Was -> Book me dudes! Now -> Martial Arts Discussion

[Pierre]

Exactly. If genuine martial art is a path to impeccability, then fight is only one of its numerous aspects . As Castaneda said and as you assumed, it's about building the energetic body.

No it's not. Firstly it is not one thing but many, and I do not think that building an energetic body of any kind comes into play at any moment.

CC energy body concept relates to the transduction process described by Mouravieff where hydrogen is refined through the centers along their activation. It's linked to the higher center activation process.

We are in the realm of invariable physicality, no energy, not variable physicality.

It's not because we are in the realm of invariable physicality that there is no energy process going on. The transduction phenomenon from centers to centers described by Mouravieff applies to human beings and therefore to invariable physical bodies.

Martial Arts, IMHO is about learning to be comfortable in your own skin. Learning control, learning strategy and dynamics of interaction, it's about mastering the flesh so you can take the test at the end of the school year. That is what Martial Arts is about. It is the warriors path, energy, sts/sto, 7th density etc be damned.

But the flesh, the physical body is only one dimension of human beings. Why focus onlyon this aspect ? Why do you discard the rest. Don't you think there can be martial arts showing how to master the flesh and also other things ?

Walk the walk, don't talk the talk.

If only practive makes sense, if forumites can't express their ideas, what the point of a forum ? I guess that you can practice and talk about it. Knowledge/theory and concrete work/practice are not in opposition. To me they seem to be two major components of evolution.

Sometimes the seeds take times to become beautiful trees. In the beginning the energetic body is something very subtle, very unperceivable. There are probably some immediate results. But some time might be necessary to notice some other fruits of the work.

I disagree, thats a patronizing concept. I have met 60 and 70 year old masters from most of the major "energetic" arts and found them completely incapable of anything regarding discernment and control, most of them were less awake in terms of the work than most 6th graders. Don't take my word for it, really evaluate the rewards of 30 to 40 years of commitment to one of these martial arts? Aside from a few parlour tricks...

I guess that all martial practitioners have their specificities. Some of them might reach very interesting things after years some not. It might not be this easy to correctly assess the capacities of a practioner who might only show what he wants to show.

About fruits, I really think that some grow faster than others. Some work gives immediate results some others can give some delayed results.That's not to say that it requires decades to appear though. Why would you discard technics that don't bring immediate tangible results ?

I believe you. The main point is not really about being or seeming stronger or weaker than this one or that one. The essential struggle is not external, it's internal. It's about not being slave of our predatory mind anymore.

This is the same kind of wishy washy fortune cookie crap that gets passed around at the higher levels of all martial arts and contantly regurgitated in kung fu movies.

Is it why you consider that as wrong ? What I mean is that the objective is to stop being slave of our lower centers. Being stronger or weaker than another practitioner is not an end in my view. It doesn't mean that interaction should not exist. On the contrary, external life/interactions bring unvaluable and necessary things : mirroring, petty tyrants challenges, knowledge sharing,...

I agree that work needs to be done on the predatory mind, but that work is group work, not by yourself work,

Why not using both ? You can have some personal work like reading a book and some collective work like discussing the content of the book.

it has nothing to do with forms, katas or qi gong nei gong or hu phlung dung fu.

I would not be this definitive. Some of this practice might contribute positively to the work. Of course it has to be done correctly and thorougly. That's a reason why meeting a reliable master is important. It doesn't mean that this are the only things that are helpful in this domain either.

I don't think that non-observability proves non-existence though.

Not quite, remember what walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is a duck, and what doesn't walk like a duck, and doesn't quack like a duck and doesn't even look like a duck, isn't a duck.
Any thing that is not observable, and it's effects are not observable, cannot exist for the person observing. Remember, the unkowable exists, and you can't know the unknowable, and getting the unknown mixed up with the unknowable is a dangerous proposition.

What I mean is that there are some phenomenon that are not observable by third partiy though it doesn't prove that they don't exist. Headache illustrates this case. It can be very real for the one who is suffering though it can not be observed/ measured by a third party.

So, what is a martial art? I have really struggled with this question, and come up with what I consider to be an acceptable answer. A martial art is a collection of skills that can be applied to interactions. With that in mind, what is a evil martial art? Why not a collection of skills for raping and burning, that is taking and destroying. A good martial art would be a collection of skills creating and giving, and a neutral art would be a equal mixture. Arts like Tai Chi and Dim Mak (Most argue that these arts are actually one art practice/theory) Kyusho Jitsu, most jitsus etc would be evil arts, in fact, very few martial arts at work today could even be considered neutral. My beloved Aikido barely makes the grade, and that may be out of prejudice.


