Mental-Emotional Aikido, Spiritual Aikido

A great deal of spiritual practice is really about breaking old habits no longer workable for you. Once we break these habits”, we are no longer constrained by reactive patterns from our past. Our choice-ful, calm, compassionate Self can open and expand its wings of peace.

This is how we use negative thoughts and feelings to our advantage, as our teachers. It’s Spiritual Akido isn’t it?

I’m happy if you prefer the term “mental-emotional Aikido.”

Our negative thoughts and feelings point to where our sub-conscious pain-body has an ache and needs first-aid from Self.

I’m learning a new internal rhythm. In the past, I simply played back outwardly the over-reactions arising inside me. There was no Self in between me feeling, and me acting out.

My new rhythm is — as often as I can — to interrupt this cycle. When my reactive mental-emotional parts take over, I try to stop for a moment. It’s as if I turn to face them; and for me, I bow to them, I thank them. These are my creations, my children, returning to me, telling me they have a disturbance I can help them with.

What’s in it for me? Treating my over-reactive parts as a child returning to their mother, when it falls down and scrapes its knee, I learn:

Where I was unaware or paying too little attention,
Where my sub-conscious was suffering,
Where I as Self, can make a positive difference.