Articles with the Tag petaluma

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 41). 

Introduction

In this series of class we worked to achieve a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3. 

In our last class we focused on the experience of ourselves that is self-referenced.  This self-referenced experience provides freedom from the need to use the creation as a reference.

Today we will conclude this series with a second class that focuses on the wholeness of an identity that is self-referenced. 

This is an identity which can provide its own reference as to who it is.  It does not need to refer to the creation in order to have an experience of its own wholeness.  As long as the identity-the I/self-requires interaction with the creation there is a lack of wholeness within the identity’s experience of itself and the likelihood of entanglement with the creation. 

In today’s class we will work to forge an identity that is self-referencing which produces wholeness and the healthiest possible relationship to the creation.

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself. 

 O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity. 

This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of the level or aspect of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference becomes entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may be so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and we say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus will be on the experience of a self-referenced identity.  The self-referenced identity is a major movement toward the most original self present even before the dawn of creation.

There are two specific featured of the self-referenced identity we will focus on in today’s class. 

 First, the initial experience of the energies of self-referencing are sometimes more subtle as the more familiar interaction between self and creation.  We don’t get that adrenalin rush that can happen when the self and creation interact.

Second, the freedom from using the creation as a reference can seem like an ultimate experience.  It is a very deep experience.  It provides the opportunity with additional practice to move toward the more ultimate experience of the most original consciousness present before the creation itself.   

We will continue to use the technique, mune-tsuki irimi nage to help us experience the self-referenced identity. 

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is

The same as the last class, going through the three rounds with the exhalations, inhalations and pauses, working to experience a wholeness that is stable throughout all three parts of the practice.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Fuller Experience of Wholeness in a Self-Referenced Identity

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique mune-tsuki irimi nage. For our practice today let’s frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as an integral part of your identity.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is my experience of interaction with the uke that is a part of myself?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

Clearing and Settling

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice.

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists. 

When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with, we will experience the downstream effects of the fragmentation in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself in the creation.  An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and also interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its downstream results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Brining the two parts of the I into balance

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has the capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?

Fire/Water/Steam

Before we go on to the technique we will use another practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

What does this second practice add to your experience beyond the mirroring?

While focusing on the self-referenced experience of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the self-referenced I/self. 

As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the self-referenced experience? 

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the first round?

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of the self-referenced I/self.

Circle/Center

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self? 

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Here we will continue to use the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

Again focusing on the self-referencing I/self, let’s go back to the technique. 

The change in the technique experience provides the concrete result of the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the self-referenced level two I/self. 

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the second round?

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of the self-referenced I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of the self-referenced I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of the self-referenced I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

Here we then continue the practice of the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again, we are focusing on the self-referenced experience of the level three I.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique experience shows the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself what is the experience of the self-referenced I/self? 

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is different than the third round?

Conclusion

In this class we completed this series focused on the experience of finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each progressively deeper level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the forged identity of the technique.  The takemusu moment is an experience of enhanced functionality with reduced potential for new entanglements being formed.

We concluded this series with a practice of experiencing the self-referenced I/self-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 113).

Feedback and Discussion

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

 

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 39). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3. 

In our last class we focused on the deeper/finer I/self interaction within the creation at a turnaround place in which there is high level functionality while minimizing the potential for entanglement.

The reduced potential for entanglement results from the creation of a forged identity made up of the clearer I and the creation.  The balance and integration of this forged identity allows for functionality from a much greater place of wholeness.  Wholeness of identity is a key component in functioning without entanglement.

It also provides a kind of healing for the creation which also benefits from functionality without entanglement.  O Sensei provided many fine examples of a supremely high level of functionality without entanglement-A Life in Aikido by Kisshomaru Ueshbia (pgs. 258-260).  

Today we will conclude this series of classes with a focus on the wholeness of an identity that is self-referenced.  This means that the identity can provide its own reference as to who it is.  It does need to refer to the creation in order to have an experience of its own wholeness.  As long as the identity-the I/self-requires interaction with the creation there is a lack of wholeness within the identity’s experience of itself and the likelihood of entanglement with the creation. 

