John of the Mountains

I am reading again. Seems like when I have a good balance in life I have time to read. I also have time to do Aikido, and some work too. I have been interested in Aikido for many years and am happy to get back 'on the mat'. The physical aspect of Aikido is just a framework for an energy based art. From what I can tell, the goal of Aikido is many fold, but some of the largest bits are learning how to interact with and channel energy. In a martial framework this can be anger or force. In the office this can be tension or responsibilities. In a relationship, this is all things, emotions, desires, responsibilities, tensions, you name it. We are physical beings, animals. But there is energy all around us. People who we usually call crazy can see it, and I mean SEE it, with their eyes. That is their gift and their burden. Most of us don't realize it's there. Few sense it, and even fewer can work with it. The amazing thing about this is that there is physical proof of energy. Back to the physical level, which is what we are most comfortable with, when someone punches you, you react. Your body receives the blow. This is you recieving the energy of another being. When someone hugs you, you can FEEL the energy from the other person. You don't have to imagine, you can actually feel it. If we didn't have energy we wouldn't be able to work with it. There would be no transfer when we contact. Some people are very tuned to another's energy and can feel that person from thousands of miles away. It's not magical, it's talent.

Well, back to the present, on my desk there is a book I have begun reading. It's John Muir's personal notes from when he was out in the world. He always kept a notebook strapped to his belt on his travels and he would scribble down thoughts, like a journal. I never realized it before, and I have read his writings before, but this man had an amazing gift to see, feel, and interact on a deep level, with the energy all around him. This quote comes from a time in which he was a shepherd in the San Joaquin valley, at the foothills of the Sierras.

"January 1, 1869
The New Year was ushered in with rain, a black day without a single sunbeam. The purple and brown colors are fast fading from the plains, the bright youthful plant green is deepening with astonishing rapidity. Every grove and hallow, however shallow, has its stream - living water is sounding everywhere, 'Tumbling brown, the burn comes down, and roars from bank to brae.' I celebrated the Happy New Year crossing countless streams, running 'ower moor and mire through gude and gide' in full chase of the wretched sheep.
Everything is governed by laws. I used to imagine that our Sabbath days were recognized by Nature, and that, apart from the moods and feelings in which we learn to move, there was a more or less clearly defined correspondence between the laws of Nature and our own. But out here in the free unplanted fields there is no rectilineal sectioning of times and seasons. All things flow here in indivisible, measureless currents."