A PILGRIMAGE
I never realized till now, at eighty years of age, that my passion, that has guided and formed my life, is the path of the warrior scholar. An OpinionSome have a passion for money, others for music, and many for shopping. The warrior scholar trains his body to meet adversity and his mind to grasp the world that gives it birth. There is nothing I would rather do.
And I know I have lots of company. Every time you see a movie wherein the hero learns a martial art, or gets a special weapon or power, it alludes toward the warrior scholar passion. When the hero then takes his skill and goes on his quest, then that is Musha Shugyo, or the Hero’s Journey. In so many of these stories the young hero is forced, either by imprisonment or some other circumstance, to study and become educated.
The reason these situations appear so often in movies and novels, is because they are built into us. And in some it is a driving life forming passion. As I write these words I am surrounded by books of all kinds, and we will discuss them later. Just know for now that many have at their heart the hero and his journey. Many were written by warrior scholars, for those with similar inclinations, to guide them on their way. One of the most famous is A Book of Five Rings.
And its author Miyamoto Musashi, is one of my heroes. Our title is Musha Shugyo and that specifically refers to a samurai leaving the protection of his clan and traveling about refining his skills and searching for self-actualization. Musashi killed a man in a duel when he was thirteen, and began his Musha Shugyo. That is him in my logo above.
Many who began their quest hoped to find a position as a vassal for a powerful lord. Without this there was no security, no protection or status. I love Musashi because he stayed free. Because of his reputation and skill he could have been a high ranked vassal, instead he stayed on the path of the warrior scholar.
In the movies he is portrayed as a swordsman, and he is one of the most famous in history. Less well known is that he had remarkable skills as a fine artist painting and sculpting pieces that have survived to this day and look fine. He worked in landscaping, and I strongly suspect he worked construction like so many of us.
Then, as he died, he wrote, A Book of Five Rings. I like to imagine that part of the motivation was to help others along the same path. And while I am no Musashi, I will try to do the same with this book. First thing for me to do is point out that he didn’t start out a super hero. He transformed. He started out a thirteen-year-old boy from a broken home. What he did is like a modern kid who reads comics becoming the man they write comics about. How do you do that?
Transformation is its own reward. If you are fat, then the process of losing weight is its own reward. The same is true for pursuing athletic excellence. As you train you do better, you become what you want to be. The heroes to-be train and study because they are changing and they like what they are becoming.
If there is any hope for you at all, then you will have noticed that there are some remarkable people out there. Often you will see them in the media. I have been fortunate to know several personally. And I assure you they weren’t born that way, they worked at it for thousands of hours.
Elsewhere I have explained that we will harvest those thousands of hours from your daily life that you now pass through sleep-walking. It is part of the 1eye life system, and if you have the Will and Intent, you will transform, and will enjoy the process of becoming what you really are.
You will develop emotional control so that you experience little in the way of fear and anxiety. You will be very comfortable in your own skin so that you are at ease with those exalted as with those held to be common. You will have better balance, faster reaction times, and in general will look and perform in a superior athletic manner, all the time. Intellectually you will leave the mob far behind. All of this takes work. Many start, few finish.
But we have a system to deal with that. I am not just presenting words. We will have exercises that become part of your day-to-day life, and we are going to incorporate visualizations and emotion to make your learning faster and bone-deep. For the mental work we will take whatever mental hysteria is gripping the public mind at the moment, and take it apart. As you walk the sands of the arena that is your life, you will face many difficulties. Our system, once you learn it, will be reduced to a 25 word mnemonic that sets you up for maximum performance every time. It is as close as you can get to a super power, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets.