Spirit vs Soul: Techniques that Hit Rock Bottom

So I've been gone for 2 months or so, and I'd recommend that everybody take a break and come back to Aikido, because you can see change in yourself and others a whole hell of a lot better, and you appreciate what you are doing and the guy who is teaching you a whole lot better, too.  Your body gets stiff, and you get crabby, and you dont relate so well to folks like you did when you were hitting three times a week.

Ive been reading some get back to nature books by a dude named bill plotkin.   I took a personality inventory once and it said I was a naturalist personality.   I like trees and squirrels and shit.   I also like to see things grow for the hell of it, I'm the worst Gardener ever, and I'm fine with it.  Plants like people need space to grow, among other things.

Anyway,  this Bill Plotkin dude said that there is two ways of figuring shit out.  Spirit and Soul.  Most of us get indoctrinated in the spirit side of things, do good things and good things will happen to you.  Be nice, forgive and forget, that kind of Sunday school type things.   That there is a reward somewhere for being good.   That's the spirit side of things.   That's the do what Jesus said, or Buddha said, and everything will be fine and dandy.   But folks who subscribe to this kind of thinking, tend to puss out when the shit hits the fan, they start to question why God lets shitty things happen to people who are nice, well groomed, and punctual, get out of bed on  Sundays.  and don't say the f-word on a daily basis.  The spirit oriented folks have to have thier faith tested and survive the the test to get become part of the world

How many martial artists quit what they are doing because it didnt work the same way in a parking lot the way it did in the dojo?  The guy who wanted to be all spirt before they found the soul?

The Soul side of thing is about hitting rock bottom.   That depression and disenchantment with a world full of Ipods and Happy meal. The punch in the face.  That whole going to hell and back, type thing.   Its not having a jacket on a cold day, a month of sleepless nights, divorces, losing a loved one, losing a job, sickness, car wrecks, emotional shit that can't go where it needs to go in a world full of calm down and be reasonable.  Its explaining buzzards and dead deer to a child, and how that's the way it is, and its suppossed to be that way.  Its the dirt that flowers and trees eventually emerge from.

That Sting Song about a little black spot on the sun today.

A martial art that's first lesson begins with a stiff arm in the face is close to the Soul.  To the way things are, and are supposed to be.  

Plotkin says that soul is feeling your way in a dark room, spirit is having the lights come on and seeing the room.   He says spirit is about shooting arrows into the sky, and soul is about taking them in the chest. He says that spirit is about the now, that buddhist thing about taking a moment or two to pay attention to your breath going in and out.   The Inside out.     The Soul is about the here. It's taking time to look at the wind blow through the trees, and birds frantically pecking for food in the yard across the street before the ice storm hits.  Its about feeling the cold, instead of avoiding and complaining about it. 

I had an epiphany or a dumbassany about the nature of Japanese Martial Arts a few months back.   Especially when you watch the judo katas with old guys mimicking the motions of waves.  That Judo and Aikido are not actually fighting systems but ways to model the soul of the world in a old and lost Japanese way of thinking.   The waves crashing the rocks, in a what is here will be gone tomorrow, mindset.  Tsunamis hitting castles made from sand.  That your whole survival strategy may be becoming a twig floating atop of the whole thing in a state of total surrender.   The faith to actually let go, and hit bottom, prevents you from hitting bottom.   

Aikido is about the Uke, I prefer to be stiffarmed in the face rather than stiff arming another guy.  I like being knocked down, better than knocking down. When I try to knock someone around it doesnt work so well.   My whole facination with the Japanese Randori is that it provides another outlet for getting knocked around.   If its taken in  a soul enhancing way, then it's a good deal, if its taken as an oppurtunity to impose more man made rules on nature then its pretty worthless. 

Kata is about the spirit side of things, which can leave you questioning the whole reason why you do things.  You can do ten thousand reps  and still get your ass handed to you by a new guy right off the street.   The kata are room with objects in it with the light switch turned on.  The real shit is what you find feeling around in the dark.

As far as the 17 goes,  The five atemi waza done in the sloppiest most non-crowd pleasing way are the real thing, like five fingers they are the best way to feel yourself through a dark room.   The rest need to be seen as potential bullshit, until you find them in the dark.

But you may be feeling your way through the living room looking for a spoon and never find it.   A spoon belongs in the kitchen or the dining room.   A lot of this shit we try to actualize only works and can be found in one room,  the dojo.  It works because someone lets it work, because  like a spoon it can be found in a drawer in the kitchen or on the table.  We want to find it everywhere, like the spirit side of things, and it doesnt work that way. 

You have to question whether our notion of timing comes from the spirit or the soul?  

Techniques have to hit rock bottom.  You have to ask your self where is the rock bottom where this thing will work?   Does the situation have to get dressed up in  a suit and tie, and show up on time for sunday school for it to work.  If it does then its bullshit. Does Uke have to act like a drunk man on roller skates for it to work?   Is your technique a Happy Meal with a Toy that has been packaged and genetically modified to work in only  in a theoretical, cloud kookoo world.  Does it only work for men wearing dresses and playing Japanese?  

Kata comes from the spirit.  The Light on in the well ordered room.   A real technique has a soul, it was found in the covered with blood, and dirt, and is a thing that stands out like buzzards and dead deer.  Its a part of a necessary cycle of things.   A reality that lives on despite any kind of rules imposed on it.