In our previous classes we asked questions about what we could do to enhance our relationship with the creation. 

In today’s class we will work to forge an identity that is self-referencing which produces wholeness and the healthiest possible relationship to the creation.

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself. 

O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity. 

This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of the level or aspect of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference becomes entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may be so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and we say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus will be on the experience of a self-referenced identity.  The self-referenced identity is a major movement toward the most original self present even before the dawn of creation. 

We will use the technique, mune-tsuki irimi nage to help us experience the self-referenced identity. 

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is

as you go through the three rounds with the exhalations, inhalations and pauses, work to experience a wholeness that is stable throughout all three parts of the practice. 

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Wholeness in a Self-Referenced Identity

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique mune-tsuki irimi nage. For our practice today let’s frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as an integral part of your identity.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is my experience of interaction with the uke who is a part of myself?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice.

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists. 

When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with, we will experience the downstream effects of the fragmentation in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself in the creation.  An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and also interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its downstream results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has the capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the self-referenced experience of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the self-referenced I/self. 

As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the self-referenced experience? 

Here we will use another practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the first round?

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of the self-referenced I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self? 

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the self-referencing I/self, let’s go back to the technique. 

The change in the technique experience provides the concrete experience of the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the self-referenced level two I/self. 

Here we will again use the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the second round?

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of the self-referenced I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of the self-referenced I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of the self-referenced I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again, we are focusing on the self-referenced experience of the level three I.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique experience shows the benefits of the self-referenced I/self.

As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself what is the experience of the self-referenced I/self? 

Here we continue the practice of the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the two parts of the I interacting with each other which includes the mune-tsuki irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity that is self-referenced without regard to outward experience or performance.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is different than the third round?

Conclusion

In this class we completed this series focused on the experience of finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each progressively deeper level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the forged identity of the technique.  The takemusu moment is an experience of enhanced functionality with reduced potential for new entanglements being formed.

We concluded this series with a practice of experiencing the self-referenced I/self-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pgs. 88-89).

Feedback and Discussion

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 128). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to experience how a deeper experience of I/self can help us find our place within the creation. 

In our last class we focused on the deeper/finer I/self interaction within the creation at a turnaround place in which high level functionality occurs while minimizing the potential for entanglement.

The reduced potential for entanglement results from the creation of a forged identity made up of the clearer I and the creation.  The balance and integration of this forged identity allows for functionality from a much greater place of wholeness.  Wholeness of identity is a key component in functioning without entanglement.

It also provides a kind of healing for the creation which also benefits from functionality without entanglement.  O Sensei provided many fine examples of a supremely high level of functionality without entanglement-A Life in Aikido by Kisshomaru Ueshbia (pgs. 258-260).  

Today we will continue this focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self with additional practice in the forging of the I with the creation without creating new entanglement.  O Sensei’s name for this is takemusu. To designate this experience we will use the phrase turnaround place. 

This is a phrase developed by Nadeau Sensei.  A turnaround place is one where we have disentangled and backtracked from our starting place to a position from which we can turn around and face the creation.  From this turnaround place we can forge a balanced and integrated identity that interacts with the creation in a way that minimizes new entanglement. 

In our previous classes we asked questions about what we could do to enhance our relationship with the creation. 

In today’s class we will work to forge this takemusu identity with the creation, in a healthy way that reduces the potential for entanglement.

The forging of the takemusu identity is a crucial part of practice because once we achieve a level of balance and integration of the I, the experience is so pleasurable we could stop our practice there.  This results in a lack of harmony at this level with the creation.  It can also make it difficult to retain the balanced and integrated I. 

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself. 

O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity. 

This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of the level or aspect of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference becomes entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may be so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and we say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus continues to be on the co-creative relationship between the I/self and the creation that minimizes entanglement. 

We will continue to use the technique, katate-dori kokyu nage to represent a portion of the creation to help us experience the  takemusu identity-the disentangled state. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique and the uke. 

It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process. 

