbs: I make promptness my limbs.

I have no ears: I make sensibility my ears.

I have no strategy: I make “un shadowed by thought” my strategy.

I have no designs: I make “seizing the opportunity by the forelock” my designs.

I have no miracles: I make right-action my miracle.

I have no principles: I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.

I have no tactics: I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.

I have no talents: I make ready wit my talent.

I have no friends: I make my mind my friend.

I have no enemy: I make carelessness my enemy.

I have no armor: I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.

I have no castle: I make immovable mind my castle.

I have no sword: I make absence of self my sword.

- Anonymous 14th Century Samurai.

Stopping the World: Our Internal Dialogue.

This is one of the most penetrative passages I’ve come across in Don Juan’s wisdom… It accounts the stopping of our internal dialogue, and how frightening such a thing can be…

—————————————————

In May of 1971, I paid don Juan the last visit of my apprenticeship. I went to see him on that occasion in the same spirit I had gone to see him during the ten years of our association; that is to say, I was once again seeking the amenity of his company. His friend don Genaro, a Mazatec Indian sorcerer, was with him. I had seen both of them during my previous visit six months earlier. I was considering whether or not to ask them if they had been together all that time, when don Genaro explained that he liked the northern desert so much that he had returned just in time to see me. Both of them laughed as if they knew a secret.

“I came back just for you, ” don Genaro said.
“That’s true,” don Juan echoed.
I reminded don Genaro that the last time I had been there, his attempts to help me to “stop the world” had been disastrous for me. That was my friendly way of letting him know that I was afraid of him. He laughed uncontrollably, shaking his body and kicking his legs like a child. Don Juan avoided looking at me and also laughed. “You’re not going to try to help me anymore, are you, don Genaro?” I asked.

My question threw both of them into spasms of laughter. Don Genaro rolled on the ground, laughing, then lay on his stomach and began to swim on the floor. When I saw him doing that I knew I was lost. At that moment my body somehow became aware that I had arrived at the end. I did not know what that end was. My personal tendency to dramatization and my previous experience with don Genaro made me believe that it might be the end of my life. During my last visit to them, don Genaro had attempted to push me to the brink of “stopping the world.” His efforts had been so bizarre and direct that don Juan himself had had to tell me to leave. Don Genaro’s demonstrations of “power” were so extraordinary and so baffling that they forced me to a total re-evaluation of myself. I went home, reviewed the notes that I had taken in the very beginning of my apprenticeship, and a whole new feeling mysteriously set in on me, although I had not been fully aware of it until I saw don Genaro swimming on the floor.

Politicized Science.

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians, and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don’t mean global warming. I’m talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favour. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H.G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Novel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and John Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus was alive, he would have supported this effort.

All in all, the research, legislation, and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of the theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

Social Control.

This is an excerpt out of Michael Crichton’s book, “State of Fear.” I avidly encourage everyone to read this book – mainly because it challenges ones preconcieved notions of fact – these are the kind of challenges that leads to an open mind. As much as there is a need to care for our environment, the bigger picture Michael Crichton was pointing at here is political advocacy under the name of science. I am not in the least a conspiracy theorist – my concern is the need for each individual’s inquiry into themselves, and that begins with being challenged to reconsider what they think they know beyond a doubt. What the author has done is taken an immensely wide range of information, studies and conclusions, and fashioned a novel using these conclusions – not forgetting to include the real footnotes of these findings for your personal research. Have a read:

“Within modern culture, ideas constantly rise and fall. For a while everybody believes something, and then, bit by bit, they stop believing it. Eventually, no one can remember the old idea, the way no one can remember the old slang. Ideas are themselves a kind of fad, you see.”

“I understand, Professor, but why-“

“Why do ideas fall out of favour, you are wondering?” Hoffman said. He was talking to himself. “The answer is simply – they do. In fashion, as in natural ecology, there are disruptions. Sharp revisions of the established order. A lightning fire burns down a forest. A different species springs up in a charred acreage. Accidental, haphazard, unexpected, abrupt change. This is what the world shows us on every side.”