Moment by Moment
by Fran Turner
Our only real power dwells in each single moment. Aikido, an art practiced in a fluid universe of time and space, requires use of this moment-to-moment power. It may seem strange and even frightening to consider this as a possibility...
Although we might like to, we can not accurately predict which technique we will perform at any particular instant, or how we might perform it, since there are so many variables that we can't control as our lives on the mat unfold. Of course, the milieu of aikido class where we wear similar uniforms, are accustomed to a certain routine of warm-ups and partner practice, where we line up and bow at certain times creates a sense of certainty about the whole thing. Over months of training, we might safely predict the number of classes we might attend, but we don't have a notion about whether or not we'll be pleased with ourselves, or utterly dejected in the course of those classes. Nor do we know what exactly we will be learning.
Randori is closest to real life: in an instant, the situation changes, dramatically launching us into the unknown of the next moment with uke's milling around us. Any strategizing we have done beforehand goes out the window because it's not possible to calculate Aikido. Plans are a helpful construction of our minds. But, for all our planning, we are left living our lives, not living our plans.
The only power we can claim resides in the moment as we live it, in the moment as we train, not in what we did wrong yesterday, or what we wish to be like whenever we grow up. So much in our lives supports our beliefs in our inadequacy, our puniness, rather than the belief in our power. In his first vision in 1925, O-Sensei said he "saw the earth as my home, and the sun, moon, and stars as my intimate friends." That was undoubtedly a moment of power, just as were his subsequent realizations.
We have our own opportunities to manifest our power, each moment as we train we can start fresh, cast aside the old skin of shortcomings that cramp us within our self-imposed limitations.
I would like to share with you an excerpt from Marianne Williamson's 1992 book, "Return to Love". This passage expresses beautifully the belief in the individual.
- "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people don't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
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