pamelonian

Aikido seminar this weekend was Dr. David Shaner, a 6th degree black belt (or maybe 7th?)and professor of Philosophy. He is amazing, as was the experience. He has come every year for the last ten years, and I have been six times. Every time we hope he will provide us with some life-changing epiphanies, and he never disappoints.

This time he reminded me why I do this art, why I meditate, why I bother. If I remember my connection to the Universal Mind, I can do anything. His theme this year was Confidence and how we gain it when we are clear about what we are doing.

To summarize it in a few cute statements does an injustice to the practice. Ki-Aikido is not just a martial art. It is a way of life, a way of being and connecting. It is absolute thinking as opposed to relative thinking. (Relative thinking is plus/minus, big/small, me/them). Again, I am failing miserably at communicating what this means.

I am still trying to decide whether or not to do the Galápagos trip this summer. Talk about life-changing. I want to swim with sharks and play with sea lions who have no fear of humans. I want to see the giant tortoises, marine iguanas, and maybe the tiny Galápagos penguins. I would spend a week on a small ship stopping at a different island with a different environment each day. I want to see Darwin's finches that had differentiated beaks that suited the unique environment of each island. Darwin wrote about them in On the Origin of the Species, in which he outlined his thoughts on Natural Selection and Evolution. On the Ecuador mainland I could bike down a volcano, camp at an Indian village, take a train ride through the Andes valley on the roof of a boxcar.

What an adventure, eh? I can save enough money for this, but it would involve pinching pennies and scrimping until June. I would have more money to splurge on myself if I weren't banking all this money for the trip. I think I would worry less about finances if I were not going on this trip. All the same, it is an experience of a lifetime and I probably would worry about finances no matter what.

Why do I always do this? Sensei talked about confidence and clarity, yet I do not seem to have it about taking this giant leap to the equator.