The violence of an art isn't taken into an account, only the theory behind it's practice. If you take and destroy, then it is evil, if you create and give it is not.

At the same time one individual can not be consciously STO or STS until he's not slave of his predatory mind. That's why I proposed that a genuine martial art contributes to freeing the practitioner from this slavery.

I understand you evil/neutral/good martial art categorization. Though I don't know what parameters you use to say that one specific martial art is part of a category. For instance you put Tai Chi and Dim Mak in the evil category does it mean that for you Tai Chi or Dim Mak induces/means taking and destroying ?

On a purely fighting/physical level, a martial art teaches someone to fight. If you fight to protect an innocent victim because she's getting raped it can be STO if you fight in order to rape an innocent victim it might be STS. You can use Jiu Jitsu, Aikido, Tai Chi or any martial art to do this actions, it won't change the STO/STS meaning. On this level, it's just a tool, neutral by itself. It's what you do with it that gives it a meaning, don't you think so ?

For instance, there are two main schools of thought on striking, on is internal power, and another is channeled power. In order to build internal power you absorb either from an opponent, or from the earth (There are a number of exercises like burying hands, hugging trees, circling fire etc), absorbing from an opponent is done by seizing a certain part of his body and draining his ki away and redirecting it out in an attack.

In channeling power for strikes, you have already within you plenty of power, and the opponent when striking you is also giving you power, the idea is to give more than was received. This is just a small example, but I hope you guys see where I am going with this, I don't like making long posts. Please think about what I have said and if you have some info or a different perspective, please respond, but not so long.

I've tried to be as short as possible. But don't you think it's tricky to write a long post and ask for short ones ? The real objective is to share knowledge/information that are as objective as possible, the number of lines not an end, don't you think so ? And since the devil is in details, it sometimes requires rather long message to grasp/describe those details.

Most of us have read Castaneda and G. so just reference the page and we can go look for it if we need to.

I guess some forumites didn't read all the books of Castaneda, Gurdjieff, Mouravieff and others. I didn't. Page number reference might be misleading since it differs from one edition to another and from one language version to another one.

I am more interested in what you think, than what you remember from G or C or M.

In order to reach constructive discussion sometimes personal thought and quotations of those authors can be useful. It's not mutually exclusive.

Edit : relocation of one /quote mark-up

 

[atreides]

CC energy body concept relates to the transduction process described by Mouravieff where hydrogen is refined through the centers along their activation. It's linked to the higher center activation process.

? I have no idea what you just said.

It's not because we are in the realm of invariable physicality that there is no energy process going on. The transduction phenomenon from centers to centers described by Mouravieff applies to human beings and therefore to invariable physical bodies.

See above.

I guess that all martial practitioners have their specificities. Some of them might reach very interesting things after years some not. It might not be this easy to correctly assess the capacities of a practioner who might only show what he wants to show.

Are you trying to get somewhere with this?

That's a reason why meeting a reliable master is important.

Why?

What I mean is that there are some phenomenon that are not observable by third partiy though it doesn't prove that they don't exist....Headache illustrates this case.

So you choose to use an example of something that is "all in your head?" I feel a Buffy quote coming on, "You know there are no exceptions, yet you think your exception is exceptional?"

On a purely fighting/physical level, a martial art teaches someone to fight. If you fight to protect an innocent victim because she's getting raped it can be STO if you fight in order to rape an innocent victim it might be STS. You can use Jiu Jitsu, Aikido, Tai Chi or any martial art to do this actions, it won't change the STO/STS meaning. On this level, it's just a tool, neutral by itself. It's what you do with it that gives it a meaning, don't you think so ?

You are being a bit sensational. Why assume that any act in 3d could be considered STO? A man may stop a rape, which is a good act, but solely for the purpose of the prestige of stopping the rape, there are alot of details. Doing something that appears good doesn't make it good. That doesn't mean I wouldn't stop a rape if I was presented with that chance, but I certainly wouldn't pat myself on the back and expect the universe to give me a cookie.

