memory

Memory: We lay in our bunks, six to a tier, steel rectangles with canvas laced to form a bed, if bed you could call it. Hundreds of us in the hold, Marines. Ready to leap off when directed and slam our bodies into whatever awaited. Constant thrum of engines, snores, and intermittent farts. We did not care. We were young, brash, and foolish. Which somehow amounts to bravery.

sphere transformation

Aikido Sensei Koichi Tohei taught us to sit quietly, to visualize a small sphere at the core of our being, to be that sphere. With each breath exhalation the sphere that you are doubles in size. This can continue until you are as expansive as the cosmos. When you have expanded as far as you wish (encompassing the planet can be far enough), allow each breath inhalation to halve the sphere you are. Half and half and half, until you are back to the size of your original sphere. Continue halving in size until you are in the realm of the subatomic or as far in smallness as you feel comfortable. Reverse the process and double in size again with each out breath until you are back to the original visualized sphere. Sit quietly. Smile, get up and be on your way. No longer bound by rigid body image, the world is different to you now.

WuChiKu Practices

CONDENSING -- Energy can be withdrawn to an infinitesimal core.
EXPANDING -- Energy can be extended outward in all directions.
CONDENSING/EXPANDING -- Both occur simultaneously.
ENERGY TRANSFER -- Energy transfer is a natural daily occurrence.
NO HESITATION -- Allow the sword to swing itself.
STANCING -- Stance affects trance.
DANCING -- Dance affects trance.
GROUNDING/ROOTING -- Embody Earth.
OPENING/RELEASING -- Embody Heaven.
ATTENTIONING -- Attention directs Energy; Energy follows Attention.
TRANSFORMING -- Energy quality can be consciously shifted/changed.
ENERGIZING -- Energy can be called and it will come.
NO-MINDING -- Head and Heart entrain.
INTENTIONING -- Intention sets the universe in motion.
BREATHING -- Breath is inspiration and letting go.

learning how to die

"Keep one-point" is the most powerful and most essential practice taught me by a martial art teacher (Koichi Tohei). Keeping one-point has served me through my life and is now serving me as I continue learning how to die.

The one-point or center in the body is two to three inches below the navel and deep inside. One moves from one-point. This allows one to get out of the head chatter, out of entangling emotion, out of fabricated illusion and move with full attentiveness and clarity through life.

But how about through death? One does not want to stay attached to one's body. Where then shall one keep one's one-point? Where shall one center oneself?

I practice the answer to this question even now. I center in the Formless that is producing this form. Rather than being a body that is embodying the Life Force, I practice being the Life Force that is embodying. In other words, I am practicing dying before I die. I identify with the Formless rather than the form.

Where is my one-point? I center in the vastness that produces all that is. I hear comforting laughter and feel warmth and peace. Centering and opening. No attachment. Boundless capaciousness. As Stephen Levine put it, a spiritual being having physical experiences rather than a physical being having spiritual experiences.