Lessons from My Masters 32: Observations - The Grandmaster Chronicles Part IV

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

                     ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

You're going to need some coffee for this one...

First of all, I really want to thank everyone for all of their support and questions. Now, because I promised to get into some of the stuff that I spoke of in the last post I'm going to attempt to explain some things that are very difficult to understand because it deals with things that cannot be seen such as this thing we call "Creativity". We in Guided Chaos discuss it a lot we even marvel at Grandmasters Perkins' creativity and naturally, we wish to duplicate it.

Unfortunately, as I've said before there are things that John knows that are so ingrained in the way he moves that they are unknowable because it is personal to John. For some, I know this sounds disappointing but for me, this is not a problem because I just accept it for what it is. I'm just privileged to have the opportunity to train with him. However, in those things that are knowable to a degree that's where I choose to focus as I attempt to explain these things. Trust me this is far from the last word on this, these are just my impressions from my experiences training with him so others who have worked with him will have different experiences. The reason for this is everyone's body is different, so how I move with him and how he moves with me is different than how he moves to another person, and how other people move with me is different than how they move with other people and so on. This is because how we interact with another human being is personal to us so while we are all doing similar things they are "not exactly" the same.

Please re-read what I just said there because this is a major, major mistake that people make including some instructors when interacting with people during the Contact Flow exercise. You see as people we all to a high degree move in a similar fashion because we are human, but... we all don't move the same because we are human and each of us as human beings are unique. Just as each human has a unique fingerprint pattern we also have within us a unique way in which we move that is personal to us and can only truly be felt by us. Hell, if identical twins aren't even the same then neither are you or I. We're always playing off of each others movement and how I react to someone's movement is also based on how I feel they react to what my body is doing and vice versa. 

Now, before I get into all that I need to prep the battlespace so to speak.

 “Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.”

                      ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Like I said in my last Blog Post, John has as I described the unique ability to move in a way where from the very start it alters your perception of time so it makes it extremely difficult to track his movement. I also said you don’t know when he’s moving like this is whether or not he’s leading you to the place he wants you to be. To me, this is an incredible ability and something that is very difficult for most people to grasp. The idea of moving in real time to influence other people to move in a predictable manner where you strike them at a point in the future of your choosing. I'm so all about this! To me, this is the elusive quality as I've said that people pay a fortune to learn how to do but almost never get. The reason is it is an intuitive ability that he has so it is not something that you can say, “So, in order to do this, you put your foot here and you turn like this offset 29.5-degrees from the Tropic of Cancer, etc.”  That's just not going to happen for you because it has to be intuitive, but there’s something else…

Beyond The Wisdom Tree

“When one practices discipline and moves from the beginner's territory to immovable wisdom, one makes a return and falls back to the level of the beginner.”

   ― Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman

For those who don't know the reason, I quote Takuan Soho a lot is because he was once Miyamoto Musashi's Zen Master, sort of his mentor sort of his "Svengali" for a time. If you read "The Unfettered Mind" and then go back and read "The Book of Five Rings" or the "Dokkodo". You can see Takuan Soho's "imprint" on Musashi's thoughts and writings especially when he discusses "The Way of the Warrior" or "The Way". 

Anyway, this quote above reminds me of what Grandmaster Carron use to always say to me when I would ask him certain questions about training and how do you continue to advance and improve/refine your ability. He would first let out a big sigh… and then say, “You’re always going back to the beginning…” but I recall him once saying something else in conjunction with it after I asked him a question along the lines of, “So Tim have you learned it all?” He said laughingly, “When you’ve figured it all out let me know”.

I was like, “Whaaaaaaat?  

He laughed at me and when on,

“You’re always going back to the beginning, always remember at one time you couldn’t do any of this when you go back to the beginning while obviously, you’re not really at the beginning you want to start from there almost as if you know nothing… It keeps you sharp… The point is you’re always learning. Now you watch John, John always looks like he’s having fun because he is. He’s always playing... he's always learning.”

John is always for the most part having fun. He moves as if it is "play", he literally moves with the freedom of a child. I have a few young people that I teach when training their parents. They're as young as 10 and 11 years old and of course, I've trained some of my other friend's children who are teenagers. Like when I've trained with my granddaughter, they are "too funny". The things they do are off the chart creative.  For those who've seen me work with some of them, it's easy to see that I'm probably having more fun than they are. You can't help but envy their attitude, their sense of freedom, their creativity, their sense of fun! After working with them heck even I'm charged up because their attitude and enthusiasm are "infectious".

