Jiu Jitsu and The Ego

It is with great pleasure that I announce Jiu Jitsu and The Ego is now published! This was a joy to write, and I’m very excited to see the response from the Jiu Jitsu community. Below is an excerpt from the book, the opening of the argument which sets the table for a new relationship to the Ego as well as our Jiu Jitsu practice. I hope you enjoy!

Inflection Point

In the space of holistic development, there are no mistakes. Once you begin this journey, you cannot fall off the path. Every experience serves, as Ram Dass put it, as grist for the mill of our awakening. We are each exactly where we should be, and the lesson we most need is the one we currently experience.

For quite a while I have been making a confident claim: the more people who practice Jiu Jitsu, the better the world will be. I’ve been witness to radical transformation of the initiates on the path, with results far surpassing any personal trainer or therapist. Magic happens on the mat. Jiu Jitsu is healing us.

Our modern world comes with a price tag. Restriction. Isolation. Stagnation. In all the ways our lifestyle binds us, Jiu Jitsu sets us free. We move, we connect, and we struggle. The art provides us the opportunity to aim up alongside fellow initiates, producing a camaraderie uncommon in daily life.

We know our modern lifestyle is antithetical to the dictates of our physiology. We adapted to move in an environment of scarce resources, but we stagnate in an environment of abundance. For most of us, the modern world is an obstacle to physical health.

Jiu Jitsu is healing us, the necessary antidote to modern convenience. And yet, while we derive immense benefits from our practice, we are leaving a lot on the table. The greatest gift of Jiu Jitsu often remains unexplored.

The body flows downstream from the mind. While our physiology may conflict with the modern environment, our psychology is at war. There is so much vying for our attention that many of us have lost the skill of attention. We are at the mercy of circumstance, victim to incessant thinking to which our attention clings. We have become deeply distracted, often living one thought removed from life.

Cogito Ergo Sum. I think therefore I am. Descartes may have done more harm than good with this one. We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinker. We experience thoughts, in the same way we experience weather or disgruntled neighbors. Many of us do not have the gift of that sacred space between thoughts and observer. We are all-consumed, experiencing a barrage of thoughts upon which we feast, largely without realizing we are doing so.

Our saving grace from distraction rests solely on the superpower of attention.

So where does this book fit in?

In seeing what Jiu Jitsu has done in my life and the lives of those around me, I have settled in nicely to the role of the Jiu Jitsu evangelist. My goal with these books is to keep you, the reader, on the mat and to deepen your relationship to your practice, in hopes that this discipline becomes a yoga for your soul’s unique journey.

Deepen. That’s a notion worth exploring. The depth of our practice is the linchpin of the potential truth of my initial proclamation that the more people who practice Jiu Jitsu, the better this world will be.

Phrases like this sound good on the surface. But the simplicity of the words masks the complexity of our reality. It’s just not that clear cut. The attention we pay our practice determines the validity of the practice. To use the words of one of my mentors, Dr. August Leming, are we using the art skillfully or unskillfully?

The wisdom buried in this question amends my opening statement:

The more people who skillfully train Jiu Jitsu, the better this world will be.

I’m not talking about technical skills. That’s a start, and often the necessary antecedent to allow the benefits of the art to permeate into the rest of our lives. Our progress in Jiu Jitsu tends to be the forerunner to the development of our humanity. But it turns out, and this is much to my surprise, that the technical advancement is not the most important factor when using Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle for personal development.

The skill which most necessitates the development of the individual is conscious attention, not physical mastery. To use the art skillfully means to practice the art from the seat of your awareness, to use this discipline as a vehicle for becoming more conscious, not less.

This distinction is paramount, and I believe, the crux of Jiu Jitsu’s capacity to evoke great change in the world.

We are not transparent to ourselves. If we were, we would not need disciplines like psychology. The psyche of the individual is layered with so much fog and complexity that our motives often are unclear to even the most introspective initiates.

The purpose of this book is to clear away some clouds and bring more skillful action to our use of Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle for personal development. This conversation will be focused on the greatest obstacle to our technical development in Jiu Jitsu, our current relationship to the Ego.

But I have another hope. This Trojan horse comes with a big sign attached: “There are ulterior motives inside.”

My hope is that in clearing away the confusion in your martial arts practice, we will bring an equivalent clarity to your life off the mat, as well. This is a two-for-one special. We’ll start on the mat, but we would be wise to not end the conversation there.

I posit that the arguments made in the following pages are the foundational anchor, the inflection point, in the continued evolution of our use of Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle for awakening. I also suggest that you, dear reader, in all your power, already know everything we’re about to discuss. Everything you need is already within you. What we will do, together, is peel back the onion and see what’s there waiting for you, just beyond the veil of our confusion.

The chaos resulting from the events of 2020, both biological and political, offers the opportunity for a rebirth. While I have lost faith in institutions, I have gained faith in individuals.

“And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer – not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.” - Joseph Campbell

Desperate times call not for desperate measures, but new ones. We are now presented with the opportunity that has always been before us, but which circumstance did not until now call forth: we are invited to choose skillful action.

The unskillful and skillful paths lead to opposing destinations. The unskillful path muddies the waters, clouds the sky, (insert countless other mixed metaphors), and adds to our confusion. If we practice Jiu Jitsu in the same unconscious manner we live our lives, there won’t be much (if any) psychological or spiritual progress.

The skillful path, however, is how Jiu Jitsu becomes a vehicle for awakening. The light we bring to our practice, which permeates into the rest of our lives, is how Jiu Jitsu becomes a true vehicle for personal development. For the martial artist, life reflects art. We first experience elevated levels of being through our discipline, which affords us the gift to live this way in the world.

We refer to the building which houses our mat as the academy, not a gym. Gym denotes a place of purely physical training and often the psychological confusion of the individuals who comprise it. The academy denotes education, a sincerity of practice, and a formal study.

The first use of the term “academy,” to my knowledge, is the garden in which Plato taught his subjects in ancient Greece. You may remember from your philosophy classes that Plato believed that when learning, we were not acquiring new information, but rather remembering what we already knew. (Even if you didn’t remember this, you have just learned it and therefore remembered it! Philosophy is weird.)

There is a subtle wisdom in Plato’s notion, regardless of its validity. In pursuing this martial art “skillfully,” I suggest we are returning to a mode of being we inherently know quite well. We are returning to who we really are, free of the confusion of thoughts, paradigms, and concepts.

If we are to use Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle for personal development, it’s time we take a good loOK at the developing person.

This vantage point will begin by observing that which obstructs our vision in the first place: the Ego.