It is not over, until it is over

 

So much of my martial ability has left the station. For all intents and purposes I guess it would best to say I am retired for active martial activity. O’ I do walk for an hour or two daily, perform a bit of my t’ai chi or a few kata, and I more focus on ways I can retain martial effectiveness in some moves, etc. But the sum of that is so slight compared to the decades I really worked at it.

 

But I still am seeking greater understanding. I share material I saved with friends on the net to see if any of them can offer interesting insight. At times that does occur. I also like sharing material many may not have seen, for I believe the more we see the greater our understanding of our own art, whatever that may be, continues to grow.

 

But yesterday I received another valuable lesson, about a small art none of you have seen and I have only shared a part of what I learned, in a very brief time, with those I trained as instructors. More that that is going to be discussed as you did not train with me and would likely not make sense.

 

But I found a few old lines, in a document long forgotten, saved on a backup cd. Those lines got me thinking, and they were not about the understanding I received. Just inspiration to look further.

 

Back in the later 1990s I received very brief instruction in a handful of very efficient techniques.  In reality I forget very little which I truly see, and I practiced them alone for years. Over the next few years I was challenged by that instructor so see if I remembered them. He did them with me, and I did what I was shown. That session very brief was filmed, and as I watched I can see I was doing what I was instructed.  But he was performing variations on those movements, and I didn’t notice that as I was doing what I was originally shown. Later watching those video I always was concentrating on what I was shown, just noticed he was performing variant versions. Most likely they were not set in stone and were what he was doing at that time.

 

In a sense an interesting example of what you can’t see in front of you, because your mind is focused on something else.

 

But those variations are not the point of this. For all the variations are very effective in their own right.

 

No, something else was going on.

 

Around 2002 one day he shared a piece of a form, I had never seen. I am not sure of the origin. And once again I practiced what I was shown. Later that year I had occasion to show him what I remembered, and then he showed me a very different way to perform the movement, not more effective, but a way yielding a very different result.

 

I never went to the point to connect that was a possibility for those basic movements he had shown me before.

 

I was never his ‘student’, he shared what he shared more because I wanted me to understand a bit of what his art was. I could not be said I received anything like full transmission.

 

That form I did not share, it was too dense for what my senior students needed. Those basic drill were enough.

 

But now I started putting things together from those words I found, and looked at that old video with new eyes, seeing what he was doing was indeed something else. For he was using that method there too.

 

I have privately shared exactly what this is with my senior students, in case the day comes where that information becomes useful. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t. But it won’t be forgotten either.

 

The lesson has several lesson subsets.

1.     Your original beginning training can make it impossible to actually see what is before you, because your beginning mind has not let go.

2.     Providing you engage the gears in your mind, it is never over unless you decide to let it be over.

 

For me it is never over until it is over.