“I am the Universe”

Sometimes during the practice of Aikido you can really feel you are more than bones, flesh and hair. Sometimes when you cannot breath because your sensei asks you to be the uke for him you can feel what you are when there is nothing left. Sometimes you can leave the earth for some seconds of ukemi flight and and the earth is above your head and you know everything is fine. Sometimes you will feel like a wood plank. Sometimes like someone else. Sometimes very rarely you can proclaim:”I am the Universe.”

For the spectator Aikido may look like a choreographed dance. But 90 percent of the real technique is internal or the atemi movements are so small that not perceptible. Sometimes not too often because it would kill you, you will feel the immense power of an Aikido move. You will feel when you suddenly loose the ground beneath your feet. And you do not know what had happened but you are lying on the floor. These will be the moments when you stop to think that Aikido is only a “dance”. It is a cosmic dance. And do you really want to fight the cosmic powers?

You cannot fight. You should not fight. Do not resist. Take ukemi. Once a fairly new Aikido practitioner became resistant and stiff while holding my sensei arm in gyaku hanmi. We should do ikkyo. But the uke only stiffened his arm and made ikkyo very hard to perform. My sensei looked at the firm gripping hand, then looked into the eyes of the uke. This was a moment where I, who was sitting in seiza next to this scene, would have loosen my grip. Alas the uke did not do that. So he was struck to the mat with a very soft strike with the edge of the other free hand to the carotid artery. The move was very determined but not devastating. Purposeful but not strong.But hey you just told us “Do not fight” and your sensei struck this poor student to the mat. Firstly the strike come from the heart. Secondly akikdo is not “evade, evade, evade”. It is rather regaining the balance. When you are in balance you are not stiff. When you are not stiff you can feel the ki. When you feel the ki you get connected to the universe. Are you doing QiGong? I can very much recommend it to you. Aikido is like a roller coaster, but QiGong is like … hard to find the right words, like a roller coaster within you. One have to feel it. You feel you are more. You really become one with the universe. This sounds very sophisticated but it is not.

It should be the usual feeling when you wake up, when you breath, when you move, when you love, when you fight.

But many aspects of the modern life hinder our capability to see the obvious truth.

We are here now and never again. Let this thought ring in your head for a while. You should feel something when thinking this thought again. Everybody will feel differently and different. But this thought evokes something. It connects us with something. Call it Kami, God, Qi or the Universe. Or do not call it at all, just be sure you do not miss this feeling.

I am the Universe. Sounds weird. How can a small person, on a small planet, in a small solar system, in one galaxy be the whole universe? By using our imagination. The flow of our electrical brain activities are detectable. I think therefor I am.

Our thoughts are faster than the light. They can move freely into the past and the future. They control us and they free us. They are the motor of the movement. They are deeds in status nascendi. They are the future, compressed into the present. They are expanding, and they stay still. Like the Universe.

What does this mean to be the Universe? Does this mean to understand the Universe? Does this mean act like the Universe? How does the Universe behave? It is. It just is. It fulfills its hidden aim, its hidden goal. And we may just take a short glimpse on the way of the Universe. The Do of the Universe. The Do of the Energy. KiDo.The harmonious way of the energy. Aikido.