The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is also a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is

As you go through the three rounds allow the exhalations, inhalations and pauses to come together into a breathing identity.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Forging an Identity With the Creation

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. Begin with the practice of katate-dori kokyu nage.  For our practice today let’s continue to frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as a portion of the creation.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is my experience of interaction with the uke?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice.

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists. 

When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with, we will experience the downstream effects of the fragmentation in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and also interferes with the unit’s ability to perform.  From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its downstream results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has the capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. 

As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will use another practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori kokyu nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity as the forged one of the technique we are doing.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the first round?

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self? 

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the growth in your co-creative relationship with the creation. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete experience of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level two I.  As you go through this third round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will continue to use the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam. 

In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level two I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori kokyu nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity as the forged one of the technique we are doing but at level two.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the second round?

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again, we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the level three I, as we go through the technique to experience functionality with minimal entanglement.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the level three I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level three I. 

As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique?  Here we continue with the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level three I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori kokyu nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity at level three as the forged one of the technique we are doing.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is different than the third round?

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each progressively deeper level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the forged identity of the technique.  The takemusu moment is an experience of enhanced functionality with reduced potential for new entanglements being formed.-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 129).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to connect with the task as a takemusu moment, forging an identity of the I and the task you want to complete.  See how this co-creative integration may provide you a fuller, less entangled experience of the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

 

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 127). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to experience how a deeper experience of I/self can help us find our place within the creation. 

In our last class we focused on the deeper/finer I/self interaction within the creation at a turnaround place in which high level functionality occurs while minimizing the potential for entanglement.

The reduced potential for entanglement results from the creation of a forged identity made up of the clearer I and the creation.  The balance and integration of this forged identity allows for functionality from a much greater place of wholeness.  Wholeness of identity is a key component in functioning without entanglement.  O Sensei provided many fine examples of a supremely high level of functionality without entanglement-A Light on Transmission by Mitsugi Saotome (pgs. 107-108).  

Today we will continue this focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self with additional practice in the forging of the I with the creation without creating new entanglement.  O Sensei’s name for this is takemusu. To designate this experience we will use the phrase turnaround place. 

This is a phrase developed by Nadeau Sensei.  A turnaround place is one where we have disentangled and backtracked from our starting place to a position from which we can turn around and face the creation.  From this turnaround place we can forge a balanced and integrated identity that interacts with the creation in a way that minimizes new entanglement. 

In our previous classes we asked questions about what we could do to enhance our relationship with the creation. 

In today’s class we will work to forge this takemusu identity with the creation, in a healthy way that reduces the potential for entanglement.

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself. 

O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity. 

This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of the level or aspect of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference becomes entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may be so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and we say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus continues to be on the co-creative relationship between the I/self and the creation that minimizes entanglement. 

We will use the technique, katate-dori kokyu nage to represent a portion of the creation to help us experience the  takemusu identity-the disentangled state. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique and the uke. 

It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process. 

The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is also a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is as you go through the three rounds allow the exhalations, inhalations and pauses to come together into a unified whole.  

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is

as you go through the three rounds allow the exhalations, inhalations and pauses to come together into a unified whole.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Practice in Forging a Unit Free of Entanglement

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. Begin with the practice of katate-dori kokyu nage.  For our practice today let’s continue to frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as a portion of the creation.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is my experience of interaction with the uke?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice.

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with, we will experience the downstream effects of the fragmentation in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and also interferes with the unit’s ability to perform.  From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its downstream results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has the capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience.

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.  As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will use another practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity as the forged one of the technique we are doing.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the first round?

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self? 

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the growth in your co-creative relationship with the creation. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete experience of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level two I.  As you go through this third round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will continue to use the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam. 

In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level two I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity as the forged one of the technique we are doing but at level two.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the second round?

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again, we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the level three I, as we go through the technique to experience functionality with minimal entanglement.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the level three I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level three I. 

As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique?  Here we continue with the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level three I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the katate-dori irimi nage technique and the uke.  Our goal is to create an identity at level three as the forged one of the technique we are doing.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is different than the third round?

