Meditation

Part of what I have started to do to help bring my new path is to meditate. Meditation or prayer comes down to be about the same thing to me: you are calling your spirit into focus on the task at hand; trying to gather your energies and center your person. In doing these things, you refill your reserves to be able to handle the trials of life as a whole. 

Discipline leads to Industriousness, Industriousness creates Self Reliance, Self Reliance allows Hospitality.

Discipline creates Courage, forges Honour, speaks Truth, and holds the Faith.

My meditations are short, only ten minutes. Personally I know that if I try to take more than that, it will get thrown aside in the hustle and bustle of daily life. These ten minutes are used to concentrate on the Nine Noble Virtues. The meditation each day focuses on a virtue, the virtue I think I need the most that day. Since all the changes I’m attempting are based on Discipline, I created a mantra that shows how, through Discipline, all the Virtues come to be. 

This is how I do my more standard meditations, but I also use a fighting meditation to clear my mind and help build muscle memory while working the pell. This is similar to katas used in Eastern martial arts. It allows the body to work through the motions without focusing on all the distractions around. Through the kata, actions become second nature, your combinations flow effortlessly. Since the kata is all about creating muscle memory, it is imperative that your form is the focus of the exercise, otherwise you can do more damage than good.

I use this to remind myself that only by following the path of Discipline can I achieve my goals to become the man I want to be. In between each repetition of the overall mantra, I focus on the virtue of the day, what it means to me, and how I am going to embrace the virtue to succeed in my day. For example, Self Reliance: only through Self Reliance can I build myself into the father that I want to be for my girls. My own strength will show them the path that they should follow, and give them the sense of stability needed to grow. Now, there are some who would say this sounds like philosophy that doesn't belong in heathenism. While our ancestors might not have used the words kata or meditation, we know that they believed in battle trances and in prayers. These ideas are not so far removed, it’s just a matter of phrasing. Personally, I also believe that the people that ranged across nearly the entire world would have picked up things from other places and used it to their advantage. Part of being a warrior is picking up tools to keep your fighting edge sharp. 

Goals:

• Meditate to strengthen the resolve to carry on in this path.

• Use the 10 minutes a day to focus my energies on whatever problems need to be tackled that day

Nine Noble Virtues- Self Reliance

One of my earliest blog posts was about the Nine Noble Virtues overall, in an attempt to get things together a little more in my life and to correct the course that I have been on I am going to start writing blog posts focusing on each of the virtues. These will likely be shorter than older posts, and are more than anything a meditation on what each of these virtues mean to me.

Before I get into the first one which will be self reliance I would like to say that I have been away a long time from writing(13 months), and I can make all the excuses in the world but it comes down to one simple fact. I allowed myself to become overwhelmed by the world around me. With each additional thing that came onto my plate I let go of the very things that kept me stable. Time to take back my life, time to get back on the path, time to live Tru.

Today I am focusing on Self Reliance:

The ability to survive without anyone else is the truest expression of freedom. Self reliance is important because it means that you’ve achieved the success that will allow you to genuinely improve yourself, and to help others. It is a hierarchy of needs: if you are struggling to get the basics, you can never reach greatness. Worse still, if you are begging just to get through, you haven’t reached the point where you can improve on the parts of your character that need work.

At first look, this is a selfish virtue: “I am self reliant, I need no one, BLARGH!” The reality of it is, self-reliance is also the first step towards hospitality. Once you have provided for yourself, you can begin to help others grow and provide for themselves. It’s like your friendly flight attendant says: “If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask first, and then assist the other person.” You can’t help anyone if you’re gasping for air.

This is what I wrote in the original post on self reliance, and it touches on the important parts of this virtue for me. Without self reliance you aren’t free to be yourself, and worse you don’t have the ability to care for others. This latter is part of the reason I am starting with this virtue, I have lost the ability to care for others through losing the ability to care for myself. The basics of how I lost my way was I listened to what others thought my path should be, I made compromises in my life thinking that it would be better for my family. This was my biggest mistake, I was trying so hard to take care of my Lady and children that I put aside myself which meant that I had no way to actually complete the goals ahead of me. My Lady is full of wisdom and one of her most brilliant chastisements/encouragements is to look me in the eyes and say “You are so busy trying to take care of me that you are failing to take care of me”. I was so busy trying to be what I thought was needed, so busy putting effort into a path that wasn’t mine that I couldn’t actually give my family the things that they had come to expect from me.

Now the time has come to change that and find my way once more. I have charted a new course, and over the next couple of months I will be sharing it with you. It starts with self reliance, by caring for myself and getting en route I will have the ability to care for my family, my pack, and my clan.

Goals

• Increase self reliance, by using organizational system that will help me remember the things I need to do.
• Work hard on the path I need to take to get my career in motion.
• Stop relying on others to make things right.