The Seven Fundamental Principles for Standing in the Face of the Truth
An Introduction
When we don't have harmony in our lives and our world, we are suffering from some kind of imbalance. As we strive to improve our relationship to the world and within ourselves, we reach out to family and friendship, exercise and nutrition, and religion and meditation for solace.
'Balance and Harmony' is an often-used phrase, that sounds good on paper but isn't always so easy to achieve. Interestingly, quietly residing between those two seven letter words lays a simple three letter word - 'and.' As we shall see, it's all in the 'and,' because hiding in that little conjunction are five secrets to improved balance and harmony.
Years ago my teacher (Sensei) related he had been thinking a great deal about the term balance and harmony, noting that the phrase is tossed about quite a bit. He had been observing how people often have a hard time finding balance in their lives, and that they have an equally hard time transitioning to harmony. He emphasized that while the two words are often used as synonyms they are actually two completely different principles.
Pondering what was preventing people from finding balance and then making the transition to harmony, his questions became a serious study. He found himself wondering what it was that resided between balance and harmony. In a succinct moment of realization, he began to focus on the three letter word ‘and’.
In time he came to the realization that a seemingly insignificant word actually represented five principles, and that the word ‘and’ was a transitional word in a much larger sense than had ever been imagined. For within that word resided five naturally flowing universal principles that reliably transition us from balance to harmony.
If we are not in harmony, it is because we are stuck on one or more of the other principles. With an understanding of how the principles work, including their interrelationships, there now existed a roadmap to achieving better harmony in our lives. Eventually, these principles became known as The Seven Fundamental Principles for Standing in the Face of the Truth. [1]
Brilliantly ordered and crafted, together these principles teach us how to stand in the face of the Truth, including how to face our inner demons and outer critics. Each principle successively reveals that we can not only be successful navigating the unknown, but that we have a universal, principle-based 'GPS guidance system' to take along anytime we go there.
The Seven Fundamental Principles
- •Balance - to be centered
- Adaptability - a willingness to change to a more balanced position relative to the environment
- Interaction - to relate with the environment
- Mechanics - structures, forces and motion
- Movement - to change
- Ki or Energy - the universal energy
- Harmony - to live according to Nature
It’s too Simple
One of the biggest problems we face on the path of inner development is confusion. In many cases confusion occurs because we are looking at, thinking about or experiencing things that we don't have a frame of reference for.
In describing this phenomenon to a group of students, Sensei related how the nature of studying deeper principles, as well as the actual act of going into a deeper part of ourselves seems so utterly confusing at times.
Designed to Reveal the Confusion
"Why would it be confusing? Because it is confusing. Because it's so simple. It's only seven fundamental principles.
"Why is it confusing? Because if it wasn't confusing everybody would have it down. I'm going to tell you right now that most people quit before they learn these kinds of things in their lives. They start to learn one principle and they quit on themselves, and they don't give themselves a chance. You can find all kinds of reasons to say it's confusing, it's not worth learning, or that you can't learn it, or that you don't think that you should have to learn it.
"You need to decide where you want to be in your application of these things, because they will open up your life in more ways than you can believe. But, if your mind stays closed to them, even a little bit, every bit that is closed to them translates to a whole lot of holding them back in your life.
"Your confusion is what is preventing you from being exactly what you want to be, and doing exactly what you want to do. It's your confusion that keeps that from happening. Otherwise, why wouldn't you be doing it? If that's what you want to be and do more than anything, why wouldn't you be doing it? It's because it's not so easy to go out and do it - because you're confused on how to go about doing it.
These principles are here to teach you how to deal with that confusion. So when you feel the confusion, it means you're on the right track.
"When you stop and look at that confusion, especially when you look at it when we're talking about the principles, the reason that you look at the confusion at all is because these principles are designed to get you to see the confusion. When we start talking like this and you start to feel confused, that's because we're bringing you to the truth."
Sensei.
"Lecture on Fundamental Principles, Part 2: Confusion and the Truth".
Montvale: Great River Institute, 1 July 1997.
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[1] Taught in Great River Jiu Jitsu's colored belt curriculum, as components for the first degree black belt.
Balance, for example, is the principle worked on by the beginning white belt student. Each student has an entire belt rank to work on that belt's specific principle, concurrent with the rank's technical and mental requirements. Black belts train in other principles relevant to the degree they are studying.
