Manifest, Hidden and Divine (Part 1)
Last July/August, the Evolutionary Aikido Community had its second Teacher Conference. We had over 12 dojo-chis together discussing the theme of principles in Aikido. The group explored over 30 different qualities, skills, or expressions of aikido, that we could recognise and identify collectively.
In the meeting we had used the categories of Manifest, Hidden and Divine as the general map of the nature of the art. These terms correlated with the words Techniques (Manifest), Principles (Hidden) and Perspectives (Divine).
To illustrate what is meant by that, imagine a conversation. In the conversation we have the visible form of the conversation, the words, language, grammar (Techniques, Manifest), we have the qualities or principles necessary for a conversation such as listening (Principles, Hidden) and we have the reason for the conversation, maybe friendship, romance, or business, (Perspective, Divine). From this we can see that the territory of the art is quite big and multi dimensional.
Each area, such as Techniques, is limitless in nature. And the relationship between the Manifest expression of Aikido (Techniques), the hidden nature of Aikido (Principles), and the Divine nature of Aikido (Perspectives) in it of itself is fascinating and subtle.
So that leads to the question, how does the reason why we are responding, influence the nature of that response, which finally impacts the form that the response takes?
(to be continued…)