Play fighting and teaching children in an art that emphasizes maximum freedom of movement and action in the body is more educational for me than it is for them. They never cease to surprise me of the off the wall things they do that actually work. Their movement comes out of the ether, out of the void, the place of unlimited possibilities. I've learned to relish opportunities to train young people, to be able to shape the iron and forge them into "warriors". I'm so all about this because I believe that children need to be raised as warriors because at some point in life they're going to need it. What's that expression? "Better to be a warrior in a garden and not need to fight than a gardener caught up in a war not knowing how to fight". In other words, they need to have the capacity to "kick that ass" when necessary. 

Now, what they do later in life with their "Sith-like powers" is their business but as with my granddaughter at the end of the day, their sword must prevail in battle.  When children go to that "place", their mind is just "there"! There is nothing else, they are in a perfect state of "Mushin", "Flow", at that moment when they go there, all of existence melts away. About the only thing that can break that spell is the "ice cream truck".

But in all seriousness, they do what they do because they are not afraid to try things so they reach Mushin in the blink of an eye because there is nothing holding them back. In their world nothing is wrong. Who doesn't want to recapture that feeling? 

In the same way, I can’t tell you how many times over the years when I’ve worked with John where he literally says to me, “Just have fun with this… no thought, just move with it and see what happens.”

So one day after training under The Wisdom Tree John and I go to get lunch at the Nanuet Dinner, so we’re sitting in there and he asks me how’s my elbow and I’m like “It’s fine”, (it wasn’t).  What happened was we were playing a game John use to play with me called “Catch as Catch Can”, sort of the Native American version of tag only your ass is getting hit. So anyway while we’re engaged in battle I tried to get out of John’s way and as I tried to run he punched me in the elbow. It made a sound like I got hit with a bat, so Master Kevin Harrell is there watching this and says, “Oh shit Colonel you alright?” and I looked at him and in my mind, I’m like,

“No issues, because you know, I just have these stars shooting out of my elbow for no reason… no biggie…”

The nerve…

Now as an aside, when I’m getting beat up like this “as usual” from the peanut gallery that only shows up to watch, these guys are good for asking questions, mind you, they offer “no help”! But you can count on them for asking boneheaded questions like, “Colonel what’s going on?” “Hey, John what did you do there?” “So Colonel what was John doing?”

As if I knew the answer to some of these questions I’d still be getting hit like that.

Un-freaking-real…

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”

                      ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

So while we’re talking and eating I ask John about what we were just doing and how Tim told me how he’s always playing, etc. so John’s like,

“Well yeah, I’m always moving in ways where it’s like play. So yeah I guess so.”

He then laughs a little and says,

“If you’ll notice what I was doing with you I wasn’t moving a lot, but my body was free. It’s like I’m kind of playing but I’m not. It’s funny because I told you when I first started learning karate it was my Father who encouraged me to learn other arts mostly to see how they worked. One of the things I discovered when I first started was even though we had all these techniques whenever I wanted to, I could just get in on people. I could just see it and I could defeat it once I saw how it worked. So while I learned how to do it I was always looking for ways to get around it or throw the monkey wrench in and screw it up.”

It never dawned on me for years until I thought about it and realized to myself,

"Wait a minute? He was a teenager when he was first learning karate, how the Hell was he figuring that out?"

I then started realizing something fundamental about the way John moves,

“When a person does not think, ‘Where shall I put it?’ the mind will extend throughout the entire body and move to any place at all… The effort not to stop the mind in just one place - this is discipline. Not stopping the mind is object and essence. Put it nowhere and it will be everywhere. Even in moving the mind outside the body, if it is sent in one direction, it will be lacking in nine others. If the mind is not restricted to just one direction, it will be in all ten.”

 ― Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman

John doesn’t try to be loose he just is, John doesn’t try to be balanced he just is, John doesn’t try to be unitized he just is. John doesn’t fight with his arms or feet but his whole body, but not just his physical body as people think but with his whole being. It’s what he wants it to be where he wants it to be when he wants it to be. In other words, for John his, “…the mind is not restricted to just one direction…” so, “…it will be in all ten.”

This is what Tim was trying to get me to understand, John moves in a way where his movement seems like “play” until it isn’t.

That’s because in the body John has never stopped moving with the freedom we all once enjoyed when we were 10 years old. When we were kids when we did things we used our whole body, there were no half measures, we were all in, either go big or go home. John in the body never gave that up. He never relinquished his freedom over movement, freedom of thought. For him, there is no thought to it. His body is free so his mind is free which keeps his body free if that makes sense. His mind is "nowhere" because it is throughout his body. This is what I mean when I use the phrase, "in the body". This internal thought without "thought", knowing without "knowing". 

