Transmutation

Yesterday I watched my dog watching a gopher push dirt from a hole.
This morning I watched my cat eat a rat he had killed.
This afternoon I had a vision …

As I was playing with my dog, I thought of her watching the gopher.
I thought of the gopher pushing out dirt, excavating tunnels and rooms.
I thought of why gophers need a lot of tunnels, and suddenly I envisioned a snake;
Not the whole snake, just the head poking through a hole underground.
Tough nose, nasal slits, hungry eyes, darting tongue; death.
I realized I had became the gopher in a moment of life or death,
Fighting against an overwhelming foe
If cornered
Or perhaps to save the young …

And then I became the snake, hungry yet patient, willing to wait to strike, willing the prey into fatigue and resignation, knowing the outcome in advance.

I became the gopher again, living through dying, surrendering into the belly of the snake and joining the life force there, just energy ever changing and permutating to take on aspects of new forms. Gopher becomes snake; snake is gopher.

Snake dies, snatched by an eagle to fly away to be eaten. Remains fall to the ground, some now digested, the eagle playing a part. The nutrients and essence enrich the soil, and now gopher/snake/eagle waves upright in the breeze as tall grass.

Cows come by, eat the grass; we humans eat the cows.

Each of these I saw in progression, time rushing forward like seconds on a clock. Each one felt real, not separate but the same, the energy rushing through each connected to all which preceded, back into infinity.

Every molecule, every atom, has a history that we do not know! There are vibrations imprinted that are part of what makes us who we are, and everything we see, feel and touch.

I always interpret, and martial arts is my metaphor, so this is how I want my martial art to be: crafty, like the gopher, who survives by creating back doors to escape; patiently relentless like the snake; swift and sure like the eagle; resilient like grass; strong and life-giving like the cow; sensitive as a human, seeking wisdom of awareness through the pinpoint of consciousness.

Imagine martial arts as not about fighting but as a way of being aware of life. Not awareness itself, which is deeper, but a way of knowing it is there. If we seek completeness in our art, it must exist in our mind. To exist in our mind, we must feel it in our spirit. To feel it in our spirit, we must be aware. To be aware is to understand there are those truths beyond our limits and trust our intuition.

Flow is not flow when we think about flowing, though it can point the way. It is flow when we have access to all, when we become aware of being more than who we are when we think of who we are. It is more because it uses things that exist where our minds do not go, except by letting go.

Anything can have flow; nothing can “have” flow.
It comes but it cannot be taken.
Flow is what takes you with it, not what you contain.
You ride it by letting it show you what it wants to reveal; if you try to force it, it will show you only what you already know.