“As Above – So Below”

In ritual magic you affect the macrocosm by understanding and changing the microcosm.

If you want to really understand kata/form and what was in the mind of the originators and you have enough knowledge – try inventing your own.

Why would you invent one?
It would have to improve the understanding and standard of the practitioner.
Do you want to categorise an entire training system into one form?
Maybe there are specific ideas and principles that you want to put together and train in one sequence?

Very quickly you will begin to understand the problems the originators had and how they had to overcome them. You realise that some are an entire training system compressed into one form, that you have to look beyond the technique to see the ideas and principles that are being trained, because there’s no point in endless repetition of the same idea with different techniques, then some are focusing on body skills like the internal system, core manipulation or power sourcing. It’s only when you try to do this and walk in the shoes of the ancestors that the doors of understanding open to you.

You can’t communicate on a broken phone….

On a deeper level, by widening your perspective, you realise that the basic ideas behind all martial training is align the body, breath and mind ( ‘Sanchin’ the resolution of the conflict of mind, body and breath) that brings about a harmony where the wordless language of your body and the rest of universe can be perceived, felt and heard. When the mechanism of your universal communicator is fixed, an entirely new perspective is found.

This gives you the opportunity to understand the universe around you, how do you do that?

By using your newly found skills to ask the questions.

Why would you invent a universe?
It may be the result of one mind or an evolutionary process by accident, or most probably something well beyond the mind of mankind, but the result is the same.
Does the universe have a purpose?
If it does what could it be?
Why does it have to be a world of opposites?
How is everything joined up?
How does it communicate?
Who am ‘I’ and what is my place in it and how do I fit in with harmony?

You realise that you’ve taken the first steps by fixing the communicator, that the universe was talking to you all the time but your communicator was broken.

Now you can receive as well as transmit more fruitfully.

The meditative conversation begins…..

“When you speak it is silent, when you are silent it speaks…”