You Can Walk Through a War Zone with Martial Arts and Never Fight!

One of the things I realized, after 22 years in the martial arts, which was almost 30 years ago, was that there must be a thought before there can be an action.
Now, while you’re grokking that, let me take it to the logical conclusion: a fight cannot occur unless you make the decision that it can so occur.
Lots of people are going to argue with this, but that is simply because they don’t see thought before action, and so can’t understand what I am saying. They have invested too much time in fighting, and not enough time in the martial arts.
I have, just for the heck of it, walked through a riot without receiving a ding. Nor even a curse word, Nor even a bad look. I did this shortly after the Rodney King riots.
I was simply curious concerning what had happened, but more important, I was curious about my ability to walk through a ‘war zone’ without being attacked.
So I drove down to South Central Los Angeles, sauntered across Normandy and Florence (the flashpoint of the riots), drove around, got out and examined businesses that had been destroyed and so on.
No problem.
Simply, I hadn’t made the decision to get in a fight.
Even if I had run into an insane person…I was safe. An insane person, you see, can’t have an effective thought (before an action). They can’t plan. Period. That is part of their insanity.
And, to tell the truth, I had played with this concept before this occurrence.
Once, in the army, I had a fellow stand in front of me, totally enraged, and tell me he was going to beat the holy you know what out of me.
I said, “No thanks,” and watched him.
He didn’t hit me, he just got madder, and louder, and finally some other fellow in the barracks got pissed at the noise and came over and fought him. While they were rolling around on the floor I went to the movies.
Now, this brings us to the most important point of this little epistle. How do you reach the point of being able to make a decision, or not make a decision, concerning people beating you up?
People who practice fighting, and think that that is martial arts, don’t see the thought before the action. They just get mad (frustrated) when I say things like what I have said here.
People who practice the martial arts, which includes forms (concepts) techniques (plans) and freestyle (translating perfection into chaos), can reach the point of being able to see the thought before the action. They usually don’t, however, because though their art is classical, it is random. Not logical. It hasn’t been matrixed.
So the classicists who achieve this ability of being able to see the thought before an action are few and far between. They usually end up being virtually worshipped. If they make the decision to get worshipped. Usually they prefer to live a quiet life. It is just so much more efficient and pleasurable.
When you matrix your art you put it in logical order.
Never been done in any martial art in the history of the world.
A few people have pushed concepts, and that tends to align an art, and that gives people a chance to break through. But the pushing of the concept usually dies with the founder, and the art becomes a legend, and the movements of the art become rote, then confused, then dispersed.
That’s just the way it is. Logic brings one to a pinnacle, but without the concept of logic (which is different than the concepts in the martial arts) the art descends, and usually pretty rapidly. It is not uncommon to see an art self destruct within a generation of the death of the founder.
So this matrixing thing, this logic, is of crucial importance.
It will not only align your art, make it logical and intuitive, but it will safeguard against the destruction of your art.
Watch, the simple drills and forms I developed through matrixing are going to be around forever. They can’t be improved on because they aren’t so much martial arts as a perfection of logic. People will discover them, do them, and find that, while they are an art unto themselves, and incredibly effective, the real joy is in seeing how the art one does, apart from Matrixing, suddenly rears its head and achieves the goals…and concepts…of the original founders.
And, the only other thing I have to say on this matter is this: it is important to learn an art solely so one can create one’s own art. If one doesn’t create their own art, they really haven’t learned the martial arts.
And all this, seeing the thought before the action, creating your own art, understanding the arts as one art, is only possible through learning the logic of matrixing.