To Move in the Body Without Judgement

“In all things have no preferences.”

             ―Miyamoto Musashi, Dokkodo 11

John moves in the body without judgment. As you will recall I once discussed this idea that this thing we call judgment is nothing more than a rationalization of the decisions that we have already made or positions we have already chosen to take. I once read a study where the author said that the human brain forms words between 1200 to 1400 words per second, others have said about 600 milliseconds per word, however, because we can't say 1200 words a second when we speak this is what allows us to seemingly create words as we go along. Well, whatever it is because our brain already formed the words before we could ever physically say them it seems to happen instantly. In other words, it already happened. 

This is what I mean when I say he moves in the body without judgment when he moves the decision of why he did what he did when he did it was already made in the body. In other words, it already happened. Because his body never gave up that freedom I can now see why he has a unique ability to read movement, to listen to peoples bodies. This freedom he enjoys in the body, in my opinion, has allowed him to develop an understanding of movement outside of normal experience. It has allowed him to see it in the mind because it’s already in his body what is the art of the possible. What can be, and what will just not work.

Oh, and one more thing, from time to time I'm often asked especially about some of the stuff in my Blog Posts why I talk about this sort of stuff. You know all this "scientific stuff". The reason should be obvious this is the way our bodies work yet when it comes to fighting for some reason. People act like these things don't even exist or that we don't know how to do these things in the body or that they don't matter even when fighting. It's in their minds as if all of the sudden how our bodies work just shuts down in a real fight and then when we're finished it goes back to the way it was working before. This is just nonsense.

It's like when you drive your car well you know, from time to time you have to react to avoid an accident well, when you do so you don't forget how to drive a car, your bodies reaction when you turn the wheel doesn't change, you don't turn the wheel so far that you flip the car over. Now you may panic and due to inexperience or a lack of training and not know what to do, but the notion these things are not still taking place on some level. I'm sorry, but that dog doesn't hunt. Folks your body is always on, but how you develop it is up to you. 

On a personal level and this is just me, I do not understand this way of thinking. I really don't. How you can train in a martial art or any physical activity for that matter and not develop or at least want to gain an appreciation for how your body works? How do you even know the right questions to ask if you don't have even a general idea of what it is or that something even exists? This way of thinking is just beyond me especially at something where the difference in how you develop yourself could be a matter of life and death. I was just speaking with a student about this the other day and I said something like, 

"You know here's the deal if what we say about the 'Principles of the Art' are true, then how you and I interact with each other in time and space is crucial and our understanding of how things work are critical to our advancement in skill and ability to use the principles, or manipulate them to our advantage. If how we interact in time and space doesn't matter then the principles of the art are not true and what you're basically saying is the art doesn't work, which we know is not the truth. My point is people can't have it both ways, either it's true or it's not and since we know it's true because there's plenty of sources outside of Guided Chaos that support how the things we do work. Then folks need to get over themselves and get on board with how it works. The sooner they accept this fact the sooner they can begin to develop their skills on a deeper level."

“Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.”

       --Leonardo da Vinci

This freedom in the body has allowed him through training and experience to make logical inferences and leaps in thought, “without thought”. When John moves with folks what seems like random movement from our perspective is actually intelligent movement guided by experience. Because of this freedom he enjoys in the body by the time he moves on you, it already happened because he already did it in the body.

But it is also, in my opinion, a level of experience he developed at an early age from dealing with his father and uncles training him to get out of the way of things, to getting into real fights.

Each experience offered new insights to how he could move his body, adapt to the situation, etc. which in my opinion shaped how he moved in the body which shaped how he thought about moving in the body on an unconscious competence level. In other words, he just “knew”. I’m all about this.

To me, this explains why he was able to have the insights he had as he got older when studying with other Masters in other arts. John, in my opinion, was already doing things in the body at a very young age that people spend a lifetime trying to get to in their own martial training. The subtle movement, the adumbration, it’s all there. When I use to study karate one of the often heard refrains from instructors was that if you kept doing the forms or techniques long enough. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where they become supple and fluid.

