Many in the martial arts industry say you should always fight fire with fire. That you should be bigger, stronger and more aggressive than the opponent. “Bigger, faster, fitter, stronger”. Yes, you should become healthier, more motivated, and increase your abilities, but beyond a point it becomes counter productive. Because in fact we are not invincible or anywhere close. We should be careful not to deplete our resources by becoming embroiled in endless petty battles, particularly if they don’t serve to improve us in the long run. This is what makes us stronger, more energised, and able.
A moments reflection would tell us that spending all our time thinking about all the enemies out there, and confronting everyone, would only result in overtraining and burnout. This intelligence is the reasoning of the higher self, which is wise and knows what it’s talking about. The higher self should manage and command the more instinctual side, which can be called the lower self.
Through will power the higher self channels the lower instincts in a direction of its choosing. It is highly influential, but only if used activly, unlike the lower self which is automatic. The higher self is like a general in battle, it sees everything more clearly than the ground troops, who are ready to fight all the time and get themselves killed for what the consider glory.
Overdoing the physical side of training is a common pitfall in martial arts. It is good to train hard, particularly to correct laziness if that is a weakness. But in their quest to be strong, people do all sorts of counterproductive exercises which cause wear and tear, and general exhaustion. But then they will say “I’m losing it, I’ve got to get back to how I was and double the effort!”. In fact, this stagnation is a sign that they were overdoing it, usually in their youth, and are now paying the price for such “overspending”. Yes, what we can get away with in our youth is quite unbelievable, but this approach is disastrous later on.
Instead of promoting moderation, many trainers out there will appeal to the students lower nature by encouraging it. Often without knowing. Although, to be fair, a trainer who knows what they are doing is simply testing the student to see if they take the bait. “C’mon you’re weak”, “You call that a kick up, pathetic!”. When you hear this sort of thing, my approach is to ignore it totally. You can never be sure whether the coach thinks they are helping or not. Just go about your usual training, and if they are any good, the coach was just testing to see whether you would rise above it. This indfference is a triumph over your instincts whilst putting them to work, which is the only way of using them properly.
Wanting to be invincible, strong, and tough is often the real enemy if taken as a literal possibility. It’s great as an ideal to intelligently aim towards. I say it is the enemy because eventually this same pride which once spurred us on, later saps us of our reserves. This is our lower nature given free reign. It gets us seriously injured, and focuses our attention on overcoming ignorant individuals or unimportant tasks when we should be moving beyond such concerns. “Are you going to let him get away with that”, “Did you see that look he just gave me”, these are all tell tale signs of our instinctual lower self which we have chosen to identify with instead of order around.
If you progress and live past a certain point, it is usually because you have managed to become wiser. However, there is virtually no guidance on the subject and people think it is just the natural course of events to stagnate and decline with age. Instead, you should be healthier and more energised, having eliminated so much baggage that often the young and naïve carry about. Often as we get older, the lower self will say “You’ve lost your edge”, you’re no good anymore”. This is all perfectly normal. But instead of listening to it, put it to work and relate instead to your higher self and it’s reasoning powers1.
Rather than listening to reason, instead we often listen to our lower instincts, which tell us to be hyper vigilant all the times and look for enemies everywhere. It has a point, and should be given a seat at the policy table, but it is always belligerent and domineering if left to its own devices. It often drowns out reason, the higher self. The lower self is a relentless source of energy and motivation, an endless battery, but lacks even common sense. According to its reasoning, peace does not exist and we should live in chaos all the time. This is a reflection of our animal ancestors, who did live in constant threat of predation all the time. But if we start listening to it, we start to become like animals ourselves. In other words, we resemble that which we look at and contemplate: therefore we should see the world through the vision of higher reasoning.
Obviously we still, even today, live in threat. For example, the threat of losing our mortgage, or job. But these threats require more careful management, and aren’t worth loosing our reason over. Such concerns require the intelligent use of the lower nature by the higher self. The lower nature alerts us to action, but it shouldn’t lead the operation. It is vitally important to stimulate us to act, and to detect possible threats. This is why highly intense individuals have cat like reflexes, and are able to process thoughts and actions so quickly. But so many such individuals have failed to control and channel their emotions and have instead been destroyed by them.
The lower nature will tell us to always watch out for double crosses, liars, and thieves. It will only be satisfied if we come down to that level and buy into it totally. But in doing so, you too will become part of that category of behaviour, ignorant and counter productive. Instead, leave the lower nature to say what it likes, after all it is a workhorse and supplies us with energy and motivation. We don’t need to give it the time of day. Relate and see the world through the eyes of the higher self instead. This is the key, to use the lower nature to sense danger and support combat skills to add instinctive power and dynamism to our actions.
