Open Door

Humans are creatures of habit, just like most other animal species, and the habits that they establish always create blind spots or mental blocks. When you open a door, you generally use the same hand. Likewise, when you go somewhere regularly, like to the store or your place of employment, you generally take the same route. Familiarity, with something that we normally do, has a tendency to blind us to other options that could conceivably be easier or even better.

In the study of martial arts, we are often led to many doors. However, generally, we are led to discover that it is often necessary to have a key to unlock the door before we can open it. More often than not, there are several locks that must be unlocked before we can open various doors. Sometimes, when one door is opened, what we discover is inclusive enough for us that we often fail to seek out other hidden doors within the room we have entered and have become comfortable being in.

The martial arts are multifaceted and have innumerable obscured layers of uses or variations, and often they appear to be far too complex and confusing to look farther and deeper. We take solace in what is easiest and most comfortable, and by doing so, we fail to seek or challenge ourselves with what lies just beyond our immediate grasp.

Over the past fifty-plus years, I have seen so many martial arts teachers and most assuredly masters, and even grandmasters, who have fallen into this void of complacency. Try to envision yourself in a museum of natural history that is filled with archives of civilizations of ancient times, even prehistoric times.

Where do you begin? Just how do you begin to find something of specific interest to you? How can you find someone to assist you, who is more knowledgeable, to make your search easier?

Those are often questions that seekers of the path often ask themselves when they are trying to search-out and find someone who is well established in the martial arts. Someone who hopefully can assist them in opening the door to the enlightenment of the ancient martial arts.

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