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Good Morning Relatives 

I've been working on the kung fu panda handbook  it is coming along   I also am trying to reconnect, to remake and perhaps rewire my brain as I go   when I fell back in 2012 I really smacked my brain and it had to take a break.  then, just when I thought I was breaking out of that healing cusp I fell again in feb last year and reinsured my shoulder and I am sure smacked my brain again though not quite as hard, and have had some setbacks due to that fall on the ice last year 

now every dark has its light if we can find the matches or where we put our glasses to find those matches and then locate the candle to find our way back into normal life   Im still working on finding my glasses for those of you who are interested  

I have chronic pain in my left brachial plexus  by chronic I mean it is ever-present in varying stages of attention controlling awareness  which is exhausting actually  who would have thought my days would become exhausting?  the brachial plexus which you can look up if you are curious and my shoulder were something that I really took for granted most of my life, as to what that plexus affects  the effect it has on me is that I get tired, I have very little ability to function for very long at all during the day and if I work on writing it can be the end of me for the remainder of the day  because of the nerve and muscle pain it triggers or exacerbates in my left neck, shoulder, arm, hand 

to top that all off I have been working on my brain  trying to restore and recapture what I think of as myself in that capacity  I cannot tell you how horrible it was to find that parts of it were inaccessible to me after the traumas I had   not good bad in fact   so I have been trying to fix that and it causes me to have headaches  odd dry pain that is not quite finger point able but present  very not good   but I trust the process actually and understand that with nerve injuries going back through the pain to find the way back to no pain but functional is the way it works or is supposed to work  

I am someone who gains comfort and peace and extreme well being from snow  from the silence and the cold and the beauty of its perfection and its smell and texture  on and on  everything about snow makes me happy  so my brain decided to interpret my wanting to have my brain back as me going skiing in new snow in an amazing place with amazing drops and twists and turns  what is funny is that there was the old me skiing with me and the new me following  that is until I got to the place where the old way led into a deep well worn actually scorched (imagine scorched snow) very deep track that looked way over skied so I made the decision to hop up on my skis and take myself down a different track  leaving my old self to find its way in its past on its own 

thus the headaches eh?  so new snow new tracks new schussing  kind of scary eh?  no not for me  who knows what I will find the the vast reservoirs of my giant snow brain as I make my way across its landscape  at least I am home at last 

anyhow  I got stuck while working on the panda and had to wait a bit while the pieces found their way to the top and I could put them together.  I realize that not all of what is put together for me is immediately recognizable for you  but that is the nice thing about having your own blog  it is yours as is mine so it makes sense to me which if you read it and you are welcome to it it may or may not make sense to you  se-la-ve 

anyhow I was thinking about how like my shoulder before it made itself so ever presently present to me through loss, I was thinking about how Po's skill as a kung fu master is over looked. Not recognized until he becomes recognizable by learning the standardized forms    what is it that Master OOgway sees when he sees Po? what is it that Po is before he is trained? what is it that makes him Him?  Him of course  like my shoulder. it is the unseen the behind the camera that makes the film  it is the life that is brought to the action that makes the action valuable  not the action itself  so I thought I would share a little of what I wrote this morning  

good luck star troopers,  have fun with your life 

How do we teach that kung fu is everything, everywhere, all the time? That we are its’ essence. We are kung fu always even as we are always language, emotion, give and take, curiosity, and that which must attempt. We are always all of these things. Even if we have not mastered our Effort so that like a horse charging under fire we are able to hold our purpose, our intent and our motion channelled through a form that is particular in its path. WE are that. 

Why do I understand this? Because it is everywhere, every moment that I am. Because I am it, and if I am here it is here. If I am moving it is moving. I am the ball of clay it makes itself from. Therefore in me is all that it is or can be. As I make my way through my life, through the things that I choose to use to shape me or that my own push pull with life molds me into or out of, it still remains that all that is possible, came from me.  How cool is that. 

How do we teach ourselves to return to the understanding that we are masters?  That we are born fully capable of all that we want to be. It is an simple matter of believing we already are extraordinary rather than thinking that we have to achieve something or the other in order to be extraordinary. The only permission we need is our own. 

We are all already all that we can be.  Without me there is no kung fu, I am kung fu, I just may not be disciplined yet, or fully trained. But I am what creates kung fu. Without me kung fu is nothing. I am the everything that kung fu needs so that it can exist. Kung fu comes to my table to eat not, the other way around.  It is very important that we take this tiger by the right tale so that it doesn't eat us alive. 

