29 / 10 / 2020

Live the epidemic like the budoka you are.

You have again confronted us with decisions that apparently make our activities impossible.

The dojos are closed. An hour and a kilometer are restrictions that severely affect our aspirations, our desires to live and to conquer our time (restrictions in France since the beginning of November 2020).

The inability to project ourselves into the future hits hard on our integrity, because saying "I" is always about balancing the present and the future.

Unless we enter into resistance and authorize ourselves underground, we will have to submit to what is likely to revolt us. From then on, the fight is internal. Obviously, it is within the limits imposed on us by the decrees in force, but above all within our consciences.

The first battle: don't get demoralized: you know, this collapse of energy that extinguishes our desires, takes away our projects, prevents us from thinking about our future, the future.

To avoid this decline, put daily practice into each of our days, turn it into an axis of consolidation of each moment. We are budoka, that is to say, nothing that is external to us decides for us. Nothing that happens to us is alien to us.

Be and remain a budoka under all circumstances. Never give up, know that any test consists of turning what could be suffering into an occasion, an opportunity to strengthen yourself. Weakness is not part of the budoka's background because he has a moral obligation to help others. Must be the first to deliver the second battle:

Protect your loved ones from this moral decline, be strong and responsible enough to embody hope, fuel their projects with your energy and make their future shine. Help your spouses, your parents, your children, your students, all those who would be affected, who would experience this confinement as a blow to their integrity. Pass on the power of budo. The Covid gives you a great opportunity to be a useful budoka.

We will overcome these difficulties. The Kobayashi Ryu will live on and develop further. Your dojos will be full of students again if you don't let anyone's hands and rumors have access to your body, your mind, your heart. If you work to further structure your body, increase the power of your mind, build your technique, that is, develop your psychosomatic abilities, you will be that verse we will turn to because he just lets his spirit rule, and in to do so, brings to light that of all.

A situation like the one we are facing can do a lot of damage if we allow negative emotions to take control of our lives. But our budoka spirits are as sharp as katana blades. Forty thousand times polished by repetition, these martial gestures have built in us an indestructible fortress whose doors can always remain open, because nothing can dent, blunt, or make our blades retreat.

We know that nothing can penetrate our souls if we do not introduce it ourselves. You have learned not to transmit the attacker's force to your center. No katate ryote dori, no matter how powerful, throws you off balance.

Also, the feeling of being that constitutes your psychosomatic axis is based in your soul but never from the outside. It is the product, like all your feelings, of an interaction between your spirit and your consciousness.

In these times, birds of bad omen abound. But their negative prophecies can't reach you because you don't give anyone access to that incorruptible space where your self is made and all your emotions that make it speak.

Your aikido makes you the ever-open fortress where all can find refuge and which no one will fight because the fight has already taken place deep inside, in the depth of your soul, when your consciousness has meticulously traveled, the cutting edge of your blade. Freedom is an immense emotion that arises from you and only you. The desire for the future depends on it. Do not allow anyone to lay their hands on your blade.

Practice for everyone:

Holding the saber in front of you, the cutting edge towards the sky and without moving anything, eyes or head, move your gaze from the point to the hilt and vice versa, at least once every day for five minutes. The absolute immobility of the eyes and body, the mobility of the consciousness that chooses where to look, this will be your daily meditation.

Concentrate!