The Cosmic Journey
Comprehension of the existence of a vehicle for journeying and dealing with existence as a human began when I was a fledgling, a boy deeply open to understanding life as best I could from the vantage point of life in small town Georgia and Alabama in the1940s. I had known since early consciousness that the cosmos takes a personal interest in human lives.
My concerns narrowed, over time, into a few questions of basic human existence. How is it we trick ourselves into believing that we are separate chunks of matter, alien from the universe, alien from life, alien from nature, alien from each other? How is it that we trance ourselves into alienation, a trance in which we can become so deeply embedded we are willing to die for it? How is it that we sleep so deeply? How is it that we do not awaken? What are the principles, the operating principles of the cosmos, and thus, the principles by which we can live most fruitfully?
A practical model for embodying the lifeforce (spirit) of the universe has emerged from two major currents of the streaming of this life. At age 12, I was lifted into the cosmos. When 21, I began the practice of the martial arts in Okinawa.
The cosmic experience came unexpectedly and with startling clarity. We lived in a small town in Alabama, separated from Georgia by the Chattahoochee River, which consisted not only of water; it was also a river of time. Looking across the river, I could see into the future. Georgia was an hour ahead.
No one else was at home that day. Sitting quietly on the living room sofa, I was suddenly transported to a vantage point where I could see the globe of Earth. I remember a moment of fear that I would not be able to breathe in “outer space.” Something reassured me and I breathed calmly and quietly. I looked “down” to see my body. I had no body other than the cosmos itself.
The earth was beautiful. A soft golden light bathed it through and through and surrounded it with a golden glow. I sensed, felt, and heard the harmony of its music. I saw and knew with deep certainty that all on earth is interrelated and harmoniously connecting. All is one flow. Separation is an illusion.
I do not know how long the experience lasted. At some point, I was sitting on the sofa once again. I told no one. I knew from listening to adult conversations that no one spoke of such things.
The Martial Journey
The second current of this life came in joining the U. S. Marine Corps with two express purposes: to see how I fared in the world of warrior males and to go to Japan. I accomplished both.
Karate. Stepping into martial art training on Okinawa in 1959 was a life transforming experience. Tatsuo Shimabuku was a small and fierce man who inspired Okinawans and Americans to push themselves to the utmost in learning his particular evolution of the martial arts, Isshinryu (the way of one spirit, one heart, and one mind).
We spun and leaped and kicked and punched in the formal katas and free-style sparring under his direction. The poured-concrete floor behind his house toughened our bare feet with its wintry cold and summer heat. The body-bag on a high chain swung from jump kicks. The makiwara boards embedded in concrete yielded to our pounding fists and elbow slams.
As we worked through the katas, Sensei would make his rounds and periodically kick or punch particular muscle groups to ensure their appropriate toughness. He corrected our breathing, our form, and our stance. Often, while watching our maneuvers, he would sit quietly pounding a large nail into a two-by-four with the calloused flesh of his hand, occasionally stopping to sip some green tea.
Though he spoke little, Sensei Shimabuku taught much: quietness and confidence, the rudiments of Zen (though he never used the word), proper breathing, visual imagery, energy flow, stance, fluidity, focus, toughness, and open awareness.
It was from Sensei Shimabuku that I learned of the existence of martial art principles passed down across the centuries. The principles were displayed in his Agena dojo and on the graduation “silks” presented with a belt award (2)
I continued to look for the journals, diaries, sayings, and aphorisms of those recognized as proficient in the arts. I wished to be able to speak the truths of these arts in succinct meaningful words, words embodying truth, words pointing to deep understandings of reality, words assisting self-cultivation and transformation.
Jujutsu. After returning to the states, I soon linked up with some black belts in jujutsu in Atlanta, Georgia. Their martial way was more circular than karate. When attacked, they would divert the oncoming energy of the attack into a circular motion, add some of their own energy to the circle, and end with the attacker’s body slammed into some immovable object.
