Speaker 1 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctors, which show where I show you how bad states of mind, difficult life issues, aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 00:00:27 Hey folks, how are you today? I hope all is well and you're in the groove, but if you're outside the groove, bumping along, being tossed around by this crazy life, that's okay too, because there's nothing the master can't use for personal transformation and you're a master, or at least you have a Zen master martial artist somewhere within you. That can be tapped into I'm sitting here, looking out the window onto the hazy sea. And it's one of those days where you can't tell if it's sunny or cloudy, it's just a shimmering Hays. And I'm ready to talk about personal transformation as a martial art, specifically, the genre known as Akido. So grab your black belt and let's do this in episode 43. We used principles from this ancient martial art Akido is a martial arts form that doesn't use techniques to battle and defeat an opponent, but rather employs methods for blending and harmonizing with the energy and movements of the attacker.
Speaker 1 00:01:49 In order to redirect the force of his aggression, instead of fighting the enemy, the Akido master observes carefully and uses the opponents own actions to transform the situation. It's really a basic process idea that the problem contains its own solution. And the way to discover this is to integrate, not try to destroy the energy in the exercise. We used your problems, basic blueprint to transform it from an unconscious force that oppresses you into a conscious power that frees you. And what's fascinating to me is that this is the exact same process as playing music in the sense that in music we seek harmony within chaos. You have a million ways to put together notes and rhythms and your job is to discover the best combination of sounds in a given moment. You usually aren't striving for disharmony or in musical language dissonance. You're hunting for how can blend and unite.
Speaker 1 00:03:01 This is a powerful notion when it comes to processing your problems, because often what happens is the more you battle them, the more they entangle you. But when you try to ignore them, the more they also get you, it's like you're screwed. If you do screwed, if you don't, the exercise shows you a different way to work on what's bothering you. The essence of a problem is feeling victimized by something it's a universal experience. We all share. The aim of Akido is to get out of being the victim by using the victimizers own power. But it's not what you might think. It's not about fighting back. Like you usually hear about fighting back mental toughness, determination and all that is important, but there are so many situations and processes in life where that simply doesn't work. Akido, masters knew this, and that's why they developed a way of embracing, redirecting and transforming the enemy's power.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 Instead of just trying to eliminate it. It's the same idea that a life problem, isn't actually a problem in the sense of it being a pathology or an illness it's information, and the same information can manifest in many different ways, depending on how conscious you are of it. For example, when I work with people with drug addictions, there's almost always something spiritual in the background of their process, not necessarily religious, but something transcendent where they use drugs to get out of the feelings and perceptions of everyday reality. So they can experience a sense of freedom. It's obviously not the best way to channel your dry for spiritual experience. It's better to become consciously spiritual. If one's drive to feel spiritually free is unconscious. It manifests as addictive urges. Whereas if it's conscious, it manifests as an authentic spiritual experience, the information doesn't change only its manifestation based on one's awareness.
Speaker 1 00:05:21 In other words, what we call a problem is really a description of our unconscious relationship to certain information. It's an inner relationship issue, a consciousness issue, a process, not an intrinsic pathology, relate to the information one way and you get a pile of shit, relate to it another way. And you get a pile of gold, same info, different result, your level of awareness determines its behavior. Of course becoming conscious of something that's unconscious is easier said than done. And that's what the exercises for it's exactly the same as the quantum physics experiments I told you about in past episodes, the way the physicist sets up her experiment determines how subatomic particles behave. The subatomic realm, doesn't contain a set of pre-existing facts, only a field of potential outcomes that are determined by how the scientist observes them. Similarly, your process contains information that manifests according to how you relate to it, or don't relate to it.
Speaker 1 00:06:41 The more unconscious you are of it, the more it drives you crazy with painful problems and impossible entanglements. The more conscious you are of it, the more creative power it gives you. It's a, shapeshifter a transmitter, a chameleon, a fluid process. That's totally dependent on you. This is the opposite of what we've all been taught and what conventional psychology and psychiatry tells us that a problem is like a thing in you, a disease, a mental illness, a condition you're afflicted with, but have no role in co-creating as if you, and it are totally separate. The fact is you and it are two sides of the same coin. You're entangled in a process together that only awareness can untangle the principles of Akido. Help us do this first by acknowledging that you're in a process with the opponent or the problem, and you're not separate from it.
