I write this remotely. Remotely in the sense that I haven’t been formally training for many months now. There are some elements which make it “difficult” to commit the time required but in essence, it’s my decision. I’ve chosen not to train and these elements are, in effect, my sick note or an easy abdication of responsibility perhaps.
During this intermission from attended training, I have however been busy exploring aspects of Aiki in other ways. I was reassured to discover that “training” never really stops and the more I learn, the more I have an everlasting respect for the art that we study. It’s as if these other things have allowed me to look back from my hike up the hill, to see the potency of it in the valley. It’s hard to conceive of a more natural framework for uniting the spirit and body with the here and now.
So what of Time in all this? What have I learnt from others and circumstances during these last few, absent months? Well, it’s a simple understanding and advocated by many, but I hope worth repeating in this forum. There is past time, current time and future time. Current time is all that matters. Past and future time or the mental projections that live there, however subtle, prevent us from resonating fully with the current moment – and contributing. There is nothing more real than this moment and if we are with the past or the future then we are, in a sense absent from life itself. As the Shawshank quote goes, “Get busy living or get busy dying” or as Sensei Brinkhurst used to say – just be, that’s it.