The jujutsu style of interaction was more polite than Isshinryu (“since you choose to follow this path of attack, we will assist you on your chosen trip”), but the end result was equally as devastating: a broken person.
We combined techniques. The attacker was blocked and softened with karate moves, then circulated through the air into a jujutsu bone break or choke hold. We had great fun, but the model fell short of an appropriate means of harmonious communication.
Ki Development. In 1974, at a summer training camp, I was privileged to attend a six-week training program on Ki Development at Fullerton College, California. On the lawn of the Fullerton campus, the teacher, Sensei Koichi Tohei (Aikido practitioner and student of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido),(3) asked for five volunteers to attack him. This smiling dancing man moved in flowing circles and spirals in the midst of attackers who were falling and sailing through the air and rushing toward a target that was no longer there.
I laughed at the spectacle and at the good-natured humor of this sensei who gave the appearance of a Japanese businessman on vacation — grey hushpuppies, blue socks, navy-blue full cut slacks, and a white open-necked short-sleeved shirt, Sensei Tohei moved gracefully with agile speed and power.
This was the martial art model applicable to daily life I had been looking for: the practice of positively grounding openness allowing non-colliding intimacy with a potential adversary. It was neither necessary nor desirable to rip out the other’s throat or slam the other’s head into the concrete after a full body throw. One could dance the dance of no harm to you, no harm to me. One could allow the dance to dance the dance.
I began learning Ki (energy) principles and their applications (mind, body, spirit moving as one) from Sensei Tohei that day. A lifelong focus on embodying these principles in daily life led to the understanding that martial art principles in their ultimate form are the same as healing art and spiritual art principles.
I began doing seminars, workshops, and retreats on the application of martial arts principles to daily life. A simple list of principles was all I had, principles teased from my own training and from the diaries and journals other martial artists left behind. I taught the principles everywhere I could: hospitals, schools, martial art training halls, Indian Health agencies, senior citizen centers, group homes for the developmentally disabled, state fairs, Elderhostel, state and county governments, community mental health centers, behavioral health agencies, churches, universities.
Of course as I kept teaching and living these principles, they kept refining me, and as they lived through me, continued to refine themselves. I practiced and taught martial arts (from the hard exterior to the soft interior) while continuing to ponder the writings and journals of those who had gone before.(4)
I also studied the spiritual literature from diverse cultures.(5) These readings (with accompanying practices) gave further validation to the understanding that the so-called “martial” principles were in accord with “spiritual” principles, that they described the same reality, the one cosmos.
The Professional Journey
My early research as a psychologist was a continuous pursuit of understanding the dynamics of nonverbal communication, a study of the expression of the spirit in which things were said, rather than the actual words spoken.(6) This quest naturally overlapped with explorations of therapeutic relationships,(7) of the field of healing,(8) and of the reality of the interdependence and interpenetration of all phenomena (mutual co-arising), as evidenced by my own and others’ direct experiences.(9)
I began to understand more deeply that examplars of expression of spirit, whether through words, through healing practices, through visual art, or through the martial arts, were warriors(10) with the courage and other warrior qualities needed to follow the path of spirit rather than human conventionality.
As a psychologist, I opened to the writings of Abraham Maslow (peak experiences), William James (cosmic consciousness & mystic experience), Carl Jung (synchronicity), Sid Jourard (transparent self), Kurt Lewin (field theory), Ken Wilber (integral psychology), and Jean Gebser (the evolution of consciousness). I saw that their views of the universe confirmed and enhanced the martial principles.
As a psychotherapist, I saw that these principles were meaningful and applicable to the daily lives of individuals caught in physical, emotional, interpersonal, mental, and spiritual pain.
All along the journey, the principles kept shaping and refining themselves. Only within the past few years did they begin forming into the present model, four sets of complementary practices arising out of the pulsating heart of Life itself. These 8 transformational practices allow a natural loosening of spiritual knots: the cognitive obscurations and emotional habits which create and compose the little separate self with all its demanding poses, anxieties, sufferings, and fears.
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