The Guardian’s Diary

After my last post, the Samurai lent me a little book called Budo Secrets; Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters.  it’s a fascinating little book.  Expect to see several quotes from it on my Thoughts website soon.  I’ve actually started some character development and investigation, after so much stagnation.  I’ve had months of ideas, little insights, but no time or discipline to follow through.  So they would be little movements; the impetus soon lost.  Now the karate, the sufi stuff, what I am reading in this book, and some good conversations are coming together to really carry me forward.  I am slowly getting fit and strong, and my mind is working again.

About time too.  This week I have scheduled a series of meetings to discuss the future of SM and our options.  If these are not productive, if I don’t get them right, it’ll bring me one step closer to failure.  So I am grateful that I am back on good form (though I dont pretend to be on top form!).

On Saturday there was a little social at SM.  Very few people came in the end, it was just the Samurai, me, Sim, and Eleanor.  First, the Samurai told me that he would be going to London in January to train with his former sensei, and would I like to come?  I was, and am, terrified by the idea.  Then we had a very long debate that ranged over social issues, ethics, human development and evolution, the environment, and what, as a culture, we could do next.  There were a range of experience levels and viewpoints.  My main thrust was trying to get Sim and the Samurai to realise that their arguments were built on many little assumptions that are culturally defined: they aren’t based on evidence or logic.  The Samurai was drawing on his background in Japanese martial arts and his understanding of Samurai culture, some other warrior cultures, and his medical knowledge.  Sim was being forced to defend his long-running semi-joke about improving societies by only supporting/tolerating those who were valuable to the society (primarily, cutting away those of low intelligence).  This joke, which he trots out a lot, is very repugnant to me and I made it my goal to point out how stupid he sounds when he uses it.  As the youngest man there, his views were often based on assumptions or things he’d been told in lectures.  He had relatively little primary material or experience to draw on.  Eleanor, even younger and not yet having been to university, was drawing even more heavily on second-hand sources and anecdotes.  She quickly felt excluded from the debate, and found other things to do.

The Samurai brought up something that touched me deeply.  What I am going to say next may sound like the most arrogant statement yet from me, a man who has often been called arrogant.  But I say truly that I approach it not with hubris or conceit.  The Samurai was talking about great men in history, who have affected people.  He spoke about Jesus and the Buddha, both of which Sim scoffed at, saying that they’re having no affect on us now.  The Samurai spoke eloquently about both: about how both had held enraptured audiences of common people and inspired them to consider the most bold changes to their lives; about how, thousands of years later, stories and reports of their actions still inspire us to question our motives and become better people.  The Samurai said his life had been changed by the Buddha, 3000 years after he died.

I was deeply moved by what my friend was saying.  I had to leave the group for a little while and appear busy with other little things.  I say to you, beloved readers, that I want to be one of those men.  I have what it takes: the self confidence that is not founded in self-deceit; the compassion; the right approach; the desire to be of service; the social skill; the uncompromising search for truth.  And then I felt ashamed that I had considered not going to London in January.  How can I hope to be a great man, and hide from something that frightens me?

I don’t need to be it now.  I’m 26!  I am a student, nothing more.  My flame is hidden.  But where others are students of psychology, engineering, meditation, martial arts: I am a student of the whole of the pattern.

And besides, I haven’t been into the wilderness yet.  That will come.  After, I will be ready.

And so you see, most beloved readers, why I am so afraid of SM failing.  I would be honour-bound to spend decades repaying what I had cost others were this to fall apart.  I have to do everything I can to save it, and thus keep my dream alive.  Tomorrow, I will start looking for a morning job.  I hate job hunting.  It feels so humiliating, and I am so bad at flaunting my talents.  A jamboree of people toting lesser talents, clammering for dehumanising jobs?  Not my scene.  But…it has to be done.  I need money.  Plain and simple.

I spent that night at Corinna’s, staying up late enjoying the luxury of a TV.  Yesterday I rose late, fussed over Phoebus a bit (who I’m getting on with at the moment), and then Moongazy and I went for a lovely (if wet) walk on Dartmoor.  I love it up there!

The evening was the usual DnD night.  They’re followed by short nights, then morning training.  Very hard this morning.

Today I’ll start preparing the new Januray courses, and then laying the foundations for the meetings this week.  They have to go well!

Time for a bit of a non-cryptic catch up!

The Samurai (aka the Ninja Carebear) and I have been training this week, every morning from 7:30 to 8:30.  Apparently I’m coming on well.  I’ve got the moves of the first kata down fine, although I keep slipping back into Shotokan stances (the ones in Goju Ryu are a lot more subtle).  Today we started the second.  We do reps every morning, starting with 20 x pressups, situps and half-burpies.  Then sets of 50 of the four blocks, the punch and the kick we’ve done so far, one set with wrist weights and one without.  It’s fairly painful but it’s good.  After the training we tend to chat for far too long and make each other late.  Interesting feedback from him this week:

• He said that I’m a lot more humble than when he first met me.  I think that’s partially because he didn’t know me very well in those days, but I still hope it’s true
• He said that he knows me better, having trained with me.  He likes how I can be respectful to him as a sensei, but still be friends.  And he can now see the stoical side of my personality: how it might hurt like hell to do a set of blocks, but I still want to do the next set.  When he’d heard me say that I can’t do pressups, he thought that meant I wouldn’t try.  Now he knows that I still give it my best!

