Cocoon of Thoughts
Sorry it's been so long since my last post. You could say the past year I have been inside of my cocoon of training while trying to sort things out. When I first went to Taiwan 9 years ago everyone warned me that I would experience culture shock. Even though it was tricky adjusting at first, I got used to my life in Taiwan pretty quickly. Continually being able to train martial arts and practice Chinese excited me. But all good things must come to an end, in order for great things to come.
I have been back in America for over a year now and the culture shock I have now seems to be permanent. If you leave your country long enough, it gets easy to see all of the BS when you get back. It's like your vision goes from VCR to DVD.
What I see is that many people are busy obsessing over things that they have been tricked into wanting. Their true desires have been put on hold so that they could find a way to fit into the system. The system pretends to feed the participants but actually feeds on them. Every thing you buy will make you heavier and less able to roam the globe. Eventually you become so heavy you get stuck in a life you don't want.
Let me be the first to tell you if you haven't already heard it....this world is yours. The whole thing belongs to you. At any time of the day you can get up and go any where you want. You can become anything you want. You are God's creation and you are a masterpiece.
Of course you probably don't feel like a masterpiece because the media will remind you, you are not tall enough, strong enough, rich enough, thin enough, happy enough...that's what I mean BS. Even as I eat my breakfast the news is telling me about every person that has been murdered this week. Of course none of the people who were murdered live in my area. In fact there were many people whose lives were saved today. Of course none of the good stuff makes it on the news. It just shows us the worst of the worst on loop. If you inhale poison long enough you might forget you are a masterpiece.
Health wise you are what you eat. Spiritually, you are what you believe. If you believe that you are in a situation that you can't get out of...then you are. If you believe you're not good enough, you're not. So it is very important to filter what you let into your mind.
You could find all of this information in a self help book of your choosing, but your positive thoughts alone are not enough to keep you from inhaling the poison. You''ll eventually find yourself being overwhelmed by your surroundings of negative friends, bosses, places or whatever.
In my cocoon I have been working with the nine palaces. It's an organized pattern around 9 poles or objects that teaches you to use effective footwork with multiple opponents. Bagua requires the stance to be rooted even as we turn, spin, evade or counter the danger. If an unseen danger impacts us in a rooted stance, we can still manage to overpower an opponent that is not rooted.
The problem with positive thinking alone is that you are unable to have a true root. Whether it's money, career, science, or religion, you will not have a true root without Jesus.
Once you have established this root it becomes priority for you to listen to the ideas that run through your mind. Your dreams are the instructions that God has given you for your joy. If you don't follow them, you are only going to get lost. Everything is difficult so you might as well do something you like.
So we must follow our desires in life, just as our instincts in combat. As Bruce Lee said, "Learn unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness." It may feel unnatural at first when you hold the stance for Bagua, Wingchun, or the guitar. Yet given enough time you almost forget that you were ever in a stance. Learning to believe the best about your situation is just as unnatural a feeling as any stance in the beginning. Especially when we have to apply our faith which means we are practicing moving for real combat. This means that it is most important to see the best of your situation at the lowest times of your life.
Start practicing by combating negative situations with positive thoughts. If you are short on money think to yourself "I'll always be rich." These thoughts will eventually form the habit of seeing the best of your situation. You will have the opportunity to use this 1000 times a day. So there is no shortage of opportunities to practice.
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