The Most Dangerous Attack

Im grateful to my master Wu Guo Zheng for the wealth of martial arts that he has blessed me with. I'm also grateful to have touch hands and shared secrets with many masters of many arts through out the years. Each encounter has made a change to my understanding of my style and in essence has changed the way I perceive my life. My father told me to train so I trained. My mother taught me to pray and I prayed. My Chinese teacher urged me to study and I studied. My master molded me to understand and I understood. I have never been special, but I listen especially well. I am the product of the good people that God has put around me. In the end,  ego is the enemy of truth.

Me and my two brothers found the best way to really improve our skills as children was to attack my militant father. Sometimes we'd wait until he was nice and full and we'd launch attacks just as he wiped the food from his mouth. Other times he would be in the middle of watching a game, or just returning from work. Whatever the scenario our attempted ambushes failed repeatedly. My pops spent the majority of my life beating us down.

Of course time becomes a factor as he gets older and we get stronger. But even as we all received black belts in various arts and learned different languages and philosophies, he continued to find a way to tag us.

"Dad caught me with a left hook in his office today. It was so embarrassing." My brother Eddie told me as we watched TV at a Thanksgiving get together. At the time I had been training for about 20 years, which means Eddie had been training for 25 years. No matter what style we were practicing at the time, combat was first and foremost. It was embarrassing to get tagged by a 50 year old man, but no matter how we defended, he always found a target.

My father was the golden gloves champion in Cincinnati before he began his training in martial arts. Before boxing he was a street fighter and a hustler. The tips he gave me and my brothers as a youth continue to be our biggest advantages in our art today.

"A slow attack is easy enough to avoid. A fast attack can be timed and countered. But the attack that starts slow and then ends fast is unblockable." My father told us as we continued hitting the pads in succession.

It's a method you see all of the greats use at one time or another. From Mohammed Ali to Bruce Lee you can see the quiet before the storm as there attack is unleashed at a frequency that can't be anticipated. When the mind sees something slow it is filled with a false sense of security. When the opponent sees it, he is already preparing his counter. As he prepares WHACK, the fight is over.

Every martial arts movement and strategy is just a mirror of life. If there was a monster attacking the city and eating children, people would immediately run out to meet the threat with no regard for their own life. But it's the slow attack that ends fast, that most people won't even see coming.

In the 80's people used to rap and sing about anything that was fun. Talking to girls, eating food, dancing or even bad dreams. It wasn't until the early 90's that the first "gangster rap" was released. Gradually hip hop and gangsters became  synonymous. Instead of rappers becoming more creative in ways to use their vocabulary to express life, they became obsessed with money and death.

Earlier movies that were too violent, sexual or irresponsible were banned from being able to make it to the public. Now if there isn't enough violence or sexuality it just isn't a good movie. People used to be scared to talk about dark magic and now Harry Potter is our hero. Children grow up wishing that they could fall in love with a vampire or a werewolf. Everyone used to watch their mouth in front of authority figures and kids, but now kids are cursing at authority figures regularly. Now a days the only word that you can say that offends people is Jesus.

This change in our society may seem like freedom of choice at first. Just as the slow attack appears to be an opportunity before it suddenly quickens. When did it become more important to be a wealthy man than a good man? When did it become cool to be disrespectful to women? Before when there was a problem in the relationship, they just wanted to find a way to fix it. Now if there's a problem with a relationship, we just want to find a way to switch it. Every movie shows you the excitement of falling in love, but no movie shows you the power of staying in love.

It was a slow and gradual process to get us here, but now the attack is upon us. The earth shakes as a consequence of our spiritual detachment. Those who attempt to grow spiritually are fooled into believing that we can become God. Which is the very first temptation that Satan brought to Eve in the garden. There are hints and clues in every belief system that we were in a spiritual war far before technology came along to distract us. Now the majority of us are too arrogant to even realize we are in pain. We are consumed by consumerism and drunk in deception.

Let me tell you that I love movies. I love tupac. I even read all the Harry Potter books in Chinese. But in addition to being entertained, it is your responsibility to be aware of your own thoughts. As a screen play writer and an actor I can tell you that every minute of film has taken months to prepare and set up. Every angle has been well calculated and if you feel upset and powerless at the end of the film, that was their exact intention. Even bad movies serve a purpose in getting their desired reaction.

I eventually found the counter to my father's attack. I had to learn to fight him with my eyes closed. Then the illusion was gone and I was left to react with only my feelings. No matter how the attack began I was in a good position to react in the end. You could say that I was fighting through faith, which is the same thing that I do now. When I see news or film that promotes death, I close my eyes and know that Jesus has promised me life.