Do You Want To See That Again?

Thinking that one needs to go to the gym, or use any specific, highly-specialized equipment, under the constant and personal supervision of a duly-certified authoritarian, is like persisting in the belief that one can only "learn," from a duly-certified and accredited institution for that purpose -- and nothing else is permitted, allowed, and may be even hazardous to your well-being to even contemplate such an heresy -- against the benevolent, selfless persons, who carry sufficient liability insurance, for demanding that one do what one does not feel comfortable doing, against one's own better judgment.

That used to be the prevailing mentality and culture of an era famous for its dysfunctions and dysfunctional personalities -- the notion that any good thing a person did, had to be forced and imposed by some higher authority -- rather than today's mode that people know themselves best, what is best for themselves -- if they only would listen and observe themselves. That is the timeless advice, to know oneself, as the highest learning and wisdom, any individual can achieve, because in that condition, one is capable of learning anything from everything, because one is the totality of reality, and not just an ego apart from it.

That is the whole concept of "ego" -- that which separates and distinguishes us from everybody else, and everything else, whereas the strength, is being able to draw on everything else, as though it is wholly oneself. Thus the mind that is constantly dividing, compartmentalizing, comparing, every thing to every other thing, is creating the separations that become the conflict and struggle with everything else. And so rather than regarding the environment as oneself, one always perceives of themselves as the alien invader of that garden of eden -- whose task then may be, to cut down all the trees so they can build a supermarket to provide the fruits and abundance that is now gone.

One of the early great thinkers of civilization was Aristotle, who believed that everything ought to be categorized, and in doing that, lay all that could be known -- and was worth knowing. So this tendency to break up reality into countless fragments of confusion unrelated to each other, is not a exclusively modern phenomenon, but a tendency that arises from time to time -- as well as its solution, the desire for greater wholeness, harmony, integration and the connectedness of all things.

In addition to thinking that gyms and health clubs is where one must go to maintain and assure their fitness, and schools and universities are the only acceptable places for learning, there actually was in the recent past, entire buildings dedicated to processing all the information, and everyone and department that wanted such a service, had to properly queue up, while the world came to a standstill, until the "results" could be obtained. It was like going to the temple gods for the truth -- and permission.

That time was actually not so long ago; such information was sacrosanct -- coming out of the building as lengthy computer printouts -- on which all that could be known, supposedly was known, or had to be at least suspected, in order to be verified. Changing anything afterwards, was a tedious and messy process, that tended to discourage the flow of thinking we now take for granted as real time information processing now available to the least of us who can simply ask the relevant questions.

And that would be, not "which gym should I go to," but whether one needs to go to a gym at all, for that purpose -- because obviously, that is the greatest reason why people are not fit -- because they think they have to go a gym to do the few, simple, brief movements that can be accomplished anytime, anywhere -- they have a minute, or even a second.

Because obviously, a second is already plenty of time to produce a great change. How much actual time does it take to throw a punch or a baseball, or hit a ball, or drive a weight overhead. The actual time of such an attempt, is almost always much less than a second, and in fact, the shortest time possible, is usually a measure of that power -- because it is the reduction in the time interval required in measuring change. Masters of their discipline and practice, are those who can compress an hour of effort it takes from everybody else, into a fraction of a second, until many may not even be aware of that effort -- but everything has already changed.