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each progressively deeper level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the forged identity of the technique.  The takemusu moment is an experience of enhanced functionality with reduced potential for new entanglements being formed.-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 127).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to connect with the task as a takemusu moment, forging an identity of the I and the task you want to complete.  See how this co-creative integration may provide you a fuller, less entangled experience of the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

 

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pgs. 46-47). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to experience how a deeper experience of I/self can help us find our place within the creation.

Today we will continue to focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self in a way that allows interaction with the creation without creating new entanglement.  O Sensei’s name for this is takemusu, we will use the phrase turn around place. 

This is a phrase developed by Nadeau Sensei.  A turn around place is one where we have disentangled and backtracked from our starting place to a position in which we can turn around and face the creation and interact with the creation in a way that does not create new entanglement. 

In our previous classes we asked questions about what we could do to enhance our relationship with the creation.  In today’s class we will work to experience a healthy relationship with the creation that reduces the potential for entanglement.

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself.  O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity.  This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of which aspect or level of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

 The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference is entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may get so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and causes us to say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus is a focus on the co-creative relationship between the I/self and the creation that minimizes entanglement. 

We will use the technique, ten-chi nage, for today and Thursday to represent a portion of the creation to help us experience the  takemusu turn around place or the disentangled state. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique and the uke. 

It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process. 

The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is also a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Our technique for today and Thursday will be ten-chi nage.

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Our tip today on the misogi breathing is as you go through the three rounds notice at the pauses, an increasing degree of release within your body.  

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing

is as you go through the three rounds notice at the pauses, an increasing degree of release within your body.

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

 Interacting in Creation Free of Entanglement

 Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique.

 Begin with the practice of ten-chi nage.  For our practice today let’s frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as a portion of the creation.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is the experience of interaction with the uke?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses. 

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing.  

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling.  

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper.  

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level. 

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing? 

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice. 

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience). 

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with we will experience the downstream effects of it in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self.  

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition. 

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self. 

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself.  

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half. 

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I.  

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has a capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I. 

What is the experience of this mirrored image? 

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives.  

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I? 

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual. 

What is the experience of this mirrored image? 

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process?  

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience.  The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique. 

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self. 

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center of I/self. 

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self?  

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself. 

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2. 

How is your experience different than level 1? 

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the growth in your co-creative relationship with the creation.  

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.  As you go through this third round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu turn around experience?
• Does this more whole I help in experiencing functionality in the creation without entanglement? 

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes. 

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37). 

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center.  

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other. 

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s. 

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self? 

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself. 

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3. 

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique as a way to experience your place.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I. 

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.  Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.  As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself how has my experience of functionality changed from level 2 to level 3?

• Does this more whole I help in experiencing your technique in the takemusu moment?

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the takemusu moment as a moment of functionality in which new entanglements are not formed.-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 48).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to connect with the task as a takemusu moment.  See how this co-creative integration may provide you a fuller experience of place and purpose.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

 

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Essence of Aikido by John Stevens (pgs. 29-30). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to experience how a deeper experience of I/self can help us find our place within the creation. 

In our last we focused on the deeper/finer I/self interaction with the creation at a turnaround place in which functionality occurs while minimizing the potential for entanglement.  

Today we will continue this focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self in a way that allows forging of the I with the creation without creating new entanglement.  O Sensei’s name for this is takemusu. To designate this experience we will use the phrase turnaround place. 

This is a phrase developed by Nadeau Sensei.  A turnaround place is one where we have disentangled and backtracked from our starting place to a position in which we can turn around and face the creation and interact with the creation in a way that does not create new entanglement. 

In our previous classes we asked questions about what we could do to enhance our relationship with the creation.  In today’s class we will work to forge with the creation, in a healthy way that reduces the potential for entanglement.

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself. 

O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we call I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity. 

This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of the level or aspect of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference is entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task. 

In some cases we may be so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and causes us to say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

There are two fundamental experiences of the I/self according to O Sensei and many other spiritual traditions.  One is the I/self within the creation.  The second is the most original experience of the I/self outside the creation.   