You don’t conquer circumstances or enemies by becoming like them and thinking about them all the time. This is what gives them power, and over time the qualities they show manifest in you too. So even if you get rid of your enemy, it is as if they live on in you taking revenge day by day. For example, if someone you work with is antagonistic towards you for no apparent reason, they will often try to drag you down to their level. But you often come to resemble them over time if you continue to lower yourself in this way. For example, you share the same mannerisms, appearance, and even personality as this is a pre requisite of relatedness.
I recommend thinking about the steps you can take to avoid confrontation at all. Think instead about positive and productive achievements you can make by ignoring people on the individual level of personal dislike, which is the viewpoint of the lower self. The lower self, if listened to will contantly want to outdo everybody and will never be happy until it has won against everything, especially higher reason. And people think this is progress!
To conquer an enemy, why not make a friend of them instead. I have done this for years, and if you do it properly you can make some of the most powerful and lasting friendships with people who would otherwise have drained your time and energy. You might say “Well I can’t be fake and like that person!” and that only a weakling wouldn’t dominate them. That is the lower self calling such actions cowardly, and weak, etc., And what is fake or weak about turning a situation to your advantage using strategy and determination? The real fakery is to think that the initial impulse to dislike is someone is an enduring trait that you should listen to and respect. This perspective was meant to be outgrown, just as we have evolved to live in houses instead of mud huts.
The real enemy is often the lower self talking as it does, because it lives in a bygone era and goes on like a broken record. It’s the general who fights the last war over and over again. But the instincts are not the real you, even if we have chosen to identify with them. This is a big problem in Martial arts, as elsewhere, because it greatly limits any progress to a very low level.
The instincts are particularly stimulated by high intensity training, and they are highly prevalent in emergency situations, such as self defence. They flatter us with how great we are at responding to such situations. “What a Hero!” it says. As soon as you hear this kind of thing throw it away immediately, it becomes a burden and a waste of time to think like this for long. It may puff you up for a bit, but it simply gets in the way of clear thinking afterwards. This is true humility.
When facing off against an opponent, the lower self tells us all sorts of overblown things like, “they’ve got nothing on me”, or “I’ll crush that pathetic idiot”. And this is what gives us the overconfidence, delusions even, to act. But it is a mistake to identify with the delusions of the lower self at any other time than to save your skin. It works for you, and cannot work but through you. Whilst it can be thanked for saving our life, the lower self cannot be trusted to make wise decisions because they will simply get us into trouble until we find it everywhere, in our friends, colleagues, and relatives for instance. It must be used, as it often motivates us, and at any rate it can’t be switched off without dire consequences. Instead, we must channel the motivation to in a direction of our choosing, rather than being dictated to by it.
Most of the training out there centres around building confidence to the degree that when someone gets a blackbelt, or wins a few matches, they think they should become a hero. Often, they feel that if they don’t do this, their training was a waste of time. They should have become a superman. In their eyes, it’s now time to prove how tough they are. Examples of this on social media are endless. Again, this is the lower instinctual self talking. It is very convincing and seductive, unless great effort is made by the higher self to silence it. When the higher self asserts its reasoning, you often realise that what you were after all that time is not what you want anymore. This is the often the case with martial arts and “winning at all costs.”
Many people go around showing off how tough they are having learnt some secret moves, but then end up having to give up training altogether through disillusionment and lethargy. This is by no means the natural course of events. Personally, I am not at all bothered about combat effectiveness or becoming the greatest athlete anymore. I recommend following simple exercises, repeating them for years regularly, and through your love of a high ideal to overcome weakness, remain effective, and become wiser, you will make progress better than if you were to take short cuts and buy into delusions.
How many experts out there preach humility, and how you should stay out of trouble, and yet recount with excitement their stories about how they once did this or that to such and such a person. I’ve sat and listened to many of these stories. This is the lower self once again bragging and loudly proclaiming how great it is, in its attempts to undermine those around it. It’s instinctively calculating, and is looking for the lower self in others to be wowed by it. I’ve seen this countless times in martial arts and elsewhere. Often when you look at these individuals, it is obvious they could no longer even run up a flight of stairs. This egocentric behaviour, which is a form of living in the past is something that often afflicts experts who are no longer progressing or evolving.
References
See Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov The Key to the Problems of Existence. in this Book, Aivanhov describes the difference between the higher and lower self, and how to change perspective. In other words, how to relate to the higher self and not be fooled by the tricks of the lower self. I have adapted lot of the ideas from here, as they are highly relevant.