Conflict With Ourselves

This is perhaps the most personal of any of my Blogs. It’s embarrassing but ultimately, it's just part of this path I’m on.  

It very easy to create a picture of who we think we are, of how we believe others view us and of our perceived place in the world. We create this ‘constructed idea’, and this becomes ‘Us’. 

The problem with this is that life will often put us in situation where we have the opportunity to see how wrong this image is. And then we are in trouble. The idea of who we thought we were, our self-image begins to crack. It’s painful and our initial reaction is fight or flight. I can ignore what I saw and run away, or I can double down and insist that I was right. Neither path leads to any liberation or truth. 

I had definitely become comfortable with who I thought I was. Chris, practitioner and teacher of Tai Chi and Xing Yi, student to a talented teacher, grounded and on a martial arts ‘Path’ of personal cultivation. That kind of thing. 

All of this is factually correct, but I think the problem was is that my Ego had created an image of who I was. Unknowingly I had started to care what people thought of me, of whether people believed I was any good at all. I especially cared about what other students of my teachers thought of me. I hadn’t noticed it, but I had begun to train with this in mind. How good am I? How good are the other disciples? How do the people I teach see me? How do the people fellow teachers and practitioners see me?  

This led to me creating an image of myself that wasn’t true. I was also training for the wrong reason; there was a shadow over my path.  

Recently I had the opportunity to train with one of the Masters of our Xing Yi Chuan system. I teacher of great skill. This training lasted for four days and was intense and gruelling. We all learnt so much. Hours and hours of drilling, repetition, pain and practice. 

I learnt so much from those four days, but ultimately the biggest thing I learn wasn’t about the Xing Yi, but actually about myself. (Wow, that sounds cheesy but let me explain before you cringe too much). 

For me those days of training were physically very hard, but it was my emotional state throughout it that was the hardest. It’s pretty embarrassing to say and very personal, but I’ll do it anyway. It goes back to what I said about my ‘Self Image’. I went there as ‘Chris, practitioner, teacher and student of a really good teacher’ and unknowingly I really cared that people there saw me as that, I really cared about what the others thought about me and worst of all I became jealous when I perceived that others were doing better than me! (This is hard to write). This, as you can imagine created a lot of turmoil and conflict within myself over those four days.  

My initial reaction was double down on my self-image, but this caused more conflict and made me more anxious. 

At the end it was a doubled edged sword. I had learnt so much about Xing Yi Chuan and now had a lot of refinements and new material to work with for a long time, but I felt unhappy, upset, something was wrong. 

I spent the next couple of days thinking about what had happened and was shocked and embarrassed by my thoughts and reactions. I then started to see the image that I had created for myself, how I cared so much about what people thought and how I had spent a long-time training with this in mind. Rather than just actually training. The disparity between who I thought I was and who I actually had become was jarring. I was embarred and a little ashamed. As the week progressed, what had happened and why I was upset began to coalesce. I began to see more clearly. It’s funny how life throws things your way when you need them. I found a story about a Samurai called Tenshin who had the same problem. He trained, caring about what everyone thought and had created a persona. Then when something happened to break that persona, he was in trouble. For him he froze and was defeated in a sword fight. 

The next weekend something interesting happened. My teacher ran a workshop. Some of the same people got together, and I knew that we were going to do partner work and applications for the whole day. My initial reaction was ‘Oh no, what if someone is better than me, what if everyone sees?’. I then stopped and realised that it doesn’t matter. There are many people there that are better than me, there always will be, it’s ok. They are not trying the shame me. I lose nothing by being pushed around and ‘losing’. In martial arts there is a term for this. We call it, ‘Investing in loss’.  

Remaining calm, just training, not caring about what others thought and just being present made a huge difference. When I was training with people of more skill, I was much more relaxed, when I was pushed, pulled or punched, it became fun not jarring and because it was enjoyable I was able to process what was happening and learn more. There was also not the tension between partners that there had been before. The tension that arises when both people are trying to maintain their self-image. Interesting, when you are more relaxed, then the other person relaxes too. You're able to bring your mind into your body and react more instinctively and appropriately. The mind isn’t in conflict; it’s just in the body and reacting to what the other person is doing. You’re not trying to make something happen, you’re just letting it happen. 

It was a hard but ultimately and great week and a half. I now realise that I need to just train and be honest with myself and others. I’m not quite sure who I am, maybe that's what I’m trying to figure out. I know that I love Tai Chi and Xing Yi. These arts bring me great joy and afford me the opportunity to constantly evolve and evaluate myself. I also love teaching and spreading what I have learnt. They have helped me and can help others. 

I hope this was of interest and is maybe something you can relate to. 

If you’d like to find out more about these arts, go to my website. If you have any questions, please contact me. 

Thanks, 

Chris. 

Keep training!