The Truth About the Martial Arts

Newsletter 784
The Truth!

Good morning!
Every work out you do
produces more of you.

Well, well.
I’m going to tell you the truth today.
and there is a question in it for you.
It’s funny,
only about 50 people will read this.
I’ve got over 1600 on the newsletter list,
but only about 50 of them open their email.
The rest just wanted the free books,
and then consigned my newsletter to the junk lists.
That’s the internet,
you know.
Guaranteed anonymity.
A chance to ghost through life
without any commitment.
And,
I’ll be honest,
I do the same thing.
I’ve got different reasons,
but I do the same thing.
Oh, well.
Are you ready for the truth?
(Quote Jack: ‘You can’t HANDLE the truth!’)
Okay,
here it is.

I was reading the Patanjali,
this was some time ago,
and the point was made:
we are bound by our desires.
Which is to say:
We are trapped by our fantasies.
We are imprisoned by what we want…
and have lost sight of reality.

Sounds like I’m going egghead on you,
eh?
Well, not really.

When you do the martial arts
you are training to defeat hordes of home invaders,
slaughter gangs of street thugs,
maybe even defeat the government
which came to take away your 2nd amendment.

How many of us have used the martial arts?
In that sense the number is low, low, low.

So the martial arts are good for discipline.
For lifestyle and health.
And all of us get that,
in spite of our fantasies.

So let’s look a little deeper.
Let’s go spiritually egghead.

According to the Patanjali
you made this universe to have a place to exist.
Heck,
look at the universe,
it’s mostly nothing.
But you made it a long time ago,
so long ago that when you did
you could imagine anything,
and make it real.

Nowadays,
except for a lousy novel or painting,
you can make almost nothing real.
You wish you had a fast car,
a beautiful woman,
a job where you traveled the world
and made zillions of dollars.
Yet,
you don’t have the power of imagination,
you don’t have the discipline behind the imagination,
to make this happen.

This is the truth.
I didn’t say it would make you comfortable.
In fact,
it’s guaranteed to do the opposite.

So you live a life where you have little money and desire more,
where you have a lousy job and desire a good one,
where you are low man on the totem pole.
You pay rent,
you pay tickets,
you listen to the Bushwah coming from your politicians,
and nothing changes.
Death and taxes, baby.

The secret isn’t to have all those things,
it is to have personal responsibility.
You see…
it is not those things that are your prison,
but your desire to have them.
And a lot of other desires, too.

Now,
here is the trick,
if you can give up your desires,
all those things will come to you easily.
You can have anything you want,
you can make anything in the universe real,
if you can just relax,
and find the truth of yourself.

This is the truth.

But how do you give up desires?

Colleges tell you you must desire a position
in a high paying company.

Welfare institutions pay you money
to stifle your initiative,
and to keep your desires strong.

Police give you tickets to keep you
enslaved to the judicial system.

And,
here is the truth…
everybody is in cahoots to keep you…desiring.

Heck,
you can’t turn on the TV,
or the internet,
or even drive down the street,
without being overwhelmed
by ads that feed your desire.

Ads pouring liquor,
inflating your groin with beautiful women,
offering counseling for addictions,
advising you to fight other races,
threatening you with poverty
and disease
and loneliness.

All designed to keep you in the rut,
in the ratrace,
desiring things,
trapping you
even while offering
enlightenment.

The truth is that you won’t become enlightened,
you won’t break free of your desires,
through ANY of these methods.

You will only become enlightened
by achieving personal responsibility.

Here is the question I promised you:
are you the kind of person who seeks
to be entertained?
Or are you the kind of person that seeks?

To be entertained
is to be victim,
to be victim to your desires,
to be manipulated by those who would entertain.

Many people who study the martial arts
do so to be entertained,
to be titillated in their desire
to be tough.
To be unbeatable.
To have a swagger in their walk
to know they can slaughter hordes,
even if that knowledge
is a fantasy.

You can recognize them
because they earn their black belt,
and quit.
They just wanted the belt,
the symbol,
the fantasy.
They desired a meal with no meat.

Here’s the sad thing:
even if a person is a true seeker,
desiring to break free of desire,
he is trapped in inefficient systems.

Here is the truth.
I studied the martial arts in the sixties.
Back then you could tell the difference
between the belts.
Green belts actually had the tools to defeat white belts.
Brown belts actually had the tools to defeat green belts.
Black Belts actually had the tools to defeat brown belts.

But,
as time passed,
other arts came along,
some good…some bad.
the original teachings of karate were diluted.
Tournaments became a key to promotion,
as did ‘how good you could fight.’

When I pass schools these days,
when I look in the windows,
perhaps sit and talk with teachers,
I don’t see the same principles.
People are doing the kicks mindlessly,
or concentrating on how hard they can kick,
instead of what is required for perfecting the kick.

