“If you have put in the proper sustained practice, then maturity and full stature has to happen for you, just as others developmental stages happen naturally without permission. Readiness to accept this earns you the rank of black belt. This blackbelt not only precedes formal recognition, but it also does not need permission from others.”
The body learns before the mind is able to explain all of the details. In other words, you build an understanding based on experience, rather than theory. This is true in martial arts, and elsewhere. Let’s say, for example, you are learning to ride a bike. You are likely to fall off several times before learning to balance and stabilise yourself. In fact, learning to balance requires that you fall over a few times first of all. At the same time, you practice riding in a straight line and not falling off. In other words, it is not so much that you need to fall off to learn, but you need to accept the risks involved and learn from them if necessary.
In terms of martial arts, you sometimes need to take a few knocks and learn from them. This does not mean you need to risk your own safety necessarily. I am not saying that getting punched and kicked repeatedly gives you the necessary maturity to become a mature person. Often, it does not. However, in my opinion you do need to take responsibility for your own experience, which may include receiving knocks along the way. Rather than outsourcing that experience to some industry approved representation of events, what you need is a certain presence within your own experience.
Depending on who you ask, people may say that you should either seek or avoid risk. let’s say you ask a doctor about your health. They will identify several risk factors to your health, and ask you to avoid certain things. If you seek advice from a businessman, they might tell you to go for it, despite the risks involved. So it is not that authority is risk averse, or risk friendly, it just depends on who you ask. So there is no right or wrong when it comes to risk taking. When you take responsibility for the development of your own development, you accept risk and safety at the same time. This acceptance precedes authority from one vested interest group. In other words, when you develop your now judgement, then this eventually becomes the wisdom you need to make informed decisions.
“Throughout most of history, they could not afford delayed maturity or competence. Neither were there many tools to make somebody outstanding. In reality, simply accepting the reality of the situation, as it is, is in itself a way of becoming outstanding.”
Throughout most of history, they could not afford delayed maturity or competence. Neither were there many tools to make somebody outstanding. In reality, simply accepting the reality of the situation is in itself outstanding. In the past, people did not live so long or have as many years of training, and by the time they were in their 30s and 40s, they were already standard bearers and mentors to others. This was, in my opinion, a more honest way of looking at things, rather than thinking that people need to be much older before they get fully wise. It is just that, today, training and systematic thinking has tended to be seen as the only real way to develop people. However, this is merely one way of many, and it is not necessarily the best way at all. The problem with it is that systems should be made to evolve and build on themselves, rather than to just start again and ignore evolved patterns and consequences. Any evolutionary change needs to take into account these consequences, rather than just seek to ignore or eliminate them as a matter of development.
Rather than artificially delaying and extending maturity, full stature was something that arrived not after certification and training, it was just expected to occur quite naturally. There are obviously environments which are conducive to this seasoning happening in the best way possible. For example, an environment which has enough members in it that have accumulated insight is superior to an environment where age means decline. In some ways, age often means decline of course, but it means more than that. Systematic or structural systems often tend to treat experienced people as non compliant or out of step, rather than whole people with developed insight. This is a generalisation, of course, but it is often so.
Today, we often find ourselves in a strange situation where we accumulate experience, but hesitate to embody it fully. We continue to defer to experts long after we have reached maturity. It is not a bad thing to defer to experts in certain contexts, such as when deciding which course of treatment to take at a hospital, for example. But there are many areas of life where one can have the necessary expertise and experience just by virtue of naturally arriving at maturity and competence in terms of life experience. This is not some anomaly, but is actually quite natural.
Some understanding can only be arrived at by sustained attention, as well as honest appraisal of one’s own life experience over time. This sustained effort does not rely on guarantees or reward or meeting objectives, nor does it lead to the completions of goals. If you can sustain your attention towards life, rather than all the details in the happenings surrounding life, then you can naturally develop the raw materials to flourish naturally and reach full maturity. These raw materials naturally develop themselves along a certain trajectory of lived experience. This process does not require societal permission, it just requires awareness of reality in the full sense.