How do we reverse the mirror in which our lives are viewed so that the vast hidden reservoir of our ability is not misfiled in our psyche and shelved as insignificant the moment we walk out of the door of our yoga class, our tai-chi practice, our church study group, or our compassion as a second language study group?

When we push who we are to the back of our minds and forget that we are who we are all the time we become as dry and dusty as a discarded book lost on a forgotten library shelf. When I look back at my life, or at the system of lives around me I see that we are and have been living our lives as if we need some sort of special permission, degree or certificate of competency in order to own them. In order to simply enjoy them. I see so much loss through the loss of all our magnificence because we have come to believe that without what is without whatever that is or may be we are nothing. Worse than nothing, most of us believe we are less than.  Brrrr-ugh, yuck yuck yuck.

When Mr Ping teaches Po that in order to make something special you just have to believe that it is special, he is also saying the opposite. That in order to make something insignificant you just have to believe that it is not special. Our lives, our system of enslavement which is bowing down the heads of our society almost to the breaking point was not created by picking the right or wrong system with which to align ourselves. It was created by thinking that we needed a system at all in order for us to have value, to have purpose, to blossom or make the most of ourselves, or to come to the conclusion that life after going to so much trouble and particular magnificence in creating us would discard us as if we did not matter after all. 

Life is not impersonal. It is not meaningless. It is amazingly, extraordinarily, extravagantly magnificent. And each of us. Each living thing has it wholly in our own hands from the moment we are born until the moment we lay down our little clay suits and move on to the next glorious adventure. We have forgotten that without the magnificent gerbil, the wheel is irrelevant.  When we become salves to the wheel that cannot because of its very nature encompass all of the extraordinary ordinariness of our own simple selves we have lost sight of the original gift of the wheel. 

How do we teach ourselves and thus each other that we already own and in fact embody a tremendous vast incalculable opportunity and competency that is so singularly amazing that there is only one of each of us ever created? How is it that the tools that were created to sharpen our wit, dulled our sense of awareness? Why is it that when I was sent to school and driven to church that the very essence of my own value, my own extraordinary capability was denied, discounted, eliminated from the equation of a successful me as if it was never a divine gift of life fully delivered the moment I was born?

Rather than receive me as the overflowing well that I am, I was taught, brainwashed into thinking that without the permission of that which is without I was less than the meanest thing, even to the point of non existence. I am not the only one who was taught and has used the mirror to destroy myself before it ever occurred to me to see in that mirror looking back at me the infinite capacity that I AM. When education, or persuasion of any kind depends on the premise that without its’ approval, without its’ mastery I am less it is a false teacher. 

Any skill, any discipline, any idea pursued to its infinite application is in fact itself dependent on the presence of the student. Without the student there is no discipline. The student brings to the practice the infinite possibility of learning, adaptation, assimilation, incredulity, curiosity, resilience, application, repetition, opposition, and eventually the ability to discard and move beyond the static realm of the classroom.  Between the small number of practical and personal extraordinary gifts that each student brings to any class, practice, or study of any form of applied learning are the infinite nuances that each student carries within him or herself. Each of us has the seed of infinite possibility bursting open deep inside of us, and reaching and growing towards the light of our own experience in a way that no master will ever experience or have the pleasure of its extraordinary essence of life. 

How do I teach myself? How do I teach all of us to turn the mirror around and instead of seeing what is lacking through some small thimble of controlled negative dialogue, teach myself and others to see what it is, who it is that I bring to the equation just be being present. Just by showing up. Hmm? How do we accomplish this extraordinary reversal of fortune and restore ourselves to our own lives?

Personally for me it is all right here in the Kung Fu Panda. Thank you very much DreamWorks Animation. I just have to believe that I already have the eyes to see it, that I already have the ability to be whatever it is that I see or understand. Then I simply have to get up and get on with it. With me.  No need to be God, or have a degree, or be able to write a masterpiece, do 183 asanas perfectly, or even go on a successful blind date. I just have to get up and be me. Every moment of every day trusting that I am already capable of finding my Way, enjoying what I choose to take on as a discipline or discard as not my cup of tea; as long as I do not leave me behind as I make my way through my own day, my own present presence I will be more than ok. I will be more than enough. I will be, I am my own dragon warrior.