After the War Is Over
The closest I can come to a one-pointed focus in life would be on the Three Gates.
- “Is it True?” is essential, CRITICAL, even if you cannot be honest with others, you MUST be with yourself. There is no other way to build a reliable map of reality, or know where you are on that map. It is a matter of “faith” to me that if you follow the path of truth deeply enough, you make connection with love, and with all the universe.
- “Is it Kind”? Follow the question “who am I?” far enough and you find that everything you or anyone else has EVER done was an attempt to evade pain, and embrace joy. That when all your pains are satisfied, all that remains is that desire to connect with the divine, or perhaps that sense of peace and calm experienced in the womb. The loving heart that beat so close to yours. This is of course the tragedy of child abuse: it violates this divine connection.
- “Is it useful?” Meaning “efficient and effective”. This is the coin of the adult world, the hunting and gathering, the production and sales, the organization of family and tribe.
A beautiful thing is the fact that game theory suggests that, over time, honesty and kindness produce the best life. History suggests that we must also prepare for war, because it is, short-term, easier to steal a crop than grow one. Ouch. We either have natural barriers, are protected by family or allies, or must connect with the survival drive and practice baring our teeth.
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A “download” is a colloquial term for a complex idea or vision received from the unconscious, or superconscious, or “Akashic Record” spiritual consciousness. And a friend and teacher spoke to me of one he received in a dream. A very advanced martial artist, “T”, a man wealthy in “health, love, money, and time to enjoy them”, he told me that he had had many martial dreams, often violent and bloody.
But in this dream, he entered a room filled with warriors, and the deadliest of them looked like a nerdy version of himself. And THAT warrior introduced T to HIS teacher, a woman warrior who said that HER power was to conquer the negative emotions that triggered violence in the first place, the “art of fighting without fighting.”
He gave me this, and two days later I woke up in the morning having received my own “download”. It was a voice, a presence, that said to me “your war is over.”
I cried. It has been such a journey, feeling isolate from the world, constantly bullied, with no father to protect me or teach me to fight. And reminded by both boys and girls that I was nothing if I couldn’t stand up and hold my space (and don’t you DARE think it was just the boys. That would be utter bullshit). Eventually I learned that if I made people laugh, if I could hold their interest with stories, they would protect me.
But I had that urge to be “admired by the men I admired, and desired by the women I desired.” What was true of THEM is that they were lions and lionesses. I was accepted as a jester, as a pet. Almost the “dancing monkey” Robbie Williams saw in the mirror in “A Better Man” (a reason I love that.)
But I also knew, from first grade, that white America would judge me for the color of my skin, think me “less than.” And that when and if I proved them wrong, would become a threat unless I pledged fealty. My own mother, who grew up in the era of lynching in the South, promised me I’d be killed if I ever revealed my true nature.
So…I would never have tribe, or mate, unless I took the chance of being hated and killed by the larger tribe around me.
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I’ve often asked myself: “what would I have been, had I been raised in a healthy, whole family, and nurtured by my society?” Rather than being shown, in every issue of every SF magazine I read, every SF movie I saw, that people who looked like me had no part of the future. From “When Worlds Collide” to “The Handmaiden’s Tale”, black people could all be excluded or murdered….AND IT WASN’T EVEN DISCUSSED. We meant nothing. And if I ever stood up and said: “I’m here!” the challenge to the groupthink would make me a potentially dangerous social pathogen.
I was nothing unless I was something. If I became something, I risked being rendered into nothing. I had no tribe to protect me.
So I became my own tribe. At colossal cost to the psyche of a boy who would have loved to just read poetry, dance, and study science, I forced myself through decades of pain and fear, tearing myself down over and over to have the old fear patterns rebuild themselves. So much shame and doubt, but somehow, I never lost faith in myself or the world, never hated for the painful motivation to keep studying arts of destruction when all I ever wanted was to love.
This pain came from all sides, and it took earning three black belts, a lifetime of meditation and various forms of therapy and self-realization, mentorship from the greatest warrior I’ve ever known, and accepting so many out-there experiences of mind and heart and body that I eventually came to a point not of “banishing” my fear, but understanding it was a natural part of my experience. That that exchange of beauty for power, and power for beauty, was essential to the human mating patterns (there is a LOT of lying about this, and its fun to watch the children playing their games. Most will grow up eventually). And that the tribalism that had, unfortunately, worked so much to my disadvantage was another natural human thing.
My conclusion: that souls had no race, gender, or class. That the same soul born male would behave male. Born female, female. Born white, white. Born black, black. Born poor, poor. Born rich, rich.
That if you think your group is better, you are simply behaving typically, and are part of the problem. If you think you are WORSE, then you are being a typical victim, at the EFFECT of the problem.
I spent six years writing that book about race, LION’S BLOOD.
What would I have been if I hadn’t been awash in fear? I’d probably swap the relative positions of Yoga and martial arts in my life. And that is what I’m doing now.
I am no longer a front-line warrior. I’m a war chief, teaching my son to be strong so that HE can be admired and desired appropriately, and teach his own son. If I can do that, that chain is HEALED in my generation, and possibly going forward.
The meaning of life is to escape suffering, embrace joy, and be of service. The martial arts were about the escape of suffering, feeling safe enough to be a goofball artist, a dreamer who, according to my friend Darnell Gadberry, “builds dream castles and moves into them” (I love that description!)
Who can come to the world with my complete self: body, heart, and mind, and express myself with the knowledge that fear will just mobilize me. I’m no longer ashamed of it. Its just trying to protect me. Put that fear behind appropriate action, and I’m like Batman with sufficient prep time: watch out.
My War Is Over. The balance of male and female energies within me, the Yin and Yang, the Ida and Pingala have been repaired. What comes next is solidifying this growth.
You know what the real first step was? Seeing my life as a story I was writing, a myth I was creating. That single insight linked me to the elders of ages past, the universal human story of a questing soul having a human experience, embracing ALL of it as challenge, knowing that I am, long-term, safest, happiest, and most successful if I strive for dynamic balance within the Three Gates.
Is it True? Is it Kind? Is it Useful?
“Health, Love, Money, and time to enjoy them”
“Escape suffering, Embrace Joy, Be of Service”
Belly Brain. Heart Center. Head Center.
If I can point to a dividing line, it would be my trip to Manila, which took me outside the black-white dichotomy for the first time in my life. It was…extraordinary.
My task now is to find the thing I can offer the world that no one else can, the thing that is deepest, and most honest, and most powerful. To give THAT to the world without fear, and with all the love in my heart.
I’ve earned that. MY war is over.
But the war continues. I will do all in my power to share with YOU how I did it, so that you can have the same experience.
I wish you peace. But Si vis pacem, para bellum, man: if you would have peace, be sure you are ready for war.
Namaste
Steve