They do the exercise with no idea
of searching for the correct angle, tilt, line of thrust,
and so on.

The forms are no longer repositories of working techniques.
I can’t tell you how many people have told me
they had no idea there were even techniques in the forms.

So how can you achieve enlightenment
if you can’t seek perfection of character
because the method has become so imperfect?

So the truth is that what I am doing
is trying to bring perfection to the martial arts,
by offering education
as to perfection of form,
of motion,
of the mental apparatus behind motion.

And the truth is that the fifty people
who actually read this,
have already ordered courses,
have already started their path to perfection,
are already breaking through the fantasy
and achieving the personal responsibility
that is at the core of enlightenment.

What I would really like,
what I desire,
is for 5,000 people to matrix.
For 50,000,
and more,
to matrix.

Not for the money.
Money doesn’t mean much.
It is just the coin of desire.
But for a better world.
A world not confined by desire,
not ruled by people who sell desire,
who imprison by desire.

The most capable person in the world
the happiest person in the world
is that person who is free
from all desires
but the desire for personal responsibility.

Okey dokey,
here’s the link for finding personal responsibility,
and the enlightenment and perfection
that goes along with it.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

Now,
a simple word…
we’re all going to desire some turkey next week,
and then we will make deals with our mind
to go on a diet,
or some other such frivolity.
And,
right after that,
we will stuff ourselves for Christmas,
or some other holiday,
like a pygmy trying to eat The Hulk.

And that is when I start shouting
Hanakwanmass!

Merry Christmas
Happy Hanukah
and Krazy Kwanza

A chance to say howdy and good wishes
to everybody.
Or,
at least insult everybody equally.

Think about this,
if you don’t do something for the fellow
who’s family sits down for a can of beans,
then someday
you will find yourself
in reversed positions.
You will be eating from a can
while those with more ability
will be ignoring you
as they cut into succulent dishes.

So do something.
Toys for tots,
boxes of food to your fire station,
or just helping out the family down the street.

Change the way this world has trained itself.

Hanakwanmass
and have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

The Seven Things My Karate Instructor Told Me

A Study in Silence and True Karate Teachings

I studied Karate for some seven years, and in that time my Karate instructor told me seven things.
I should say first that he didn’t tell me anything else.
He was a silent man, and he would sit in his office, students clustered around, and the students did all the talking. He would give a yes or no, but even a lot of that. He would just smile and enjoy.
Big difference from most people, who really don’t know when to shut up.
And, the odd thing I noticed, the more people talk the less they say; they are like radios set to some station of static and left to chatter.

‘There are many roads to the top of the mountain.’ He told me that one when I asked him which art was best.

‘A tight fist is a heavy fist.’ He was admonishing me to understand the ‘loose-tight’ concept of the fist. We of the Kang Duk Won, you see, were not encouraged to make our whole bodies rigid. The better a student was, the less tight his body was, and the more tight his fist, and only his fist, was. Surrounding that fist was silence. Emptiness. A dearth of chatter. No talk.

‘How’s work?’ He used to ask everybody that when they entered the school. It was his way to get us to start the conversation.

Once I asked him what the difference between ‘The Way,’ and a method was. He asked me if there was one, and he did it in a way to let me know that there wasn’t one. How interesting. It was the death of mysticism for me, or at least let me know that he wasn’t bent on the mystical approach.

‘I just do the forms. Everything is in the forms.’ I had asked him how he got so good, and it was part of a larger question about what he studied, how did he keep learning now that he was at the top.

‘Want a drink?’ A real ice breaker if there ever was one. But it was an ice breaker for us, not him. He was already totally and truly comfortable with himself; he lived, and he knew it, and he loved it.

‘Wham!’ Yes, he would actually say ‘Wham! when he was emphasizing a point. He would set up the technique, glancing at you to make sure you were paying attention, and then he would do the technique, liquid lightening, and say ‘Wham!’ instead of kia-ing.

That’s it.
When he taught a form he did so almost completely silently. He just showed, repeating as needed, in small sections for the white belts, and almost whole forms, and only once or twice, when we were black belts.
Past that, he instructed by example, by doing intently and with more focus than any human being I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the thing, people who talk haven’t done the forms enough, haven’t sunk their awareness into the forms deeply enough to become the forms, and to have the forms speak to them. Believe me, this is not mystical, it is hard work, and the secret to everything in life.
The simple fact is that people who teach by speaking are usually trying to explain what they don’t know. They are making up reasons to bolster their lack of understanding, and their reasons are usually wrong. I say this after almost fifty years of watching people teach.
The really sad thing is that they are going to try to explain this article, have a dialogue about it in their head.
What they really need to do is do the forms until all dialogues stop happening in their head.
They need to create silence, first of the voice, then through their forms.
This is the only way to really learn true Karate.