Yet, I can tell you “rare” is the martial artist that can get there from here unless they were already blessed with a certain level of physical talent that allowed for them to have a certain amount of natural looseness from the very start. There are other reasons for this but the main thing is if you do not develop this level of subtle adumbration in the body it’s just not going to happen for you. This suppleness, looseness, ability to create space for yourself if you do not develop this in the body you’re just not going to get there I don’t care what you study including Guided Chaos.

Now, you may be asking why am I spending so many electrons explaining this? It’s because folks when you have the opportunity to work with John, try not to mess up what he’s trying to show you. In other words, stop screwing his drill up! He’s moving in a way to allow you to feel and experience what he’s doing. He’s moving just enough above your ability to push your abilities without overwhelming you. He’s guiding you and placing you where you can learn something that in many cases until you become advanced enough you would never think of because you have to experience it to appreciate it let alone know it even exists. When I talk about how John helps people “Create” this will make even more sense and you will see why this understanding of his movement is important. Now in my last Blog Post, I talked about things like Stopping Time and Disappearing, etc. but what I came to realize is that no matter what I say. What actually allows you to do it is you have to develop it in the body by learning how to gain greater control over your body and there are certain things in your body you have to develop in order to achieve this to varying degrees. Just as a brief description once again:

Stopping Time – is a way of moving where for a brief moment all movement in your body “stops” for like a microsecond, to change the tempo either to get them to overcommit or in anticipation of them over committing so you can affect their body as they try to adjust. In order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" your body movement and come to a complete stop, then have the ability to start again. 

Slowing Time – is a way of moving where for brief moments, like a microsecond, you actually “slow down” your movement to change the tempo either to get them to overcommit or to direct them to where you want them to go. Like Stopping Time, in order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" your body movement only this time instead of stopping you slow your body movement down, allowing them to over commit or direct their motion/redirect their motion, then have the ability to start again. 

Disappearing – is a way of moving where you can literally “lift” your hands, arms or even move your body away from them where for a microsecond, they actually get stuck where they are because they are still holding the shape of your last “impression”. Like Stopping and Slowing Time, in order do this you need to be able to develop the level of Body Unity where for a microsecond you "decelerate" or "change" your body movement by isolating on a micro level only this time you let them go after you have made your adjustment and strike from an entirely different place in relation to their body.

This is a much more complex set of skills than the way I'm describing them and I'll be honest most folks will never get there for various reasons but not necessarily due to a lack of physical development but a lack of understanding these things in context and imagination. 

These are not formal things these are just names I just gave them to describe things that I’ve felt not only John showed me under The Wisdom Tree when I would ask him what he did, etc. Oh, one more point, in order to do these things above all you must also develop the “patience” in order to successfully pull them off. This is hard to do because it requires you not only develop the right timing and competence to do it but have the confidence in your abilities to sort of stand in that space because when practicing this you’re going to get hit, that’s just the way it is.

This is not easy because it’s like swinging a baseball bat, swing too soon and you miss, swing too late and you miss. The timing has to be precise and this takes time to develop, but if you stay at it and practice this the right way you can develop it on some level. Just understand some of this is also based on how much physical talent you have so if you have good speed and reflexes life is good, if not? Then the timing is even more crucial.

So with that said, I’m going to lay something out to hopefully help you understand when training to refine your movement a little better.

Micro-Adumbration: The Space Between Space Part II

“Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.”

                         ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

On Creativity

“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination, they produce more hues than can ever be seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.”

                                 ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I believe, and this is just my personal theory, that "creativity" is a process but one that has to be built in up front. But here’s the key it doesn’t have to be exact it just has to “feel familiar” or “appear similar”. In other words, it is far from being random as we've been led to believe however because it is one of those intangible things that seems to come from out of the ether. For most people, it is difficult for their minds to grasp.

In the paragraph in "Red" below, I’m sure you’ve seen this sort of thing before, this is one of those skills we actually teach folks in the military to develop their understanding of how to quickly observe a situation and with minimal information make decisions (i.e., logical assumptions or inferences). This was an email that was going around some time back purporting some fictional study on how the brain learns to read through “whole words” which is just nonsense. But we have used this in the military to teach certain skills. Please read the statement below:

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

Now the statement you just read is not true about how we read or why you’re able to read the text. There's even stuff like this that we have used:

                   "P05ITIV3 R34L1TY" 

The reason you are able to still read the above even if with some difficulty is because you had already built in the “capacity” to read otherwise it wouldn’t matter what was presented you can either read or you can’t. And that’s the point I’m trying to make here when you build it in ahead of time you’re able to make those "leaps of logic" or "inferences" in the body.