Today our focus continues to be on the co-creative relationship between the I/self and the creation that minimizes entanglement. 

We will continue to use the technique, ten-chi nage to represent a portion of the creation to help us experience the  takemusu turnaround place-the disentangled state. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique and the uke. 

It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process. 

The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is also a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing

is as you go through the three rounds allow the exhalations, inhalations and pauses to come together into a unified whole.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Forging a Unit Free of Entanglement

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. Begin with the practice of ten-chi nage.  For our practice today let’s continue to frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but as a portion of the creation.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what is the experience of interaction with the uke?

• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s continue with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self.  We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice.

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented. 

Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with, we will experience the downstream effects of the fragmentation in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and also interferes with the unit’s ability to perform.  From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its downstream results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has a capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward. 

As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.  As you go through this second round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will use another practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the ten-chi nage technique and the uke.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the first round?

3. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self? 

We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the growth in your co-creative relationship with the creation. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level two I.  As you go through this third round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique? 

Here we will continue to use the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam. 

In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level 2 I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the ten-chi nage technique and the uke.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is it different than the second round?

4. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again, we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the level three I, as we go through the technique to experience  functionality without entanglement.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the level three I.

Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative level three I.  As you go through this fourth round of practice ask yourself what is the takemusu experience?  What is your experience of the takemusu experience as you do the technique?  Here we continue with the practice from our forging process, the interaction of fire/water/steam.  In this version of the fire/water steam process we have the clearer more integrated level three I interacting with the part of the creation represented by the ten-chi nage technique and the uke.

• What is your experience of the technique after this forging practice? How is different than the third round?

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each progressively deeper level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to experience the takemusu moment as a moment of functionality in which after forging there is enhanced functionality without new entanglements being formed.-The Essence of Aikido by John Stevens (pg. 43).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to connect with the task as a takemusu moment, after a brief forging practice.  See how this co-creative integration may provide you a fuller, less entangled experience of the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Philosophy of Aikido by John Stevens (pg. 71). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to experience how a deeper experience of I/self can have a positive effect on the creation, specifically the Aikido technique we are training with.

Today we will continue to focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self in relationship to the creation. 

Our focus in this class will be on further opening the relationship between the creation and the deeper I/self experience. 

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself.  O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

The I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we are calling I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity.  This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of which aspect or level of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we use the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference is entangled with the creation preventing us from experiencing the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task.  In some cases we may get so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and causes us to say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

Today our focus is on expanding beyond the healing focus from our last class, to more fully experience the co-creative relationship between the I/self and the creation as embodied by our uke. 

We will use the technique, katate-dori irimi, to represent a portion of the creation to help us experience the co-creative changes that occur as we work with deeper levels of I/self. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique and the uke. 

It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process.  The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is also a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Our technique for today and Thursday will be katate-dori irimi nage.

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing:

is as you go through the three rounds notice at the pauses, from an open ended perspective, changes in your body.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Deeper Co-creative Relationship With the Creation Through the Experience of the I/Self

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. 

• Begin with the practice of katate-dori irimi nage. For our practice today let’s frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but in an open ended way by asking what do you the uke need?  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what does my partner need?
• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s start with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling. 

Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

3. From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self. We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice. 

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented.  Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that an initial opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with we will experience the downstream effects of it in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has a capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned outward toward the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward.  As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. Ask what does your uke need?  As you go through this second round of practice do you have a clearer sense of what your partner needs?
• Does this more whole I help your partner to begin to fulfill what they need? 

4. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center of I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self?  We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the outcome for your partner from the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative healing interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. Ask what do you the uke need?  As you go through this third round of practice do you have a clearer sense of what your partner needs?

Does this more whole I help your partner to fulfill what they need? 

5. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique as a practice for your partner.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative healing interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. Ask what do you the uke need?  As you go through this fourth round of practice do you have a clearer sense of what your partner needs?
• Does this more whole level 3 I help your partner to fulfill what they need? 

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each level of I resulted in a co-creative interaction to assist your uke in fulfilling a need.