The Five Principles of a True Martial Art

What Makes a ‘True Martial Art?’

Analyzing the body lines to find proper alignment…

Oddly, back when I was training in the Kang Duk Won, we bypassed the first few elements of a True Martial Art. As I studied other other martial arts, however, such as Aikido, Tai Chi Chuan, and so on, the importance of the items we hadn’t focused on became more important, and I began to see the whole picture.

The Hands On Transmission of Martial Arts!

What a great day!
Think about it,
there is no alternative.
There is only a great day…or the art has failed.
And,
if it looks a little gloomy,
you do a work out,
then you can unfail the art,
do it–work out.
The cure for absolutely everything.

I know that sound a little quirky,
but I was thinking about something.
I was thinking about wearing my first gi.
A shabby, short,
thin, yellowish thing.
Shortly was sweat stained and ugly.
Man,
when I got my first real gi,
I think it was a tokkaido,
I was pretty proud.
And,
I wore it out.
Literally,
took this canvas thick uniform,
and worked it till it unraveled.
I actually wore out my first black belt that way.
It was too short, so I pulled it harder to get the ends out,
and after a while it just came apart.
Isn’t it funny how things come apart,
and bodies grow stronger?

But what I really want to talk about is
‘hands on transmission.’
When you get the real art
it has to be by a direct
person to person
transmission of data.
Because you need to get up sweaty and personal,
you need to feel the techniques
until your uniform falls apart
and your belt frays into threads.

I’m not saying it’s impossible,
because somebody had to discover the art,
therefore,
anybody can discover the art.
But I doubt it will happen,
unless you wear out a few uniforms,
and make strong a few bodies.

But here’s the deal.
When I was teaching kenpo,
some forty years ago,
I was not giving a hands on transmission of art.
I was showing moves,
but I didn’t have the art.
It had not been forced upon me
and collected in my soul.
I had not sweated
until the elixer had ignited my ki.

Now,
the guy in charge of the kenpo school,
could he give a hands on transmission.
No.
He was phenomenal,
but he hadn’t studied enough arts.
He even held other arts in disrepute,
laughed at the militaristic shotokan boys.
And,
I had a friend who studied shotokan,
surely he could get the hands on transmission…
right?
Well,
the shotokan instructors used to laugh at kenpo,
called them ‘magic finger boys.’
Of course this was long ago,
and one would hope that all have matured.
But,
where do you get the hands on transmisson?
From somebody who has the true art.
Who has sweated until he no longer makes fun of his fellow man.
I got it from a runty, little fellow who…
never spoke ill of anybody.
Who was the most polite person I had ever met,
who had sweated the forms until his black gi had turned grey,
and then come apart.

Now,
I’ll tell you something tragic.
Almost nobody has the true art.
The true art was corrupted
by people who made fun of others,
who weren’t polite,
who held other schools in disrepute.
It was corrupted by people who wanted to fight
instead of learn.
It was corrupted by people
who wanted trophies and glory,
domination and money.
Some of these corrupters were even well meaning,
especially if they never had the art,
but were trying as hard as they could,
teaching people even while thinking that they had it…

Now,
there are artists out there,
and they can be true artists.
Another ounce of sweat,
the data I offer in the courses,
on the site,
in this newsletter,
and they’ll make it.
This is a hands on transmission,
you see.
A few hints,
a direction to go in,
but,
most important,
what this newsletter is about…
work out.

If you work out
it’ll happen.
If you ‘shabby-ize’ your gi,
if you tie that belt until the threads quit,
then you’ll make it.
Some of you already have.
Some of you have to work out a bit longer,
but,
pay attention to the first thing I say in this newsletter,
work out.
Pay attention to the last thing I say,
work out,
and you’ll have it.

Really,
I might plug a course here and there,
might even sell one,
but that’s not the point of it all.
The point is just to keep you jacked up,
encouraged,
inspired,
and tell you one thing…
that work out you’re about to do…
it is the most important thing in the world.
So,
do it.
Work out,
and give yourself a ‘hands on transmission.’
You are your own teacher,
you know,
all you have to do is open your eyes,
and that will happen if you just keep working out.

Guess I’m ranting.
That’s okay.
It’s a good cause.
you guys have the most special week in the history of the world.
and the most fantastic work out ever.

If you want the accurate data
as to what the true art is,
check out this link…

Master Instructor Course

And…
work out.
Al

:o)

REMEMBER!

The article on me in Inside Kung Fu should be out any day. Supposed to be the 24th, but there’s always some leeway.
Feel free to buy five copies, and write to the editor and tell him you want more.
If they get a sell out, and letters from across the country from a wide variety of people, they are going to do more.

To hold another art in disrespect, even though its tenets be improper and its practice be a sham, is worse than foolishness, it is like holding your hand upon the head of a child and saying, “You will never grow to be a man.

Send me your wins!