August 7, 2017

I started practicing Aikido, more then a year ago. Since I can remember I always wanted to master an Martial Art but Aikido wasn’t in my list.
I didn’t even knew that it exist and on my mind I always thought about Kong Fu or Jujutsu, i never imagine to find my self practicing any Martial Art, surrounding by HighTec, intelligent partitioners.

In the past few months I have found my curiosity for Shamanism, coming back to me.
I remember my self practicing different shamanic technics few year past but in the last couple of years, my main focus was caught by ancient astrology ,High Magic technics and alchemy, so shamanism was not in my daily routine but was always accompanied me.

While trying to bring more of it back to my life I started reading books about different Shamanic technics from around the glob.

I found my self attracting, more then the others, to Mongolian & Siberian philosophy and culture and i tried to find as much as I could about them.

While searching in there rituals and listening to there music I purchased my self a Russian Jaw Harp to start practicing Non-ordinary State while playing with it, instead of listening to monotonic shamanic drumming as I used to do.

The Mongolian call the Jaw Harp (hel khuur) “the horse riding instrument” because they believed that it can take you to another world, the spirit world.
After few month in practicing, i can understand why they call it this way…

After finding this amazing and simple instrument, so powerful I told Sharon, my partner and my dreams manifesto, to help me sculpt a powerful and unique Jaw Harp that we can embed in it, our design and knowledge.
This image is our first model…
(still working to find the right vowels and harmony).

While making our Jaw Harp I started to read the book “Sky Shamans of Mongolia” by Kevin Turner and i fount a really exciting piece of information there and I quote:
“Aikido, often translated as “the way of harmonious spirit,” is another Japanese tradition with links to Mongolia. Japanese martial arts master Morihei Ueshiba formed a deep connection with Mongolia. Already a legend among martial-arts masters, he accompanied Onisaburo Deguchi, the head of the shamanistic Omoto-kyo sect, to Mongolia in 1924. It is reported that he and Deguchi encountered Mongolian shamans there.
The following year, Ueshiba returned to Japan, and experienced a great spiritual transformation while spending time in the mountains. He stated that “a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into a golden one.” After this shamanistic initiation experience, Ueshiba’s martial arts skill achieved new, transcendental heights, and he changed his direction to a compassionate form of self-defense, using an attacker’s force to disarm and subdue him without harm. This form of martial arts is well-known today as aikido”.

Aikido as Shamanism, changed my all adult point of view but it was only when I read this paragraph that I understood the entangled connection between them.

The first thing you learn in Aikido class is to never block the attack. The attack is a powerful gift that the attacker is given you, so why to block it if you can use it? help your attacker to release this energy, find your center, move away from the line of the attack and help him direct it away from you.

As some exotic Shamanic technics philosophy which explains how to manipulate attack in NonOrdinary state, by persuading the attacker to change his way by offering “him” a better deal (just like a good sales man).

While practicing Aikido and Shamanism you learn how to move a side your ego-driven reaction to situations, your “natural” instinct to separate good and bad, light and dark, and slowly you are gaining the ability to understand both sides and not choosing any one of them.
You are mastering balance and you learn to walk between the worlds, on the thin line that separate the yin & young, the line that holds the power of them both, the feminine and the mescaline and by abandoning any need of distinction you become aware to your true self, your androgynous state which is a complete, fully realised being.

Morihei Ueshiba used to say: “Aikido is a way of developing body and soul to create a better society” and I think this is the essence of Shamanism as well, to connect oneself back to the nature spirit of earth, to be in harmony with nature and to get your power and healing from there.

More than that, a true and powerful shamanic lessons are meant to relieve you from your ego and the need to feel powerful, even in healing processes, and by conquering your ego, you become a simple energy conductor (or “harmonious spirit”) and you lead the healing to accrue without “your” involvement.
You become a superconductor, like an electricity wire, like Mercury who connect between heaven and earth.

You creates the Harmony between the “above” and the “below” and like the Trinity (heaven, earth man) in Chinese medicine, so you becomes the funnel of the energy that harmonies heaven and earth.

“Masakatsu Agatsu” (Japanese)… True victory is victory over oneself.” Morihei Ueshiba