Locker Room Wisdom I love hanging out in the locker room. I was thinking a lot about after working out today. What I value about the locker room is honesty. Brutal honesty. You know who everyone is in a locker room. You have your potty mouths, mean people, nice people, funny people, etc. Whenever anyone talks in the locker room, it is with great honesty and directness. Some guys don’t like changing or showering with others and others are way, way too comfortable being naked. There are many deep lessons involved in this situation. First, many people have instant expectations of what a locker room guy is. Everyone has an expectation, image or even stereotype. Most people envision a bunch of jocks sitting around scratching their groin and grunting like apes. In the path of healing, we always have to be aware of our concepts, preconceived ideas and the stereotypes of our mind. A locker room is a great example of that. Do you see a primate like man grunting in your mind? Do you see a lawyer? Do you see a healer? What do you see? Do you see a loving dad? All these thoughts affect our life. An important lesson in understanding disease is concepts and preconceived ideas. Do you think an herbalist is someone who lives in a solar powered house down by the river made of sticks? Or do you see them dressed in renaissance clothing? Or do you see them as a person of great wisdom able to orchestrate deep changes in your life? Or something else? The first locker room principle we see is preconceptions. Like ideas about people, we also have these preconceived ideas about health and illness. Do you think emotions cause disease? Do you think cancer is impossible to cure? Do you think acid reflux is easy to treat, but multiple sclerosis is hard to treat? In healing, we have always examine the preconceptions we are operating under for insight. If there is no new insight, then there is no new level of healing. The second principle is honesty. I love the locker room because it is a place of brutal honesty. Everyone is their true self. Mean guy, professional business guy, naked guy, self righteous guy, the nice guy, funny guy, etc. You know pretty well who everyone is and what their beliefs are. The deeper meaning of this is important to grasp. What does this have to do with healing??? The locker room is a microcosm of human life. You could criticize many people. However, we have to ask, “Are they being authentic?” Some people are just plain mean and born mean. Some people are just darn funny. Some people are driven. Some people do martial arts to punch and throw people, others do it for the pure art form of it. Before we run to judgment, we must ask, “Are these people living authentic?” Many of these people are truly living authentic lives and their locker room discussion (whether we agree with it or not) is an extension of who they are. This brings us to a core principle of healing – be who you are. The locker room is great because there is no hiding, no posturing, no pretend attitudes. It is just people in their true state. For some reason, it evokes great honesty. A major principle of healing is living who you truly are. You may not like someone or their career or their life path, but can you be objective instead look deeper to see if it is their true nature shining? The understanding is that there is macrocosmic (big level) healing and microcosmic (small level) healing. They microcosm affects the macrocosm and vice versa. This is how the universe works. You might not care about the sun, but there is a reason why NASA monitors it every second. It affects everything on earth. The first steps we take on our healing path are small changes. They represent the microcosmic change, the beginning. However, we absolutely have to address the small stuff before the bigger stuff can change. Nothing is more important for microcosmic change then being your true self. Allow your true self to shine. Allow your true nature to come out. Sounds simple, but it may need to create change at every level of your life – work, career, passions, hobbies, family, relationships, friendships, habits, diet, etc. Do you feel better as a meat eater or vegetarian? Do you feel better working out at the gym or just doing yoga? Do not let ideas fool you or concepts fool you. Just follow your true nature. The biggest reason people are sick is because their true self is not shining and they are not being honest about it. This is the root of dis-ease and creates all kinds of problems in our bodies. Please read that last statement again. Healing is not always magical and is often simply built upon the small changes. So many people try to create a big grand change without building on the foundation of small important changes. This is like trying to be successful in your career without honoring your true self. You can’t do it my friends or it is just a temporary at best. This is one great teaching aspect of martial arts, we have to learn the basic really well before we can learn the more advanced. What about the macrocosmic? Like we said, being honest and allowing your true self to shine is the microcosmic change that allows the big change to happen. At least the guys in the locker room are being honest and following their nature, even is some do not like it. When we make the microcosmic changes, then success happens and is built on a strong foundation. But what is the macrocosmic change? It is healing at a very deep and permanent level. When the disease is gone or the sadness is gone and there are life skills to support the change. This is the big macrocosmic change. It always, always has to be built on small changes. So many people want to heal and want the big change – complete happiness or the disease gone. But they often set themselves up by not thinking about the small changes. Make small changes, be honest to yourself, let go of preconceived ideas and let the healing potential activate. Okay, next time you see a big Neanderthal type guy at the gym, don’t assume he is something.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:09:31 +0000
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