Today I was trying to explain to him why I feel uncomfortable with some of the principles of the japanese mindset.  Not karate.  The principles of karate that I’ve learned so far are amazing.  The things I have a problem with are some of the comments of former japanese masters.  I didn’t explain very well in person.  Let me try to do better here…

There is something very brash about the approach of some martial artists.  Even as they are humble in their training, and respectful to the world, they still step wholeheartedly into a confrontation and end it as quickly and efficiently as they can.  What I was trying to say is that the level of mastery that I aspire to is not that.  Mine is defusing situations far before they develop.  Not being obvious about anything.  Feeling the flow of emotions in a group, and swimming through it with no friction whatsoever.  Nobody would ever notice that you had done anything, but courses of action have been altered.  No recognition, no hubris.  If a fight breaks out, you stand on the right side, and you end it well, you have still, in some way, failed.

At the same time, I recognise the limitations of my approach.  There have been important times in my life that went wrong because I didn’t stand up and obviously, conspicuously, stand my ground.  I was too busy flowing, and the moment slipped away.

So I have much to learn, but then so do others who do not flow.  I sometimes just walk down a busy street with my eyes shut, feeling the flow around me.  I’ve never walked into anyone.

Other news:

• Following my little awakening in the sufi class, lots of weird stuff has been happening to me.  Or I am more aware of it.  Coincidences, strange events, things happening just as I think of them.  There have been a lot of unexplainable events at SM: doors moving, things being triggered…  Especially at night.
• On the full moon I did a little magic.  That was where the mysterious “words from the moon” came from.  As I walked under it, those words came to me.  So I did some work at SM to try to clear the energy and welcome more prosperity into the place.
• It doesn’t seem to have worked.  This week has been very, very bad.  I don’t think I’ll make 1/4 of break-even.  The recession has begun to bite.  Nobody is coming in to the cafe.  I’ll have to call my investors again and take them through the situation and my proposed reactions.
• On Saturday night I watched Bremner, Bird and Fortune (for those not in the UK, they’re a hilliarious trio who do very insightful political satire).  They did a whole show explaining the origins of the recession.  It was very good.  But it left me starkly reminded how bad it’s going to be.  I laid awake for a while panicking, then I shifted into being pro-active.  I went to SM and worked for a few hours, forming a strategy to exploit new markets and increase efficiency for the downturn.  I also dealt with a customer at 2:30am!

I don’t know what’s going to happen next.  I’m scared about the future.  The business was steadily climbing, but the latest trends show that I won’t break even for another 9 months.  I can’t expect to be supported for that long.  So what happens next?  I don’t know.  I have lots of new strategies that are very good and practicable, but they depend on people who don’t need SM to survive, they’d just quite like it to.  If they don’t pull out all the stops, I’m screwed.

That all sounds rather victimy, but I’m just trying to be realistic.  This was never supposed to be a one-man business.  It can’t work with just me.  I wouldn’t have all these rooms if it was just me!

My new shoes (slightly regretting buying them) will be ready a week tomorrow.  I’ll see Mac and Embercombe the Monday after.  Something to look forward to.

Devotion

Service

Prosperity

Reward

The land was growing sick, and it said to the pattern:

“Where are the people who used to tend me?  All of the humans live in their little boxes and hide from me, and they worship themselves, their little gods, and their petty philosophies.  Where are the mighty men whose fire and ambition and strength once kept the balance?  Where are the women whose fierce tenderness and mystery nurtured the magic of the land?  Now they only take from me, they hurt me, they desecrate all that is sacred, they exterminate my other children, and they grow worse by the day.”

The pattern recognised the need of the land.  Then the land said:

“The humans form part of the pattern, as it exists now.  I will give them one last chance.  I will tolerate their thieving and their childishness, and I will stretch myself to my limits to give them what they need.  I will birth many more of them.  Perhaps, somehow, they will remember themselves.”

The pattern asked, “what if they do not change?”

“Then I will shrug them off, though it pains me to do so, and a new pattern will form.”

The pattern agreed.  And the land wept.  And they waited…

I was walking through the bus station this evening and an old tramp was on his back, trying to get up, his walking stick beside him.  He was obviously drunk.  I stopped and asked if he was ok, and when I saw the dried blood on his face, when I saw that he had no coordination, helped him up.  I couldn’t just leave him there, he was virtually unable to stand.  Supporting most of his weight I helped him through the station, up the stairs, to HSBC where he could lie in the warm lobby.  He seemed to go there a lot.  He mumbled a lot as we walked.  He thanked me.  He said I was an angel.  He said he could see my wings.

He might have been drunk, he may have lost his way and he may not have much more time left in this world, but it still made me smile inside.