Cultivating Clarity

The other day, doing kokyu-dosa at the end of aikido class, my partner commented, “Sensei, I don’t see what you’re seeing.” It’s quick and easy to respond by pointing to the decades of aikido practice, or the suggestion of paying attention… But these replies don’t get to it.

How can we see what we are not seeing? How can we see another’s mind move before their body begins to move? How can we see the condition of another’s ki?

When I look at my experience, daily ki breathing has been the most significant practice for cultivating greater clarity in perception and stable living-calmness in bodymind. But it certainly did not start off like that. When I first started 15-ish years ago, mind was all over the place: worries, opinions, criticisms, reminders, desires, pop songs, judgments, rules, answers, doubts, regrets, hopes, dreads, fixes, corrections… The chaos churned 24/7, constantly stirring everything up. And since mind leads body, body was constantly activated into tension and agitation. The whole system was confused.

The well-intended suggestions to just rest in the body, or let the mind settle in the one-point didn’t seem to work for me. Body was filled with aches, stiffness, cloudiness, numbness, dullness, tension and holding. To which mind reacted with further opinions, worries and prescriptions. I sat in seiza every morning breathing… but was often swept into agitated confusion or attempts to control the mess.

Sitting with all churn and lurch was far from easy. But as I continued, day after day, there were moments of depth, calmness and subtle joy. They seemed to occur randomly, and if I tried to hold on to them, they were instantly gone. The more I sought them, the more elusive they became. Then I was told to just let them go and stop seeking any particular state or experience. Just be with what was moving in experience, moment to moment.

Slowly mind seemed to settle a bit more often and an ungraspable clarity opened occasionally. It’s like the dark turbidity in silty water s-l-o-w-l-y settling out. Any move I made to help this process just stirred it up again. Some days it seemed easy, other days the confused churn jerked me to and fro. Yet… something subtle was growing, clarifying…

With this growing background capacity of awareness, then the more relaxed, open, let go and present I am, the brighter the clarity that opens. This clears a way for an aiki, inter-being, move-with, oneness that to me is paramount in aikido, and is a wondrous way to move in life. This is not conceptual, it is a natural bodymind feel-how, present moment, no-separation engagement. Which is itself a condition for being surprisingly creative in the next instant.

Plus there seems to be no final insight or conclusive end. Nothing to hold on to! Just the spirit of the process… All this seems to boundlessly open up each time I look with fresh awareness. Each early dawn sitting, breathing, gently but vividly looking, stands on all the past sessions, but flies into the unknown. What an adventure!

“One’s destination is never a place,
but a new way of seeing things.”
—Henry Miller

A deeper equanimity
comes when we learn
how to be with our life
as it is,
not as we would like it to be.
—Eliot Fintushel