Let me start by saying that I am first in line for the forthcoming ruminations. Never do I absolve myself, and if I fall seven, I’ll get up eight, and keep striving in the path of sincerity and truth. But truth is a funny thing. We conflate and distort buzzwords and catch phrases from the ether, for truth. We call it “my truth”. Nothing speaks louder of fear and hypocrisy than this.
There is a real “my truth”, but that is a variance of at best 2%, from the universal truth. The other “my truth” that everyone flings around in their consciousness is actual bullshit. It is the excuse.
“Inside and outside must be same”…I say this to my boys, in my now infamous karate master persona, with appropriated looks and accent. I say it to them jovially, but I am dead serious. Unless you fear for your life, or are trying to reconcile two people for the greater good, what you present to the outside world must reflect your inside. Be firm, and don’t worry about being judged. Those who do, go the other way. They are lost. They parrot from the ether, to fill the void of their inside.
We are all created equal, with the same purpose, and the journey that we travel has the same destination. The straight path to the destination is truth…not “my truth”, but truth. Truth has some inconveniences and struggles. It requires being firm, being patient. It requires striving, and self sacrifice. “My truth”, on the other hand, is a fine tuned machine to bypass those tests, in favor of one’s insecurities and egoic, selfish desires.
The karate-do journey must also reflect the same truth. “Inside karate, must be same as outside karate”. It must be pure, otherwise it is for show, or for some other insecurity that derails one’s path of self discovery and self improvement. Your karate is for you, not for anyone else. It is a tool to align inside and outside, both physically and emotionally. If your karate has become material, something that you hold on to, you have lost your way. If your life has become material, something that you hold on to, you have also lost your way.
Shoshin Karate-Do International 