“Wisdom doesn’t switch on in old age. It is instead claimed by one who is able to see the emerging reality in front of them in the fullest possible sense.”
Wisdom doesn’t switch on in old age. It is instead claimed by one who is able to see the emerging reality in front of them in the fullest possible sense. This can happen at an advanced age, or just at a certain point of maturity, for example, in one’s thirties and forties. This emerges over time naturally. Historically, people were expected to step forwards rather than recede into the background once their narrow usefulness had run out. Today the reverse is often true, and one often finds themselves irrelevant in places where peoples are used as raw materials rather than as peoples to bring up to full stature.
“When martial arts is full of energy, in all of its possible varieties, it becomes dynamic and unpredictable. Then, there is presence and engagement, there has to be, it is inevitable.”
If a martial artist retires from competitive training, they often simply exit the community. At best, they become an instructor of a technical and systematic approach to martial arts. This is one reason why martial arts can easily become overly dogmatic and ritualistic, out of touch with the evolving environment. However, when martial arts is full of energy, in all of its possible varieties, it becomes dynamic and unpredictable. Then, there is presence and engagement, there has to be, it is inevitable. Ritualistic training, where everybody is doing the same thing at the same time has its benefits in the right context, but today there is so much variety and diversity, that it often becomes irrelevant.
It is often better that people develop in their own way as unique individuals. This requires a level of discipline that is often missing in many people. However, when one is able to develop as a unique individual in the best way possible, they are an example and a nurturer of others to do the same, even though they are not a perfect representation of systemic design. However, in rigid systems, rather than imparting what they have learned, experienced martial artists are usually expected to stop developing and simply stand above others to be looked up to as a finished product. However, one does not get to a point where they have all the final answers freezing into an authority, they stand where they are fully, amongst others rather than on top of them. That way everyone is always in the making, evolving fluidly rather than in friction with one another.
Embodied competence precedes recognition. This includes your own recognition, as well as that of others. If you have put in the proper sustained practice, then maturity and full stature has to happen for you, just as others developmental stages happen naturally without permission. Readiness to accept this earns you the rank of black belt. This blackbelt not only precedes formal recognition, but it also does not need permission from others. Waiting for the formal kind of endorsement often just delays the inevitable, and the inevitable only happens through sustained use and employment of your faculties on the right kind of pathway. Then, it is only natural that your competence emerges, and hesitation surrounding this natural development has its own consequences.
One needs to be functional in real time, not just when it suits some establishment. Deferral of this proper functioning is a luxury you cannot afford, rather than a necessity that you must oblige. What I mean by that is, if you are training according to what is necessary, rather than all that is unnecessary, then you naturally arrive and there is no waiting around or deferring of your peak maturity. When you have already arrived, then there is no more to do than to do as needed. This arrival is simply there in your presence. No amount of following of a process can replace this awareness of being present.
At a certain point, you stop copying others and putting them above your own development, above your own flowering. Instead, you start carrying the responsibility, and this responsibility becomes a reference point for others as well as yourself. You might say that this is a heavy weight to bear. In fact, it is not, it is just the way things are. Then you move from being above others, which carries its own challenges, to transmitting your insights because of your depth of experience, which is an enriching experience in itself. Rather than out of your power or influence over others, which requires conflict with others, you accept them and yourself as a kind of ecosystem. This is not a perfect powerful authority, it is instead a sincere and authentic authority of responsibility.
In the context of martial arts, refusing to take this responsibility is seen as unethical, once one arrives at a certain point. The reason for this is not to pressure people into some system or position in the hierarchy, but because one must eventually stand by their own experience and developed capabilities rather than against it. When I say this, I do not mean some egotistical image of an authority that you have made for yourself. This is a delusion. Formal recognition of your authority should follow natural development, rather than you trying to live up to an image.
“Formal recognition should recognise reality and seek to conform to it, rather than replace its richness.”
An image is something you or somebody else has made up, and has no existential relevance here. In other words, formal recognition and titles should not replace life experience. Formal recognition should recognise reality and seek to conform to it, rather than replace its richness. So in the end, martial arts teaches you that readiness is proven in capability and action, rather than grounded in the opinions of others.
