Knowing when to act on your opponent is the essence of martial arts, strike too soon and you might over extend, too late and you may miss, one must find the perfect moment to be or not to be and that moment is only ever now.

The magic of being human is our ability to plan and prepare as well as to be able to remember and reminisce, something made capable by the X factor in our species, the mind, but contrary to our common view, it is not here that we find the illusive now, the mind simply acts to bookend this event and hence if we are to find true perfection in our performance, we must learn to look deeper.

Try this exercise for me - cast your mind back to a memory from some time ago…now try to anticipate some random future event in your life, take a moment to think about it….. OK, with this exercise complete, try the same with your body… Of course you can’t, your body is only ever in the now, it cannot be in the future or the past, it is only ever exactly here in the present moment.

Although we habituate the ever flowing present moment, for most of us, it is the past or the present that we attach to and this is because most of us live in our minds. What most of us do not know is that there is a deeper aspect to our selves, our true selves, the inner witness that does not judge or tie up events with the prejudice of our biased notions, we call it the higher self, the subconscious, even God. It is part of us and we are part of it, continuously drawn to its wisdom, we call this intuition and it is the flame that burns deep in our consciousness.

Most of us are so drawn into our minds that we never truly feel the gravity of the inner self but to experience it is to know it. Between the self and the circumstance lies the mind or the ego but the self can see through the illusion, the now, it can see directly and it is this direct vision of the present moment that we seek to know through martial arts practice.

Eons ago, the molecule gave rise to the monkey, the monkey to the man and the man to the mind but somewhere along that road, we as a species became consumed by the wonder of our own imagination and it would seem that many of us are simply lost in there, fueling a world of conjecture and speculation. Now nature beckons us to make that journey back to our origins and to do so, we must reconnect with the body, it is here we may approach the inner self.

The inner witness does not practice one style or another, he is neutral at every moment, reaching only for the tool that is required to fit the job at hand, nothing is done in excess and nothing is lacked. This was Bruce Lee’s vision when he spoke about Jeet Kune Do, a realization of the self that would transcend the ego of various systems or styles of martial art.

I grew up in a world where karate was still karate and Kung Fu was (to my generation) a separate system. We were taught to believe that one should chose a system and know it sufficiently to handle any situation but this was sorely exposed to be a terrific falsehood in the year of our lord, 1993. This was the first ever licensed mixed martial arts event that the Western World was ever exposed to, it was called the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and the result was shocking, a little Brazilian wrestler known as Royce Gracie dominated the event and went on to hold that title for some time afterwards. What was particularly curious about him was the way he fought or perhaps didn’t fight, at least not as we knew it, he pretty much didn’t punch or kick!

Here we had a humble man, tying up his opponents with their own limbs with what he called “Gracie Jiu-Jitsu” we were witnessing the fully realized martial artist, he was not practicing any particular style, it was his style, it was his inner self that was performing, this was a direct expression of the self and hence the name (Gracie, his birth name). This was what Bruce Lee had envisioned when he shod his Kung Fu robes for his iconic yellow track suit, he was no longer practicing his traditional Wing Chun, he was simply Bruce.

The only way, we can grow as a spiritual being is to let go of the egoic mind and find the stillness of the inner self. All knowledge is available to us in here, there is no indecision, just pure acceptance. Race driver Ayrton Senna used to speak of being “above consciousness” when he drove, athletes call this “peak flow” . Bruce Lee described it as “feeling and not thinking”. It is the inner architect that we seek in this experience, the direct vision that only exists in the now, something that cannot be approached intellectually, it simply has to be experienced directly.

This place is in you, it is in all of us but it can seem so far as to not exist for so many of us but it watches over us and guides our every decision if we are simply mindful enough to listen. The deepest secret of martial arts is to surrender to each moment and let matters be exactly as they are, not to question as to question is to hesitate and it is hesitation that takes us outside the now. The primordial force of the Universe is energy, a constant flux that we are enmeshed in, our purpose is to find our current in this motif and to flow with it to our ultimate truth. All you ever need to know, you already know, you simply have to know this to be true…all is exactly how it supposed to be, it could be no other way, you simply have to accept this and learn to see from the deepest part of you, then you will be a fully realized self, you will be happy.