The Spiritual Martial Artist

Reshape yourself through the power of your will.
Never let yourself be degraded by self-will.
The will is the only friend of the Self,
and the will is the only enemy of the Self.
Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

Imagine a circle with the Self - our Soul - at the center of it. At the core of the circle is perfect unity, internal and external merge into one. It is also the place where energy stands still. All visible movement has come to a halt. Yet, all the energy is lively active if you can experience them with your inner microscope. They are totally collected and ready to move if you are ready to give any instruction. If you want to merge consciously with the Self you will find that you can't. It is like looking into disturbed water and trying to look at the ground by moving the water with a stick. Even more sand will rise to the surface that way and the water will become even muddier. What you can do though, you can wait. Just don't do anything and the water will clear by itself. Let Tao bring you to merge with your core. You are totally passive yet lively alert. You join the flow and back to the source.

The spiritual martial artist is the one who knows how to follow the flow. He is so still and sensitive that he joins the flow of the Tao. With this collected energy, with being totally present, he is able to move and respond to situations with clear clues. He totally merges with the Now. With this awareness, with this total presence, he turns his life into a piece of art. It is like whatever he does, where he walks, he turns every moment into a beautiful lotus flower.

Most of us are not able to do the magic yet. However, this is not a problem. The point is that you have to know that you have this power if you can learn to connect with your Core. Enjoy the glimpses that you see. Experiment with the powers you discover inside of you and your environment.Try to schedule a mindful activity every day, something that you enjoy doing. Cooking, jogging, meditation, cleaning the house, weightlifting, walking, talking to people, breathing…etc, there are endless things you can do if you can pay your attention to it. And then slowly expand this mindful exercise to other activities you don’t enjoy as much. Practice for a while and see for yourself what you experience.

When you are doing these exercises, you may observe fears and desires popping up inside of you. Try to catch them and understand with your awareness. We argue that whenever you are disconnected from your Core, you enter the realm of the " I", the ego, which brings fears and desires with it. Being aware of them is all you can do. Only at your Core will they evaporate into nothingness.

Whenever you sense the fears or desires arise in you, try to understand what it is about. When you fear, you are worrying that you are going to lose what you have. When you desire, you want to strengthen your identity. When you can monitor and understand these fears and desires, they will lose some of their power over you.

A spiritual path is about experimenting with the intersection of the divine Core and the psychological " I". It is about putting yourself into situations where the Self is likely to pop up, about finding ways to merge with the Now and even just experimenting with the psychological "I". Have a look at the figure below. Perhaps you can think of the " I" as a circle around the True Self. Internally, perceive how the " I" is afraid of doing what deep inside you know you have to do. Perceive how the " I" wants to escape from freedom by engaging in all kind of mindless and addictive activities. Externally, perceive how the " I" wants to be different from others, wants to built a persona that dominates, while simultaneously feeling attacked from higher authorities. Just be mindful of everything that is going on and counter-act as best as you can when the self wants to gain the upper hand over the Self.


"I" feels afraid.                                     "I" wants to escape.


                                       Self


"I" feels attacked.                                 "I" wants to be different

Counter-balance the internal forces like a martial artists when the " I" wants to take you away from the Self. So specifically,

Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Feel the desire to escape and don't do anything about it.
Feel the temptation to give in to stronger egos but resist.
Feel the temptation to dominate and refrain.

By Christian and Su Zhen