When it comes down to it, it seems that you are quite intent on attaching the work to martial arts, Bravo, I am working towards the same goal, but the work on the self is firstly a group and secondly a real concrete work, with concrete tools. All the hydrogen and higher centers amounts to a hill of beans if you can't work on the physical stuff and the psychological stuff. If you can't deal with your real programs and reactions in daily life, then trying to work on the higher centers is only going to warp your reality beyond what it is now, not you in the sense of you, but you in the sense of all of us, the human race, the group etc.

The closed off confucian pedagogical structure is completely detrimental to the psyche and the work. Also we can't hide behind jargon and pretty theories, concrete work with concrete results is the beginning, and martial arts should give a person that. All this higher centers, yin yang energy stuff doesn't enter into it until you have made real progress with the observable and measurable stuff first.

 

[Novelis]

Another long post… I tried, it was much longer before, so I filtered out the Unnecess... :P

I am not some ascended master, I am just a person who has spent 18 odd years on and off looking for real martial arts, I don't really know anything, but I have been around just long enough to lose faith in just about every system I have encountered.

I’m no master either, but my search has had somewhat of an opposite effect on my thoughts on the “overall picture

 

[Ben]

That’s your perspective, and for all I know, you may be right. This would completely destroy my whole preconceptions on this subject, so I’d like to know how you came to this conclusion.
Nevertheless, a common ground could be found maybe with this book I bought recently called “Stalking Yang Lu Chan

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I see it as a huge mosaic that interrelate, not this one is false/bad/lies, get rid of it, cross it off the list. There are schools of thought that are false, for sure, but I haven’t come across any that don’t have SOMETHING valuable I can take with me.

I agree with not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but you don't wanna involve yourself in something that's mostly bathwater either and end up filling yourself with all the wrong things in the processes. Take Christianity - there's truth there, doesn't mean one should join and spend years being a Christian. It's still a control mechanism that leads you astray, and the truths that it includes do not somehow "balance out" the lies because the conclusions the philosophy draws and the direction it sends you is a lie, the truth are only there to lure you in, but not to help you learn and grow as a being, just enlightening enough to lure you in and trap you. This makes the entire philosophy "bad", despite the fact that it contains truths. The direction it sends you is bad, the premises are bad, the conclusions are bad, the things it asks you to do are nonsense and a waste of time, and so those truths that are contained within simply do not "legitimize" the philosophy as a whole in any way, only make it a more potent manipulation. In the end, if you take all the truths and lies in it together, you still end up being led astray and not helped one iota. So I'd call that entire philosophy "bad". Doesn't mean we can't learn from it by weeding, as long as we realise that the philosophy if followed as designed will only lead you astray, and therefore it's only good for spare parts, assuming we can identify the useful parts.

I only say that because let's say you take taoism and its "yin yang". Well that's nice but what about the rest of it? What happens to someone who accepts taoism in its entirety and follows it? Does the yin-yang bit prevent them from being conditioned by a set of assumptions that lead them into illusions? Yin yang won't help them, even if it is a true concept. In the Bible Jesus says "The truth shall set you free!". But this statement in no way helps anyone who is a Christian, despite the fact that it's true. The truth is instantly neutralized because the premise of the entire philosophy is based on belief, and belief is the direct opposite of truth. So carefully planting certain truths in an overall manipulation cancels out their effect by virtue of the other more fundemental aspects that are lies, which effectively prevent those truths from being of any use or help to the practitioner/follower, and only exist exist as an effective lure and nothing else, osit.

I'd call a philosophy good, even if it contains errors, if the overall direction the philosophy sends you is towards truth. There are errors and omissions that really do not matter much, and might've been introduced over time as distortions, but don't really affect the direction and results of the philosophy itself. But if the philosophy itself sends you lala land and "imprisons your being", then it's not just some more or less innocent/insignificant errors and omissions and distortions, it's engineered that way and "by its fruits shall you know it", osit. I think an example of a good philosophy is that presented by the C's. Even if they are right and they are only 70 percent accurate, it in no way detracts from the direction it will send you if you understand it and follow it as a whole - which is premised on "knowledge protects" and "question everything" at the core. And when I say "follow it" I don't mean in any way believe/assume anything, I mean literally follow as intended - take all only as inspiration and do the Work and research necessary, which is exactly what C's constantly encourage as opposed to most other "philosophies". On the other hand, if you take most other channeling, it can contain a lot of truth about many things, but the direction it sends the people is down, towards illusion and sleep. This makes the entire message, the entire channeling, bad, osit. As usual, might be good only for "spare parts" if one can weed, but nothing else, as the overall message/direction is "bad", osit.

