Chapter 9 - Discipline is the Doorway to the Infinite Self
It was just after 4.a.m when the old sage shook the young man awake.
"Huo after what happened yesterday I want to change your training. Rather than continue to work on connecting you with your inner-self, which seems to be taking on a life if its own, I believe it would be best to work with your physical self. Today we will begin your lessons in martial arts and also in meditation. If you inner life continues to develop at the current rate it is important that you learn physical and mental discipline to be able cope with the changes."
"Master how will martial arts help with my inner life."
"Your inner world expresses itself in your outer world and unless we discipline, your mind, body and emotional responses then you will create your outer world based on your childish reactions to what you perceive as external influences. Everything in the outer world is only an expression of what it first created in the inner worlds. As you open yourself up to the inner worlds you will get messages from your higher self. If you are not a clear channel then these messages will be distorted by your ego and emotions. When the message tells you to go forward your ego may tell you the opposite. It is only through discipline that we can quieten the ego and clear the subconscious mind of its previous programming.
The old sage moved into the horse stance; he took a deep breath and then closed his eyes. "Now Huo I want you to attack."
"But Master you have your eyes closed and you are so old. I am afraid that I will hurt you as I will be too quick for you."
The old sage smiled, the young man was much like he had been those many years ago. "Yes you are probably right but please do this as a favour to an old man. Attack me."
Huo faltered for a moment. Then he moved forward, dancing around the old man flicking out the odd punch, more to test if the old man would respond rather than trying to hit him.
The old sage never moved.
Huo's confidence began to grow. He would not hit the old man hard, just a light tap on his head to teach him a lesson and show him how fast he was. Before the fist reached its target Huo could feel himself being thrown in the air. As he struck the ground feeling every bruise, he replayed in his mind what had happened. His fist was about a hands length from the old man, when the old sage moved inside the fist, grabbed his arm and in what seemed an impossible move the sage went underneath him and launched him into the air. "Teach me," was Huo's only reply.
And that was when his Martial Arts training began. Each day well before sunrise the nocturnal animals would gather around in a circle to watch the old man and his young apprentice practice, using stances the animals themselves used and also working with the energy of the elements to understand how to read your opponent, but more importantly to learn how to understand and observe yourself; to move to that stage where there was no reaction. For it was in the reaction that the old sage knew that moved you out of the flow.
Month after month they practiced. First Martial Arts and then the daily meditation; one minute of meditation for each hour of the day. At first the young man could not hold his emotions in check, reacting to the strikes of the old sage which always ended up in him getting another bruise or landing on his backside. He was progressing well with the physical aspects of the training, but he could not move beyond his emotions; something he would need to do to move on to the deeper aspects of the old Sage's teachings.
The old sage was not worried, "for it was what it was, it was neither good nor bad." the young man would move beyond the ego in his own good time. It just meant that he would have to slow down on the inner work.
It was after a particularly bad session when the young man had received far more bruises than normal, the Sage's inner voice suggested they do the meditation by a stream which ran a few hundred meters from their camp.
As soon as he saw the stream he understood what his inner voice was trying to tell him. Even after all these years it was the inner voice from his Higher Self which was always there when needed. The key, as always, was to be open enough to listen.
They sat beside the stream only this time the old sage asked Huo not to close his eyes but to stare into the water and allow it to take him into a meditative state.
The young man watched the stream, not quite sure how this was going to help him to go into a meditative state. All the same after a few minutes he found himself very calm and he released the frustration he had experienced from the early training session, where once again the old man made him look stupid. It no longer mattered for he began to understand that he was not fighting against his Master but himself. That one realization released any anger he had stored in his body. At once his body healed itself, the bruises disappearing and along with it the aches and pains. He even noticed that his paralyzed left arm was now completely free from any pain and he now had full movement of it. He looked to the old sage for an answer but the old sage had disappeared. Unperturbed he looked back into the water for in that moment he knew that it was his teacher that morning.
He watched as the water flowed on by kissing the bank and givings its life force to the plants and animals who lived along the stream. He looked into the middle to see a large rock rising out of the water. The water did not seem to fight against it, but simply flowed around the rock. It did not need to react, it just found another simpler course. He understood that in time the water would defeat the rock but that it would be done in a calm balanced way. The water had so much power and yet at the same time it gave life to everything around it. He had never looked at the elements in this way before, but from that moment on he would begin to observe more, for there was far more to this world than he had previously thought possible.
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