I studied with Miles (and I studied Miles) for a full week as an uchideshi. An uchideshi is a live in student or, literally “inside student”: a student that lives inside the dojo and gets to study his or her own inside and the insides of the others. When you pay attention you can see Miles shift into different roles all the time. On the dojo floor his presence leaves no space and has no tolerance for unmindfulness but still he moves from gentle, patient and being a buddy, to a tiny bit of a show-off and back to the authoritarian Sensei. The fluidity of his presence is reflected in the fluidity of his aikido.
It is ridiculous to stay unborn
I asked myself: “which aspect of me needs to be born?”. What I saw was that my Professional Voice still needed to be born. I also saw that the journey I’m making is some sort of pregnancy. Which actually means that I have a good and safe time ahead of me before it becomes uncomfortable (big grin on my face). The Father in me is also still unborn, as is The Husband, The Mature Leader and The Best Selling Writer.
It is ridiculous to stay unborn. Just visualizing your big mature body, with a bald head in my case, creates an impulse to liberate oneself. Do you really want to stay trapped in your comfort zone? Really? Without autonomy, still being carried around by your mother, attached to her with the naval chord? Do you want to prevent to ever be vulnerable? Do you want to hide behind limiting thoughts and ideas about how you should be? Or do you want to be born into what you could be? Do you want to be free and take responsibility for your own life and our planet? Do you want to realize the real you?
Do you remember the video where I said how limited I felt after my first aikido class? Here a video taken directly after my third lesson. Still very immature, I admit, but not completely unborn.
