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Martial Arts Legends Made Real

Posted on January 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 793
The Truth of the Old Martial Arts Legends

Man,
this is an absolutely perfect day.
Absolutely perfect.
You know what makes it perfect?
I just worked out.
If you ever want to make NOW better,
just work out.
The more you work out,
the better NOW is.

I remember hearing old stories,
old legends from China,
and so on.

The fellow who practiced jumping out of a one foot hole.
Then, the second year, a two foot hole.
Three years a three foot hole.
After ten years he was jumping ten feet up.
Could jump on and off roofs.
And twenty years…

Then there was a the fellow who lifted a calf on his shoulders.
Did it every day.
When the calf grew into a bull, his strength was prodigious.

And so on.

Interesting stories.
Sort of like comic books.
Keeps the young kids interested.

But there is truth to those old legends.
The truth is different, however.

You do a form for a couple of years,
you train your body to move quick and fast,
any direction,
any combination of techniques.
Then,
without really understanding what is happening,
you move into the realm of the mind.
Maybe ten or twenty years.
Your thought process becomes quicker,
faster,
more intuitive.
Then,
without really understanding it,
you move into the realm of the spirit.
You stop looking at your body,
for you understand it.
You start looking at the attack,
and you aren’t a sequence of nerves and twitches and muscles and stuff,
you just go to where you are supposed to go,
without the muscular fanfare,
without the mental thinkingness.
Your body just moves through space without effort.

The thing is…
you make this happen not by measuring yourself,
but by dedicating yourself.
Not by thinking about it,
but by just doing it,
spending the years,
doing the forms over and over,
until the body gets tired of working,
until the mind gets tired of thinking about it,
until the spirit takes over and just does it.

Think about it like this:
You are digging a hole,
you are digging into the earth,
but that is just a vehicle to make strong the body.
You dig and you dig,
the body gets tired,
but you know you are getting close,
you have to keep digging,
so you steel your mind,
and you make your body keep digging.
And when the mind gets tired,
you know you are closer than ever
and all that keeps you going is your spirit.
You ignored the protests of body and mind
and you keep digging,
and,
at last,
you reach it.
It seeps out of the bottom of the hole,
seeps into your feet,
up your legs,
invigorates your body, mind and spirit.
You have found gold.
Not the gross gold that is shiny rock,
but the pure gold of refined spirit.
The gold that makes you immortal,
that makes you a pure and ever shining spirit.

Others,
unless they have done the digging,
cannot see it.
But what others know doesn’t matter.
What matters is what you know.
And you know the truth of you.

This is the truth behind the legends.
Superhuman deeds are possible,
but they are not what you think.
They are not comic book,
they are real,
but they are not normally visible,
and they are not what people usually expect.

But,
regardless,
you won’t really understand this
unless you start working out,
and don’t stop.
Work out until you are an old man.
Until the body is tired,
but you are not.
Until you realize the flesh is frail,
but the spirit is not.
That is the only proof I can offer.