On Samurai Training and Being a Cell to a Larger Organism
We can either spend our time explaining how we're cells of an organism, or making sure we align ourselves and our lives with it.
The kind of world that will result from one or the other is very different.
Reading time: 5 minutes.
There is a big difference between learning about and practicing with.
When I embarked on my recent journey to Japan, I already knew this intellectually. But there's nothing like direct experience to reveal how sterile intellectual knowing can be, and how humbling it is to work through it in practice.
I spent most of my life drowning in knowledge.
It was the result of a mix of things: family values, cultural tendencies and our modern age obsession for information.
I also spent most of my life running on the belief that if we know about something it means we can do something about it — only to crush against the wall of reality, over and over again. I talked about this last year, when I launched my first-ever group program The Ecology of Power.
And, as my practices around this deepened, so did my struggles.
At every step I'd find another layer of conditioning — one more way in which I tend to end up lost between intaking information, sharing knowledge and, occasionally, falling into one of my worst states: righteousness.
That attitude of sharing things from a subtle place of tension. In my case, a quiet, often unconscious and unintentional aiming for the result. "Can you please get this? It's valuable, can't you see? Just get it already."
I knew about this, and I know where it comes from. And yet — I kept falling.
But then, Japan happened.
I knew that signing up for Samurai training would be interesting, potentially challenging and impactful.
But training with Sensei Zen wasn't like that.
It wasn't interesting or challenging in the usual ways. Plus — his approach to Samurai Traditions isn't about Samurai training at all.
It's about immersing in activities that reshape how you perceive yourself, others and the world around you.
You think you're learning to use a sword. But it's using the sword that's altering you — potentially forever.
Sensei is the last heir of a 16-generation Zen Samurai lineage and his method combines Zen, Bushido, and Shinto traditions in a way that, amongst other things, enables us to directly experience what it feels like to recognize ourselves as cells to a larger organism.
We don't learn about it. He doesn't lecture or explain how it works.
He simply builds, holds, and reinforces the container in a very specific way, practice after practice, day after day — creating space for each person to go through the process, and allow their own necessary reconfiguration to be what it needs to be, and to unfold on its own time.
Because there's a wisdom to it.
It's a humbling, at times frustrating, completely transforming process. As you repeatedly hit the wall of your frustrations and your ever-present subtle craving for results and outcomes, the process eventually takes over.
And for just a few seconds you feel the difference between aiming for something to happen and allowing it to happen through you. You feel what it is to be a cell to a larger organism, and to be in tune with that intelligence.
And there's no turning back from that.
Not for me at least.
Because once I touched that state, whatever my reactive states (like righteousness) allegedly promise — lost all interest.
I could talk about this forever — and, who knows, maybe I will. Sounds like a life well spent.
But what feels right to share now is that the combination of my experience with Sensei Zen in Japan and Josh Schrei's recent words on the power of containers have elevated my love for spaces of shared practice to a whole new level.
"We are not short of insights in this day and age.
It's not about unlocking the codes, it's not about unlocking some mysterious thing that we haven’t thought of already. It’s about: do I have the container to hold that in my life? And with that, can I actually put this into practice of years and years and years?"
There's an organic wisdom to everything. I used to think so, now I know so. In a new way.
And can I see the beauty in having gone to Japan and having met these words right before re-opening applications for this year's Ecology of Power.
I had ideas about how to run it, but those went out the window. They had to.
Because as I came back I knew it had to become:
- even more focused on holding a container for deep, embodied practice
- choral, inviting other experts to lead sessions and share their tools
- co-designed, creating space for both experts and participants to shape the process as we go
Applications are now open, and they close on May 15th.
You can find all the details here.
If you're reading this you know me by now, and you know I take time to digest experiences before I share about them in detail.
And I'd love to hear from you.
Is there'a anything you'd like to know? Would you want to learn more about the kind of exercises we did, how they challenged me, or...?
I hope to hear from you — and especially, I really hope to see you in practice.
So we can keep braiding our roots, and branches.
With love, always
~M*
PS — of course these are my own perspectives, emerged from my own experience. You can learn more about Sensei Zen's work and programs here and on his instagram account. And if you feel called to join one of his programs, I cannot recommend it enough.
