"You can't get much darker than the human brain. It's got no conscience. It wants what it wants when it wants it, but most of all it wants to survive, and will do whatever's necessary to preserve itself. But then there's the mind .... That which makes us sentient, when sees a bigger picture, a different perspective. You can't allow the darkness - or your brain - to overrule your mind." But, it is not easy.
Some of us will succumb to the influence, willing to sacrifice innocence in order to win a single battle, becoming nearly indistinguishable from those we are fighting." The best weapon is awareness. Knowing that your perspectives and values are being subverted forces you to question yourself. Preserve the real you early on, and that is the person who will prevail." - F. Paul Wilson, The Dark at the End
If you can say to yourself out the gate, "I don't want to subject anyone to that mindless monkey," then you are winning that internal battle, the most important battle anyone can engage.
In past posts as well as in many of the writings I have encountered in my studies I have heard how important our internal struggles are, our internal battles. Some assume that is a self-discipline issue gained through martial art training but in reality it is a training that one must tackle even if they don't take martial arts training. It is better the consider that a discipline like the martial arts is an awakening of a sort to what we should focus our awareness on that is internal to ourselves.
If we can conquer our inner darkness some refer to as ego, pride or tribal monkey posturing violent tendencies we can better avoid and deescalate a conflict. We can better apply our martial skills if the first two become moot or we cannot avoid a violent encounter. It is a type of awareness I have not often seen discussed out in the open. I sometimes wonder if this is another way our "ego's" fools us so we remain stagnant and violent.
2 comments:
These are things I've been brooding over lately, and I think you're right that the issue is something deeper than the martial arts and doesn't necessarily concern them directly, but they do have a great effect. The discipline helps, that initial decision not to let the monkey take over ... these are incredibly helpful ... but in order to keep the monkey at bay there is some other secret ingredient. I think it has something to do with desire/hope. We can be extremely strong and have all the disicipline in the world. We can be extremely intelligent and use our conscious thoughts to keep the monkey at bay ... but I think both of those can fail because we do have limits. Very interesting post.
I think the secret answer to all of this is the question, "Why?" Successfully dealing with the monkey requires engaging this question.
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