The Real One

6.

Which one is real? The one where I preform the bidding of more powerful and motivated organizations, or the one where I am an independent contractor working in spiritual harmony with the universe? Clearly, there is a yin/yang relationship, because after all, they are both my reality, simply happening at different times across the face of a single day, month or year. I can be a fierce samurai warrior in the service of the Lord as easily as I can be an instrument of global peacekeeping for the good guys. They each, however, require a not-so-subtle shift in focus with immediate present moment awareness of the current circumstance. That is the practice of the day. Determining which is which and going at it with what the Italians call ‘a tutta forza,’ at full speed. 

With everyone who comes into contact playing a part. Hours before sunrise the wind whips water across the channel, It is the only audio, I sit silent on the safu and count my breaths. This meditation is to calm the mind and isolate, render and refine the process of staying present. In this precious and precise practice one becomes acutely aware of what a difficult challenge this truly is. It is very much a micro to life’s more omnipotent macro. One also instantly recognizes the value in the ability to condense the scattered chaos of random thought patterns into a single and powerful laser-like beam of pure light. With time, this discipline becomes what the razor-sharp, long-sword of the samurai, the katana, is to the practitioner who wields it. ‘I am only as sharp as my sword of awareness,’ reverbates inside my inner dojo. It is the warriors way to begin each day with ritual, preparing for the battle that begins with the first step of every new dawn. 

The battle is also a dance. More ballet than hand-to-hand combat, more two-step than tap-out and more polka than gut-punch. Or is supposed to be. It is a complex dynamic. The trick is to commit to one or the other, not lingering longer than necessary in the middle of the road or sitting on the fence with legs dangling, one in the light and the other in the shadows. Whomever suggested that with one foot in the fire and the other on ice one creates a comfortable temperature in the middle, was way more poet than sage. Face the fire or freeze.

I reinforce this approach by seeing that, upon completion of the meditation, there are but two choices in moving forward with the daily practice, and that one of them is not an option.

One may, I could, choose fear. Or, I could, I will, choose love. 

That is the real one.