In future classes we will work to experience I/self at our deepest possible level-The Essence of Aikido by John Stevens (pg. 21).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before the next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to integrate with the task.  See how this co-creative integration may change the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

 

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 33). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3.  We then expanded the practice to include how a deeper experience of I/self can have a positive effect on the creation, specifically the Aikido technique we are training with.

Today we will continue to work on this deeper experience of the I/self with further dimensional shifts. 

We will continue to focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self in relationship to the creation.  Our focus in this class will be on the healing capabilities in the creation resulting from a deeper I/self experience. 

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself.  O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit, that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not entangled in the creation itself. 

We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

That the I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation is true at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we are calling I, provides a consistent sense of personal identity.  This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives, regardless of which aspect or level of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we have been using the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference is entangled with the creation so that we don’t experience the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task.  In some cases we may get so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and causes us to say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

Today our focus is on the co-creative aspect of the I/self as a healer. 

We will use the technique, kata-dori ikkyo, to represent a portion of the creation to help us to experience the co-creative changes occurring in the creation as we work with deeper levels of I/self. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique.  It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process.  The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Our technique for today will continue to be kata-dori ikkyo.

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing:

As you go through the three rounds, notice at the pauses the availability of healing energy in your body. 

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Co-creative Healing Experience of the I/Self

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. 

• Begin with the practice of kata-dori ikkyo. For our practice today let’s frame the uke’s role not as an attacker but someone in need of healing.  As you go through this first round of practice ask yourself what healing does my partner need?
• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s start with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling.  Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at a deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

3. From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self. We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice. 

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented.  Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that a real opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with we will experience the downstream effects of it in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has a capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned toward what is going on in the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward.  As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

Rrom here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I. Does this more whole I help your partner to begin the healing process? 

4. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center of I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self?  We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the healing outcome for your partner from the technique as well as your personal experience.  The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative healing interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the level 2 co-creative healing I.

5. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again we are focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique as a healing practice for your partner.  Pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience.  The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative healing interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the level 3 co-creative healing I.

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each level of I resulted in a co-creative healing change in your uke.

In future classes we will continue to explore the co-creative actions of the I/self as we move further from entanglement to wholeness-The Secret Teachings of Aikido translated by John Stevens (pg. 32).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to integrate with the task.  See how this co-creative integration may change the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.

I appreciate everyone participating in this new format and welcome to everyone coming for the first time.  We are working to keep our regular class schedule going so it will be easier to return to our training together.

Please share any comments, suggestions or questions.

This difficult time; while we wish it was not going on, is an opportunity to deepen our practice by appreciating what is really important to us and what we can let go of-Shinki by Nobuyuki Watanabe (pg. 60). 

Introduction

In our last on-line class we continued our series on a fuller/finer experience of the I/self.  We worked to balance and integrate the I and then made a dimensional shift from level 1 to level 2 and then to level 3. 

Today we will continue to work on this deeper experience of the I/self with further dimensional shifts.  We will focus specifically on the co-creative function of the I/self in relationship to the creation. 

Defining I/self can be a difficult task.  We will rely more on experiential practices than definitions in words.

However, a very basic outline may help us to get started. 

O Sensei talked about the consciousness we call self as being present even before the dawn of creation. 

By this he meant two very important things that will help us to focus our practice. 

First, consciousness at this most original level played an instrumental role in the birth of creation itself.  O Sensei said the energies of creation, coming from spirit that formed the creation, flowed through the consciousness we call the self at the very beginning of creation.  Consciousness was present even before the creation and was a co-creative partner in the birth of creation. 

Second, since consciousness was present prior to the creation, it is not a part of the creation or the function of creation but is an experiential partner to creation.  At its most original level, self is a mirror that provides clarity and order to creation precisely because it is not a part of the creation itself.  We worked with this to some degree in our most recent series of classes with the experience of the Pure Witness.

When you experience the beauty and harmony of the balanced energies of creation this experience provides a clearer opportunity for I/self to shine through. 

It is however important to recognize that when you feel the balance and harmony of creation you are not experiencing the self but a beautiful experience of the creation.   

