“Supreme Excellence,” by Nev Sagiba

When striving for excellence, we generate light, the nature of the expanding universe. No, this is not a mystical statement. When striving against odds, the neurones fire more, and the more they are practiced and used, the more they fire. The more the neurones fire, the more electrical energy is generated, the more light, hikari.

This is not a trite statement, but a fact of life and nature, millions of years in the making.

Conversely, when undermining any creation or creative process, we expend much more energy also undermining ourselves. Petty manipulations tend to backfire. In the end, they all recoil because they fail to generate light, but are parasitical in nature. Invariably something in nature will swat a mosquito.

To simply do the job is less energy expending than making a lot of noise in excuse making. Getting to the point is easier than avoidance. But this requires sincerity, clear perception and morality.

Look around you at the antics in the world today. People expend immense energy cheating to get a damaged result they could get whole and complete with simply less but honest effort. This points to a contagion of the mind, a mental illness, a disease of the soul fomented and infected by pathological parasites and diseased minds.

We can all be collectively and individually free of this illness.

Effort, right effort, generates light. So what? Light is the nature of the creative, expanding universe and all in it. Darkness, merely the absence of light and when subscribed to, this cold, shrinking, illusory nature can consume everything in its path. Anti-matter and anti-light, is as prions are to the cannibal’s brief existence.

The human body-mind complex exists for more than merely the processing of poor quality matter to produce sewage, whilst briefly scratching a few itches and chasing this or that delusion. Nature can achieve this without a biological entity of such immense potential and complexity as a human being.

As yet, the potential of this biological entity remains mostly unexplored because we are not taught much more than to chase the glitter of external appearances which in the end, after a wasted life, end up proving that they do not exist anyhow, and never did, being merely the seemingness of baubles reflected from a shimmering sea of life which is in fact real, but misunderstood by us.

Ancient languages referred to the striving to excel as for example the Sanskrit word: “yoga” which originally translated as, “skill in action.” This in ALL SKILLS and actions. The “yogi,” or skillful doer, was deemed to be “the favourite of the godhead.” Why would the ancient writers make such a statement?

With the passing of long time, and long time again, The Yoga of All Things, was forgotten, and it decayed into a handful of largely misunderstood stretching poses containing elements of aerobic, cardiovascular, anaerobic, isotonic and isometric resistance, kinetics and isokinetics, retro-gravity negative resistance, polymeric, muscle synergy, flexibility, muscle tone, speed of body to eye co-ordination, equilibrium and adaptivity. These were originally intended to enhance the body-mind connection through natural breathing in action meditation.

Meditation being the natural state of balanced body-mind, fully present and clearly conscious in the moment, that term also decayed into everything but MEDITATION; rather such misdirections and exercises as visioning, hypnotically “guided” visualization, contemplation, cogitation, thinking, fantasizing and a large range of practices which are not meditation per se, rather mental manipulations that often lead to lack of the very clarity sought.

Later, in China, the term Gungfu was used to indicate the same condition, or natural state embodied by the great people of old. Likewise, originally, “kungfu” was used in a context completely unrelated to martial arts, referring colloquially to any individual accomplishment or skill cultivated through practice leading to Dau. Wushu is a more precise term for general martial activities.

Importantly the body-mind connection was sought as the marriage of heaven and earth within the human being as a conduit hopefully replicating the original condition of the universe before opposites came into being, thereby reconciling all opposites in the moment. Wholeness and equilibrium of mind, body, spirit, intention or will, wisdom or clarity, and love or harmony embodied.

Other old writings of both East and West refer to light, also the distinctions between light and darkness in human consciousness and to bring forth and extend that light into the world rather than hiding it.

Again, this is not philosophical theory, but measured scientific fact. The universe, and all in it, is expanding light, as is that which forms our content and which is more intensely expressed in the biological organism, the firing of neurons in the brain, gut, nervous system and chemical cocktails throughout the biological organism, via the glandular system. It is pragmatically calibrated.

People who strive to excel and to support the striving towards excellence generate different conditions inside themselves, around them, individually and collectively, to those who do not, or those who run counter to the harmony that already exists in nature and the universe and which we are designed to reflect.

The error in thinking that leads to darkness and failure is when, every man for himself, we make ourselves separated from the collective unity and desire to be the best, over others, instead of simply the best that we can be for today, for this moment for no reason other than to be the best we can, for the sake of unconditional excellence itself, and to serve.

People who chase money seldom get to catch it and even less to hold on to it. And those who do are mostly miserable. But those who sincerely strive to excel and to support excellence, naturally and effortlessly attract wealth in more numerous vast arrays then mere money, this being only one measure of expended energy.

There is spiritual wealth, physical wealth, mental wealth, social wealth, as well as the mere material wealth which exists only to support these more important forms of human wealth.

Nature does not require humans to produce poo. Nature can get all the valid poo for fertilizing trees that it needs by natural decay of dead organic matter. In the end, trees eat us anyhow and the few inches of topsoil we rely on for food growth is, in any event, the bodies of our biological ancestors, we so disgracefully bury under concrete. Instead of honouring, we have become a species of polluters living in denial.

We are, or can be, much more than mere poo factories. We are designed to explore possibilities, to be inventive, to serve, to radiate and to harmonize.

But we have a choice.

Aikido is Yoga/Gungfu practice par excellence. Kami no hikari is not a theory, or the idealized ramblings of old mystics, but a real and solid fact. It is not so solid we can bottle it, or sell it or capture it, but, more real than solid, it runs the world. Men in suits do not, they merely delude themselves and administer poorly and with little skill. As we can see.

When they, and we all, are long gone, nature will continue in her ancient, perennial process subject to the eternal movements of the universe which Aikido reflects.

On this basis, Aikido is a good practice that not only over time can serve to make us more whole, but by harmonizing us and our surrounds, adds to the true wealth of the world, intangible to some: The Supreme Excellence that dictates conditions in and all around us. Conditions that cannot be manipulated, but only enhanced as a living harmony that enlightens, uplifts and enriches the world in the truest sense.

Nev Sagiba
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