As I woke this morning, I watched the floating grey blue silhouette of a humming bird hovering and weaving slowly through the swaying silhouette patterns of leaves and branches against my golden window shade from the first rays of morning light. Seeing this first thing upon waking warms my blood. There is a world of life just outside my window and I am seeing only the shadows of that world. When the Japanese Samurai as well as the American Plains Indians saw a humming bird they believed that they were being visited by a relative, a grandfather or grandmother who had crossed over. They would take a moment, stop whatever they were doing and say hi. They did this, I am convinced, because it provided them an empowering belief. You never really say goodbye to those you love. They will always return in some form or fashion. It is the experience of seeing a humming bird shadow on my window shade that causes me to think I am surrounded by friends, seen and unseen. Some of those friends unseen are those who have crossed over leaving their bodies behind like well worn clothes discarded. Many are still in their bodies. Many of those people are heroes to me. That’s is what I am thinking as I wake this morning. Heroes. Seen and unseen. I believe that there are people whose lives are something bordering on miraculous to those who meet them. They have learned how to become successful in areas of their lives where others sense something like near impossibility in their own lives. These people are called heroes. Heroes are not just those individuals who run into the burning building and bring out a child in their arms. Yes, that is a hero but not the kind of hero I am thinking of here. A hero is that person who travels a path of life that has the obstacles every one faces and because they are motivated by some inner light, some vision of what they want, rather than what is, they learn the skills necessary to turn the obstacle into a kind of playful game so that where the rest of us might feel a sense of despair, those heroes become more empowered and then unstoppable. What makes these heroes so worthy of taking note is that what they are mastering is something that is the source of great suffering in the lives of those who have not accomplished learning it. Heroes stand out from the rest of us because they have achieve excellence in one or more of those four areas of life in which we all struggle to learn; how to make a living, how to create and maintain health, how to have empowering relationships and how to protect their own life and the lives of others from predators. But there is more. They are not heroes just because they have done something well. Rather they are the ones that decided to turn around and walk back down the path to help others attain their own greatness. The truth is, heroes are not rare beings. They are everywhere. And most importantly a hero lives in each of us. When the hero comes to life inside of us, two very important things happen. We find our power and our thrill for living, and we help others by showing them how to find their own power. During this time of practicing the art of “sitting still” so that my arm can recover I am still on the adventure of learning. What I am learning right now is the art of self defense. I have to remember, that when, in my case, 50% of the body doesn’t move on a good day and then when an arm gets knocked out of commission, that leaves me with a little over 25% of my limbs still in good working order. I have to remember this because until moments like this I tend to forget that I walk on crutches. I know. It is strange but true. While I am practicing, deepening the neurological paths of my memory of each martial arts form and technique, I am also, as a side benefit, reliving the memory of the moments I spent with the Teachers who taught me these forms. Each time I rehearse the memory, I am filled with a sense of deep gratitude for those who help me along the way. And not just my teachers, but my senior fellow students who slowed down their own knowledge to help me repeat the forms I had just learned. And not just the senior students but my fellow students who laughed with me as they would help me up, or I would help them up, after being knocked down by the very same. And not just those fellow students, but the students who looked up to me because I had a knowledge about a technique or form that the were still learning, and I was able to help them on their path. And overlaying all of this, while practicing the forms with my mind while sitting still, is the knowledge that what I am practicing is the tried and true ways of stopping the most aggressive attackers, handed down by very experience martial artist for hundreds of years. I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky as to be the recipient of such important knowledge. I am sitting here in a chair, in my back yard, alone, and yet, in my memory, in a very real way I am surrounded by rooms filled with powerful friends in white or black uniforms, all with one mind. To learn and to help each other learn to become truly powerful and happy people. Even though I am in a temporary recovery stage of my 900 Mile End Polio Now Bike Tour, I am still on the journey of raising awareness and funds for the End Polio Now Rotary International campaign to eradicate polio from the planet. To learn more go to endpolionow.org. If you would like to know more about any one of my five sponsors go to these sites: The Sonoma Valley Rotary Club Facebook Page: https://facebook/SonomaValleyRotaryClub?filter=3 The California Martial Arts Institute at: calmartialarts The Challenge Athletes Foundation at: challengedathletes.org Top End Invacare at: https://facebook/topendwheelchair The Sonoma Valley Cyclery at: sonomacyclery
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 22:27:15 +0000
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