That the I/self functions as a witness or experiential partner to creation is true at this most original level of creation. 

Our more normal experience of I/self, which we are calling I, functions to provide a consistent sense of personal identity.  This is true in both the ordinary and extraordinary experiences in our daily lives regardless of which aspect or level of the creation with which we are interacting.

This is how we have been using the experience of I in our forging practice.

The I/self is the part of our system, at a basic level, that provides a qualitative experience of satisfaction and meaning to our activities.  It is the source of our perspective on our lives and our world in both an immediate and overall sense.

The health of the I is a big factor in how well we forge with the units that are important to us both in the sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and in our functional performance. 

The overall goal of this series of classes is to experience progressively finer/fuller dimensional levels of I/self.

 O Sensei and most other spiritual traditions teach that the I in our ordinary frame of reference is entangled with the creation so that we don’t experience the I/self in its deeper, finer levels. 

He said starting at the dawn of creation and then as the creation unfolded, we became increasingly entangled.  This entanglement interferes with our ability to more fully experience I/self and also interferes with the functioning of creation itself.

We have all experienced versions of this in our daily lives.  One example is when attempting a difficult or challenging task the harder we try the less able we are to complete the task.  In some cases we may get so upset over our inability to function at the level we desire that frustration and anger boils over and causes us to say “I don’t know who I am.”

Our plan for this series is first to practice disentanglement between the I and the creation. 

This process will allow us to backtrack from an entangled state to a state closer to the experience of I/self at the most original level before entanglement first occurred.

Today our focus is on the co-creative aspect of the I/self. 

 We will use the technique, kata-dori ikkyo, to represent a portion of the creation to help us to experience the co-creative changes occurring in the creation as we work with deeper levels of I/self. 

The changes will be influenced by the level of I/self you are experiencing as well as the features of the technique.  It is important to recognize that your level of experience of I/self is a part of the co-creative process.  The creation in its manifestation, in this case as an Aikido technique, is a partner in the co-creative process.  The creation gets a vote as well as the I/self.   

We can also continue an additional practice we added in our previous series.  On a purely voluntary basis, select a call-off with which you would like to work throughout this series. 

This will help to make the practices in each class more personal and well connected. 

It is an opportunity to practice dimensionality with something of specific significance to you over a series of classes and in a longer timeframe.   

Our technique for today and Thursday will be kata-dori ikkyo.

Let’s bow in and start with misogi breathing and a good full warm-up.

Five Principles for Ki Breathing

Our tip today on the misogi breathing

as you go through the three rounds, notice at the pauses between rounds how the practice changes your experience of your body.  

1. Breathe out with the sound of HA, don’t let your breath just leak out
2. Breathe out as calmly and quietly as possible
3. Breathe out the Ki of your head to the Ki of your toe
4. Breathe in from the tip of your nose until your body is full of air
5. Calm your mind infinitely smaller at the one point after inhaling.

Co-creative Experience of the I/Self

1. Let’s begin with a round of practice with the technique. 

• Begin with the practice of kata-dori ikkyo.
• Get feedback on the technique to establish a baseline to use for comparison as the practice progresses.

2. Let’s start with a basic practice of clearing and settling. This is how we begin our forging practice.  Here we will spend a little more time and attention by working through several levels of clearing. 

It is a simple process of relaxing and settling.  Feeling the back, the under half of the body and then deeper. 

Let’s go through three cycles of clearing to experience clearing at deeper level.

What is your experience of this deeper level of clearing?

3. From this deeper level of clearing let’s work with the two parts of the I/self. We work with the I/self having two parts in our forging practice. 

One part is more awareness oriented and the other is more experientially oriented.  Our shorthand for these are the mind of I (awareness/thinking) and the body of I (feeling/experience).

Our goal, initially, is to experience these parts of the I and their interaction with each other.  It is in this interaction that a real opportunity for growth and development of the I/self exists.  When there is a lack of connection or even conflict between the parts of the I we are starting from a place of fragmentation rather than wholeness. 

If this lack of integration is not acknowledged and worked with we will experience the downstream effects of it in reduced satisfaction and performance.  It will also make it difficult to progress to dimensionally finer experiences of I/self. 