 

[atreides]

Hi Novelis:

We are not completely in disagreement. When I said building internal power, I was illustrating a certain type of teaching in martial arts, not one that I support or practice. As for an energetic body, again I state that this concept as it is presented is completely erroneus. The energetic work, which is simply about the "energy" in the centers, is really for quite a bit later, like alot later. We are really talking about something more like metabolic energy than any particular energy field. Qi is actually an almost useless term from an occidental perspective, and as one can observe it leads nowhere in particular. We can guess this off a pretty basic idea, wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction and many there be thereat.

Any popular concept, anything that is mass promoted should be suspect and deeply evaluated because it is "part of the program." It is very apparent that the Chinese with Tai Chi and various Kung Fus were attempting to recreate physically what was really energetic in the beginning, sort of like reverse engineering, but I believe it went wrong, and so much to the fact that it is very detrimental to follow those paths.

That doesn't mean that I don't learn Tai Chi Techniques or theories, or Judo, or Jiu Jitsu or even Aikido, but I also accept the fact that these are firstly antiquated arts for the "old warriors" and that they are not very inapplicable in todays situations, as I have experienced and seen. We also have some ideas about "the work" and how things may be used as tool in this "work". We also know that there is no need to cut down a tree with a sardine, it simply doesn't work, it isn't a tool we can use.

Because we know that one part of this work is something called objectivity, we have to be prepared to objectively evaluate the benefits and the damages caused by certain practices, and we have to be willing to remove, change, or repair things in our lives when they are judged to be to some degree or another objectively detrimental.

I spent a lot of time in my life believing in asian martial arts, I believed strongly in them up until about 1 year ago. And even during the last year, even now, I am always finding things that I used to believe and now cannot support because I can see that they are wrong. In fact, it was when I stopped doing the whole fortune cookie mister miyagi crap and hiding what I knew behind pithy sayings and "you aren't an X dan so you can't know" I started talking to people around the house, people who aren't invested in martial arts, and started getting feed back. I started trying techniques out in the most real situations I could find. I started testing and evaluating and this is what I found.

I went back and read M and read G and read C and started putting it together and seeing how they didn't really mesh at all, that I had been lying to my self, I had been distorting the truth. I had made the consistencies bigger and the inconsistencies smaller.

And once I saw this, I wanted to start tracing the origins of martial arts, I read books and websites, I have read the bubishi 3 times, I read other peoples ideas on war, and I started paring things down. I even asked the C's what they thought, and their clues lead me to where I am at now. It is all lies, and most of it, was intentional. And it is so subtil the way the perception is manipulated, and the way that really bad concepts are disguised in ambiguity, or you find something that is so detailed, you can't possibly check it all in a single life time, and then you see. They are hiding things.

And then I remembered another thing, by their fruits ye shall know them. I started meeting these grand masters, and examining their fruits, and they were rotten and meaningless.

There was no fruit people, there should be fruits, but in the end it's all words, and no actions.

And then I said, you know, it's time for the "New Warriors" to throw away all the crap from the "Old Warriors" and start categorically reexamining the truth and being shrewd and objective and light hearted with no attachment to it, just trying to find the truth. And the more people fight me on it the more I realize that it really needs to be done, because you know, martial arts is a real Holy Cow, it was for me, and I had the C's step all over my Holy Cow, but you know, I got some great BBQ ribs out of it, you know when the meat's just falling off the bone and it's like muah, tasty...oh where was I?

Yeah, Holy Cow people. When you feel hurt and defensive and offended about something, then you know you are identifying with it, you are using it as a crutch to hold up your illusory world, and then you know, it's gotta go. So out it went. You gotta remember, that this wishy washy "there's something good in everything" way of thinking, is just our attachment to it. When it's bad, it's bad, a rotten apple ruins the bushell, you can't be afraid to start over, you can't be afraid to throw it all away, you can't be attached to an idea.

 

[Mr. Premise]

You should write a book about your re-evaluation of martial arts, Atreides.

I think it would be worthwhile. I don't think there are many who have done that with the perspective you have.

 

[atreides]

Hi thanks, I have tried about 6-7 times already, but by the time I have finished I end up practically rewriting everything new info, throwing out old info etc. I am trying right now to write one in a sort of fictional sense, like a series of dialogues connected with monologues...like Plato or Castaneda. Anyway, hope this one pans out. :)

 

[Nathan]

That sounds like a good way of going about it. You might be able to convey more in the fictional sense perhaps? I hope one day, when you deem it to be finished, we can purchase it online.

