Saturday, August 3, 2013

The True Meaning of Kensho



August 2, 2013

The range of motion in my knee is starting to come back a bit. It still feels really stiff but I can actually sleep on my side now. That’s huge! There is still a lot of pain if I step or turn a certain way, a reminder that I’m not out of the woods.

I’m still very cautious about my knee buckling. It’s true what people say that the recovery will take longer psychologically than physically. It’s a total mind trip to have something like this happen and it’s a big, high mountain to climb back up to feel ’normal’ again. 

I finished reading Spontaneous Healing and started on Creating Health by Deepak Chopra. A chapter struck me. Health is the sum of all the impulses, positive and negative, that come from consciousness. He calls it a psychophysiological connection - for every state of consciousness, there is a corresponding state of physiology. Meaning, you are what you think. What you think, you manifest, and all of our thoughts are under our control. Learning how to control these thoughts is considered mastery of the self or “enlightenment.”   

The martial arts system I study is called Kensho-Do. Alex named it many, many years ago when he created the system. It’s a blend of Kenpo (Ken) and Shorei-Ryu (Sho), in addition to a plethora of additional concepts from different styles. “Do” means “the way.” However, Kensho takes on another meaning. In Japanese Zen tradition, Kensho means the “seeing of essence.” It’s considered an initial insight or awakening, and should be followed by more training that deepen this insight, eventually learning to express it in daily life – Enlightenment.

I’m seeing the pieces of the puzzle come together. This whole thing is a catalyst that is moving me in another direction. I’m still working on what that looks like and have plenty of time to figure it out but whatever it is, it’s for a higher good. A change I’ve already made and have said before is not working 12-hours a day and starting to explore some other interests I’ve always had but never made the time for. 

I can’t think of this as a setback, but as an opportunity to make some significant changes for the next cycle of my life…to reach Kensho. 



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