When I discussed in the last Blog Post “Fighting in the Future” one thing I didn’t get into was the idea of when you reach the future and looking back on the past. You are able to anticipate possibilities and probabilities, as a result, because you are able to anticipate to a high degree in the body. You enter a place where you are able to become “Creative”.

As I’ve said in other posts, one of the things that I’ve observed is that the most creative people I’ve ever come across in my life all seem to have one thing in common and that is as in the example above with the jumbled words, their fundamental understanding of whatever it is that they did was “so great”. That while others were still painting by the numbers or as in the case of music playing scales, they were creating art and symphonies because they could already see where they needed to go next without having to think about it because they had already built in the capacity to do so beforehand. whatever it was for them it was, they had no preferences they just did it, but they had to learn to become that person.

I was just recently talking to a student about this and I was telling the story of my Mom and how she had taught herself how to play the piano and guitar. Now my Mom, who was also an artist was not into pop music at all. It was either classical music or gospel and that was it. Anything else was the “Devils Music”, she was far from an “Iron Maiden” fan. Just sayin…

So I’m in the car with her one day and she’s playing one of her classical music tapes and while I recognize some of it most of it I had never heard before so I was like, “Mom who’s this?”

So she says, “Oh, this is me this is one of my tapes.”

So, at this point, you could hear the needle violently scratch across the record and I’m like, “What?”

She says, “Yes, this is one of my tapes I put together, I got tired of listening to other people’s music so I thought I’d try to make some of my own.”

So, when we get home because I’m still a little in disbelief she turns on her keyboard and sure enough, she starts to play what was on the tape in the car. Now I’ve heard my Mom play before but it was always other people’s stuff, but to see her play something that came out of her own mind was a different thing. You want to know why some of the most popular musical artist today don’t write their own songs, it’s because creativity is hard, it is a different talent. However, it in my view is not impossible to develop to some degree but it requires a different way of thinking to include developing things in the body that are outside of our conscious awareness.

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

                       ― Sun Tzu

When you get to the future as I said before the thing you have to get is, “it” already happened. Whatever you do “it already happened”. If they get to the future before you, bad news for you, it already happened since when you do something from the future, “opportunities multiply as they are seized” because you can’t catch up.  My observation is one of the hallmarks of creative people is they are always in the future. They’re not just asking why, but also why not? Both in body and spirit, they just seem to always be “there”.

This is why they see what others don’t see, they have developed themselves to the point where they’re not thinking of what to do they’ve already done it.

“Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won't see the tree… Preoccupied with a single tree, you'll miss the entire forest.”

  ― Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman

When you train to the best of your abilities through the principles but also through the brilliant Contact Flow Exercise that John has created. Which in and of itself is another form of his creativity. You want to do it the way he says to do it, whatever he wants you to focus on at that time is what you want to do because he’s trying to help you learn some very specific attributes but you can only learn them by moving the way he points out how you have to move. The reason is you have to give your body a chance to develop these things so that as you build up a million different adumbrations in the body you are able to start moving in a way that allows you the freedom in the body to make the logical inferences or leaps to the future that will enable you to get ahead of another person’s movement.

When people move there are impression when we move with them that we are able to gain an appreciation of but in order to be able to look back from the future to see them we have to build it up in our body where we reach a point where our body has already decided what it’s going to do before we even do it. From there the multiple possibilities just seem to open up where you make the decisions in real time without conscious awareness but you have to build it in up front. Like I said in my last post I can teach you how to throw a football but I can’t teach you how to throw one well. For that, you have to throw a lot of footballs to get good at it if you are ever to be able to develop your “touch”.

Well, that’s it for this installment. Remember when you train as My Master has taught me try to focus on that thing he is showing you and move in the manner he told you. If he said just move with it then just move with it and no nothing else. If he says stay out of the way then stay out of the way and do nothing else. All of the other things will come in their own time in the body, the timing, the adumbration, the touch. But you have to do it enough and long enough to allow it to “take”. If you’re trying to find it within yourself, you have to give yourself the chance to develop it. However, how you develop it only you can do that for yourself.

“When this No-Mind has been well developed, the mind does not stop with one thing nor does it lack any one thing. It appears appropriately when facing a time of need"

― Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman

Again this is one of those things that would take me years to unravel the meaning and understanding. But understand it I eventually did...

Well, that's it for this installment hope this helps folks out in understanding some of this stuff. Remember, these are just my thoughts on this stuff based on my experiences.

Thank you.

LtCol Al Ridenhour

Senior Master Instructor

GUIDED CHAOS

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