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