It’s not easy succeeding in today’s world nor in today’s economy. Maintaining integrity and preserving personal principles requires a stout heart and hardy guts in today’s conflicted world. Our world at once preaches politeness and puritan politics while behaving in increasingly disingenuous and deplorable ways.
While we pursue internal arts of the martial and healing nature, we search for wisdom everyday in our form and in life’s daily challenges. Frank Rivers, in The Way of the Owl: Succeeding with Integrity in a Conflicted World, offers 8 successful sections…
Priorities- Creative Maneuver and Relationship
- Being Clear About the Invisible
- Aligning with the Natural World
- Training the Mind’s Eye
- The Way That Can Be Spoken Of
- Forging the Internal Alliance
- A Glimpse of Wisdom
Frank imagines the contrast between the rigid, juvenile Fledgling and the experienced and wise Owl, and offers 53 short tales and treatises leading us to Owlish Mastery.
From Test and Relinquish (The Way of The Owl, pp.73-74):
Because she deal with challenging and occasionally life-threatening conflicts, the owl places an extremely high value on discovering the truth. She knows that failure to discriminate between fact and fiction will make her vulnerable. Trying to block an imaginary punch or strike an imaginary target will inevitably lead to trouble. At best, illusion and distortion are expensive distractions; at worst, they can kill. If you want to perform with grace and fluidiity, you must address things as they truly are.
Thus, the owl practices the art of science. This art is specifically designed to strip away illusion, misconception, and fallacious beliefs and penetrate to the core of what is real.
Unfortunately, the fledling misunderstand this process. He believes that science works by postulating theories about reality and then trying to prove them correct. When he tries to follow this approach in his daily life, he generates a theory—”My neighbor is aggressive and hostile”—and then looks for “evidence” to support it—”He looks suspicious.” He then declares his theory “proved.”
This is not how science works. Owlish scientists do not just look for evidence to support their theories, nor do they prove their theories correct. Instead, they look for contradictory evidence and revise their theories accordingly. In fact, scientists are actually in the business of disproving theories.
The process begins with speculation and conjecture. The scientist generates a hypothesis, then exposes it to the test of reality. In this effort, there is no attempt to prove anything. In fact, progress comes when ideas or parts of ideas are shown to be false. When this happens, erroneous ideas can be modified or rejected. Through continual speculation, testing, and revision, the scientist can move closer to the true nature of things.
The key element in this process is our willingness to discard and revise images that are incorrect. Unfortunately, we resist this process. Our images give us a sense of security. If there is a difference between image and reality, we become angry and upset with reality and its failure to conform to the pictures in our mind.
Frank tests of Taijiquan’s form applications and pushing hands can press Taijiquan back into reality. Try it: stop theorizing chi and test the truth.