 

[anart]

There was no fruit people, there should be fruits, but in the end it's all words, and no actions.

Thank sweet jesus - I've been terrified of fruit people since I was a wee lass - thank you, thank you, thank you................no fruit people - although, now that you mention it, I have lots of friends who are fruits, but that's another story entirely...

~sigh of relief, my hubby does it again~

(hey, now - - yes, it's a joke - but, really, the fortunate lack of fruit people just happened to shine a light on a very valuable piece of information, so allow me my fruit people mirth - it's really all I have at the moment......)

;)

 

[atreides]

HEHEHE.

Ya, Ima have to start working on the book. I just don't really like that for communication, I prefer face to face discussions instead of preaching from a book.

 

[Niall]

Hu phlung dung phu...

ROTFLMAO

I flirted with Dung phu last summer. Wasn't sure why, but a hunch told me it's incompatible with the work. No Modern Arnis or Systema is taught in my town (that I so far know of). Any harm picking up a book or two on these 'arts'? What's recommended reading on these Atreides?

 

[atreides]

Well, I really suggest you head over and get ahold of V. Vasiliev's Systema Hand to Hand, and as for modern arnis, I just picked that one because they teach both left and right hand, instead of forcing right hand, and it was kinda arbitrary. If you wanna learn stick fighting, I suggest Remy Presas Sr. Especially his Visadario DVD, and the Dog Brothers, Cycles and Sinawali DVDs. I haven't read Vasiliev's book yet, but I plan on getting it. As for books to read, The art of war by sun tzu, everyone should read the Bubishi to see what a load of manure it is. Most of it is what not to do, I think Novelis mentioned some texts earlier in the thread, I haven't got a chance to read them yet, but they sound interesting. Also Castaneda's books are good, I am especially fond thus far with the Fire within one, good times.

My problem is, that I have read so many books that basically talk about how not to do things, at least from my perspective. But you know, some of the stuff that G talks about in ISO Miraculous is really applicable to the martial arts. And the stuff on centers, as for instance, in asian martial arts the focus is on the mechanical center, even for "energetic" things, and in some arts the others are talked about passingly, and some of the new age "modified" martial arts pretend to try and awaken or work on other centers, but really they are just pulling their own legs. However, in say for instance Russian martial arts, they tend to focus on the solar plexus in general, also you can find some historical links between russian practices and say for instance Peroun worship etc and so forth.

So we can see that some of the practice of martial arts could be geared towards awakening or sanitizing the emotional center, and of course this should be balanced with liberating the intellect from the emotional dictatroship, in fact maybe we can guess, especially building on what the systema guys are saying about psyches and psychic power etc, that we are not talking about mechanical energies being made supreme for the purposes of defense or destruction, but as a path to completeness, of repair etc Hurting and healing are really close together, so we can say that we can take an idea like hurting someone, locking, punching, kicking etc, and turn it into a real psychical healing type of process. So instead of blowing wind out of our arses talking about some abstract form of chi/energy, we can bring it down to earth and start really talking about energy being used by out psyche, and by our body in a nourishment sense. So once we stop working with this imagined energy, we can start working with kinetic energy, and metabolic energy and so on and so forth.

Despite what some people try to claim when they write 'pseudo' scientific explanations for asian martial arts, they are not talking about concrete and verifiable forms of energy, most of the time. There are some exceptions, in the case of Tremor, which is a little different, and in the case of Ki in Aikido sometimes. But their understanding and application of energetic technique is so broad and ambiguous that it's really a hit or miss kinda thing. The reason is, the art was a copy cat art, they were trying to recreate what they saw others do, they knew there was energy involved, but to them energy was an incomprehensible idea, to them it was a belief, not a faith. They believed the secret was energy, so they created their arts from what they understood, but what they understood was not what was real. And so their realities becamed warped.

 

[Nathan]

I just don't really like that for communication, I prefer face to face discussions instead of preaching from a book.

I guess if you are face to face, there is less chance of the information being misinterpreted. Plus, you can get feedback and really see if they understand or not.

Systema classes start again for 2007. Yay! :P

 

[atreides]

I am jealous, the only Systema classes in france are in Paris. Oi gervalt.