One way this happens is that part of the I ranges out and tries to obtain satisfaction from outside itself. 

An example is when the mind of I tries to direct the unit, it results in maintaining the fragmentation of the I within itself and interferes with the unit’s ability to perform. 

From O Sensei’s perspective, this tendency toward entanglement and its results is a key part of the difficulty of the human condition.

Bringing the two parts of the I into a more balanced and integrated experience with each other is a big step toward reducing entanglement and its resulting negative effects.  It is also an important first step in experiencing dimensionally finer levels of I/self.

Our practice starts by allowing each part of the I an opportunity to experience itself. 

In some cases this may take some time as one or both parts may need to balance and integrate within themselves before they can interact with their counterpart other half.

Let’s now move to a practice of interaction between the two parts of the I. 

Starting with the mind of I, let’s use the practice from our forging classes.  The mind of I has a capacity to mirror.  Often this mirroring capability is turned toward what is going on in the outside world.  Here we will turn it inward.  As the mind of the I, allow a mirrored image of the body of I-the more feeling/experiential part of the I-to form in you the mind of I.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

Then switching perspectives move to the body of I.  Allow yourself a moment to change perspectives. 

Before we continue with the mirroring practice, what is the difference in your experience between the mind of I and now the body of I?

From here the body of I mirrors the mind of I.  The body of I may take a different approach to mirroring than the mind of I does.  It may not even be visual.

What is the experience of this mirrored image?

We now have the two parts of the I mirroring each other.  What is your experience?  What is their relationship with each other in this mirroring process? 

Is there a greater overall experience of wholeness as I?  Focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience. 

The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the more whole co-creative I.

4. Let’s now move to a deeper level of experience of I/self.

We can use the circle/center practice to get started.  Open a circle of the next level of I/self and the next level of center of I/self.

Our question-what is the circle and the center of the next level of I/self?  We can use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the space to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I we just did, but now at level 2.

How is your experience different than level 1?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as you go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience.  The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the level 2 co-creative I.

5. Let’s now move to level 3 of I/self. Let’s work with a quieting practice we have used in previous classes.

Our practice is a breathing exercise from Koichi Tohei Sensei.  He calls it the Breathing Method That Transcends Breathing-Aikido in Daily Life (pgs. 36-37).

The practice starts with a very slow and quiet inhalation through the nose and then focusing your attention on your center.  This allows your attention to rest comfortably and gently on your center. 

From this gentle focus on center move the hands into position in front of your center with the left hand on top of the right, thumbs pointing toward each other.

This part of the practice is added to Tohei Sensei’s.

Visualize the circle formed by your hands as an opening to a place of great, great quiet. It is an opening like a tunnel or a portal to a quiet place where we can ask the question what is the experience of the next level of I/self?

We can continue to use O Sensei’s principle of the mountain echo to allow the experience of the next level of I/self to present itself.

Then let’s repeat the mirroring and integration practice with the I, but now at level 3.

How is your experience different than level 2?

Again focusing on the co-creative capability of the I, as we go through the technique, pay careful attention to the change in the technique as well as your personal experience.  The change in the technique provides the concrete result of the co-creative interaction that comes from the I.

• Let’s go back to the technique to experience it as the level 3 co-creative I.

Conclusion

In this class we continued our series to experience finer/fuller levels of I/self.  We started with some fundamental practices from our forging process. 

Then we worked with a more refined level of I/self going from level 1 to level 2 to level 3. 

At each level of I we went back to the technique to experience how each level of I resulted in a co-creative change in the technique.

In future classes we will continue to explore the co-creative actions of the I/self as we move further from entanglement to wholeness-Shinki by Nobuyuki Watanabe (pg. 26).

Feedback and Discussion

Practice before next class: 

Select a daily life activity and take a moment to pause and allow the experience of I/self to integrate with the task.  See how this co-creative integration may change the task.  

You may also take a moment to experience any dimensional shifts in the area you selected as your call-off for this entire series of classes.

Finish with misogi breathing and bowing out.