Speaker 1 00:07:49 And second, by viewing the problem as carrying the solution for your life in a larger sense, the problem irritates and upsets you in order to wake you up to something you're not aware of. It's a poisonous arrow in your life that knocks you into an altered state. That's when you have the choice to unfold its message or remain asleep and suffer its wrath, or just try to repress it. Akido is alchemy, which by the way, was the precursor to chemistry. Alchemists worked in their labs to transmute base metals into gold. Applying Akido to your problems means transforming your inner enemies, your demons, your shadow into conscious powers. Notice how I use the words, transmutation and transformation, not destruction or elimination. You can suppress avoid, ignore medicate, power through, or even bliss out a problem, but you can't kill the process. That's driving it. It could be right for you to just power through something, but you don't know this until you process what's happening.
Speaker 1 00:09:11 If you automatically respond to your problems in a pre-programmed way, that aims to just zap them away, they don't actually die. They continue on in another form in your psyche, influencing you from the dark recesses of your mind. I remember a high energy client who judged himself for this and set his migraines were caused by being too amped up. But when we worked on it, we discovered that his process was actually trying to push him further into his energy. The way to relieve his tension was to integrate it as his natural high energy way of being the more he tried to relax, the more his energy manifested as physical and mental tension, his process was to connect with and live his energy and power, not get rid of it, but he didn't like what we discovered. He said he was going to keep doing his special chill-out exercises and he was actually able to get rid of his amped up feelings.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 Then a week later, his migraines got really bad when we worked on them again, we discovered the same thing to amplify his headache. He squeezed the crap out of a pillow and spontaneously said, wake the fuck up. Stop being such a chilled out lazy ass, get to work, get creative. Use your energy this time. He decided to follow what he learned. He changed his mindset and attitude and embraced his true high energy nature. About a month later, his migraines went away and never returned his problem. Wasn't being too amped up. It was judging it and thereby putting a damper on his true nature. Oftentimes what we criticize ourselves for and what others judge us for is actually something we need to do more in the end. Nature always wins the process. Can't be destroyed. The philosophy of Akido embraces this fact. And instead of trying to vanquish the enemy, it aims at wrestling its secrets from it and integrating them as one's own. Uh, speaking of headaches, I got to go bang on the drums for a minute back in a flash
Speaker 1 00:12:21 Okay. That felt good. Um, where was I? I talked about blending and harmonizing with the energy of something that disturbs or upsets you in order to redirect the process. A really interesting application of this is songwriting. When you compose something, you enter into a pure Akido space where the more you're able to disentangle from yourself, get out of the way, resist resisting. What's coming to you and flow at the experience. The better off you are, the more you try to impose your will your craft, your idea of what a good song is. The worse off you are. Writing a song is a dance in your partner. Isn't always cooperative. That's when you have to follow the process by sensing what needs to happen instead of fighting bad notes and uninspiring rhythms, by trying to make up good ones, you feel into them, amplify them and explore the offending musical elements and use them as guides to what's really trying to be expressed.
Speaker 1 00:13:38 You divine the secrets of the song that want to be written and act as a midwife for its birth. You don't hammer it into place using your willpower. I mean, you can do that, but it won't be a very good song. It'll be contrived, forced manipulated, but Hey, some people like that to each his own. The point is energy and information come to you in various forms. Some of it positive, some neutral and some negative, and it's all your process by using it all. You become a conscious strong whole person, whereas shunning the negative actually weakens and diminishes. You hidden within your bad experiences is a powerful, uplifting process, but you have to uncover it. And the way to do this is to extract their messages. Life is a shapeshifter and within every experience, even the really crappy ones is an implicit often invisible process of change, growth, healing, and flow. Trying to come to your awareness, see you next time, stay aware. You can follow me on social media at doctors awake, and you can sign up on the mailing
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