Sitting meditation finer dimensions and the 'I'

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. Our country's Independence Day. Hope you can spend tomorrow with family or loved ones, safely.......The 4th of July is my Dad's birthday. He's been gone 24 years. But Happy Birthday, Dad. The dojo opened in the bicentennial year of 1976 and in the month of July....We held our noon Zoom class today, but there is no class tomorrow.

Today we covered sitting meditation as a way to travel to finer dimensions. I posted the session on Youtube and it is included in this blog. When I first started Aikido in fall of 1969 meditation was an important part of the classes.Both of my original teachers, Roberts Frager and Nadeau, had trained in Japan with Osensei. And both realized he was doing much more than technique. And that development, not just physical, technical but also spiritual was an important part of his 'Aikido'.So we meditated, chanted, explored the energy dimensions along with the Aikido movements. This was a part of the classes. And there were monthly weekend sleepovers with senseis Nadeau and Frager to go into depth with things like finer dimensions both of self and energy.  That time has been very influential in my Aikido journey.

So today we covered what Osensei referred to as 'the land of the roots' or ne no kuni. This is on page 316 of nidai Doshu's biography of his dad, A Life in Aikido. John Steven's translates it as underworld. Those of you who like research, please look it up. Osensei goes over rather late in his life the purposes and goals of Aikido and its practitioners and makes this statement,"It is important to also make use of the ne no kuni." That is the only reference to that I have found. He talks about things like the Floating Bridge of Heaven, The High Plain of Heaven, Heaven and Earth, but alludes to that underworld just once in my research. I found that I try to daily chant the Kami Goto and that the underworld is mentioned twice in the chant.I discovered that while I had no conscous sense of it I had been chanting it for decades.

So what might be the Underworld that Osensei references? And while he brings Heaven in quite frequently in my study he references the Underworld just once. It has its role in the Kojiki, which Osensei used to frame his understanding of the universe and of the act of Creation itself. So lets see what we can come up with. He frequently referenced the manifest/hidden/divine, in Japanese genkai,yukai, shinkai. Briefly the Genkai is the material realm, the obvious outer world. The Yukai is the hidden(not obvious) realm of finer and deeper dimensions. My interpretation is the Shinkai is the soul/spirit/self. So one way to look at misogi is going from the 'I' in the manifest to deeper or finer levels of itself or self through the hidden realms. Finally to return it itself as a True Self/ Soul/Spirit.
It is common to address the finer realms as upper(ie Heaven). But what if the journey to self must also be deeper and that is why we must also integrate the Underworld half?

In the biography of his Dad nidai Doshu states that while we have an incredible practice in Aikido that is worldwide now, his father had to undergo many hardships to bring Aikido into being. So my current sense of the Underworld is what Nadeau sensei refers to as Downtime. We started out today's class with, 'Let's start with a negative". The coronavirus. The social unrest. The economic uncertainty. Failures in Leadership at the Governmental level. We could go around and around in the 'I'. Or use it to get to downtime, a gateway to deeper. Deeper and Finer can be similar. My sense is the real task is to go from knowledge/awareness to feel/experience. So we get so caught up knowledge and awareness that there is another step we miss, especially on the spiritual journey. So we used the downtime as a gateway to other dimensions. Pools of Calm. Magic Crystal Caves. But referencing the shift from state to state as deeper to deeper downtime. As you travel to and through the deeper finer states the 'I' moves to self. We also tackled it from the other end. "I'm confused." "I'm not getting anything...."  "I can't do this". All of these are 'I' as a blockage. My sense is that we need both ends. The ability to travel dimensionally to experience both the finer of creation and to get out of the 'I' and its base level. And also to be able to operate on that base level of 'I' so that we don't get trapped in what is oftentimes termed Ordinary Reality.

We also revisted the bokken cut. This is quite good because we have a practice to integrate the other realms and to bring them right through to the manifest/physical. So I'm finding that cut to be very important. And one of my goals in this period of dojo closed and social isolation is to really really get a good sense of it without becoming locked up by it. So here is today's video. I just loaded it so you might have to come back after it's posted but it is worth a look.

How Are You All?

The coronavirus impacted the dojo around the middle of March. Now here we are the beginning of July. Boy things can change in a hurry, can't they? Classes have shifted online via Zoom then posted on Youtube. We have done Saturday outdoors classes the past 3 Saturdays at Bestor Park around the corner from the dojo. Social distancing with weapons work and with Masks(Wear one!) I personally got online a Spider-man mask. Guess I get to be your friendly neighborhood Aikido-ist. Hope everybody is safe, taking precautions, and for now healthy.

My own situation is safe and healthy for now. I enjoy the video classes and I realize they are no substitute for real classes. I continue to train on a daily basis. One thing we have been covering online and in the outdoor classes is the basic suburi cut.

The above photo is what I study the most about Osensei's sword work(bokken). Notice how alive it is, even in the photo. And when I trained in Shingu I really studied Tojima sensei's cut.

And the above cut is a photo (obviously taken from a video) of Tojima sensei in 1979 teaching a sword class at UC Santa Cruz. Even though the angle of the cut is slightly different my sensei is that they are very close. So in the midst of the downtime of the coronavirus I have been practicing that cut.If I can make deep inroads into this journey it will be time well spent.

My partner Elle fell and broke her hip just about the time the dojo was closed. She is scheduled for surgery early next week. I will keep you posted. I have been in contact with my daughter and Nora. We observe social distancing. Nora is growing and is so cute I think the social distancing is so hard especially for children.

Nadeau sensei and I continue to do our 'research' but over the phone. No Occidental this year and a lot of events have shifted to online. Nadeau sensei has shifted for now to a virtual dojo. He has a show Friday nights at 6:30. NO show this week because of July 4th. Similarly we will do Zoom noon class tomorrow July 3rd, but no class Saturday July 4th.

San Jose State classes will be online this fall. So I have to format a class without falling, student teacher contact other than online. So it will be a challenge.

Those of you who have continued to pay tuition online, thank you very much. You are the lifeblood of the dojo and keep us going. We will persevere, push through, and come out on the other side hopefully stronger, wiser, and with a greater appreciation for what we have. I hope all of you are safe, healthy, and with family and loved one.

I'm still playing music. Here is a video I did recently. Nardis is a Miles Davis tune Chet Baker played. It has for me an Egyptian feel. For non music people it has some fun photos of dojo people, and Nora.