The Way

Resetting the Self on the Rocky Road to Awakening

“When you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things.”

I first read The Book of the Five Rings when I was a young man deep in the study of the martial arts.

Of course, being immersed in Japanese martial arts after dabbling in the Korean to start out made me immensely curious as to the culture of the people that had given birth to the styles I studied, and, also of course, I was inundated with tales—real, imagined and everything in between—of near-mythic historical figures associated with Japanese martial arts in particular, which led me to Miyamoto Musashi.

Sometimes known as the ‘wandering samurai,’ Musashi is undoubtedly one of the quintessential warriors imprinted onto the collective consciousness of both east AND west. Only, he wasn’t a samurai, as a samurai has a lord.

No. Musashi was a ronin, a samurai without a master.

On the surface, I suppose that makes him, well, ‘cool,’ at least from the perspective of most young men who come across either pseudo-historical accounts of him or—far more likely—fictionalized archetypes purporting to encapsulate the manner in which he lived his life.

Naturally, then, when I finally sat down to read his non-martial contributions to the history of man, I assumed I’d be getting detailed accounts of his many martial deeds—the duels he had, the many foes he faced down and the borderline supernatural feats of physical and tactical prowess he had accomplished en route to cementing his status as more myth than man, and surely one of the preeminent warriors of any age.

And while I’m not going to pretend there aren’t martial accounts, talk of strategy and the memory of the rigors of combat infused into Musashi’s writings, what I came away with at the time was as near a thing to the opposite of what I had expected than I COULD have expected, and I was enriched as a result of it.

You see, The Book of the Five Rings wasn’t so much meant to be an autobiographical account of Musashi’s life, nor a retelling of his most famous deeds and misdeeds, but more an account of his mind, and more importantly, his spirit, itself molded in said rigors he apparently left to the telling—and no doubt the exagerration—of lesser men, most of which I have read, and found entirely lacking in substance what they make up for in accounts.

Their focus on the supposed and unknowable actual—Musashi’s purported accomplishments in the physical realm—seem somehow hollow and false in light of the writings and the words he chose to leave behind, for these were the makings of the man according to the man himself, and not the corporeal echoes of things he did on the way to dying.

While accounts vary as to just how many fatal duels Musashi fought in, how many foes he faced down and whether or not he ever needed more than one strike to finish his latest challenger—be they samurai, ronin or wandering vagabond—the account he provided near the end of his life of his spirit remains unchanged, uncorrupted and as relevant as ever.

At least to me.

In a way, Musashi spent his whole life seeking ‘the way,’ only to realize near its ending that he’d been walking it all along. His first opponent—himself—was also the last, and it seemed he realized on a delay that every vanquished foe in the interim still did not prepare him for the eventuality of the last duel, that being with the self and of the self, one that must result in either destruction, or absolution in the form of ascension.

“Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives,” says the imaginary AND fictional Tyler Durden in one of the great speeches in one of the modern myths cemented into the hearts and minds of lost and (internally, spiritually) bleeding Gen X and Millennial Men … approximations of the lost souls who toil and fight in the damp and dark around him—a man who himself does not truly exist, and so, who resents those who do even while taking pity on them for seeking to be pointed toward their own ‘way,’ but who are in actuality seeking someone else’s.

Durden’s first line, then is a promise of salvation. His second one of damnation, each coming on the back of a choice every man can only offer himself, and on the back of a question he must spend his life finding the right words to ask. More so, the right reason.

And yet, both paths, and both choices—Durden knows, and he says, for those with the ears to hear it—emanate from the self, which is capable of both raising to the heavens or dragging into the circles of hell.

A man made of plans who resented those who followed him, knowing that, in seeking to be rid of the chains that bound them, they had begged for him to forge them anew, if only he told them brighter—or perhaps truer—stories en route to their new chosen bondage disguised as freedom.

A modern-day mythic Musashi, though perhaps one gilded in the sort of nihilism the heirs of the very collectivist system we’re in the midst of tearing down, and so, one who wandered to far along the path to nowhere—a way of no way—that cannot help but result in the destruction of hope on the back of things born imbued with the stuff.

A cautionary tale. A sobering one, in an age of reemergent and yes, perhaps well-meaning prophets such as this.

So, what did Musashi mean by what remains one of his most iconic lines?

What does it mean to see the way broadly?

From a purely martial sense, another of my prime influences, Bruce Lee internalized and then externalized this philosophy in his call to “take what works and leave the rest.”

This is another mantra I’ve employed often in my life—first in the martial arts, when one collective skill set came up wanting in the face of a challenge, a technique or a physical tool set I’d never come across before, and then later in my marriage. In fact, this is one of the core governing philosophies OF that marriage, which has now spanned seven years, and which helped build a bridge to making it so over the years spent mapping out what it might look like as my future wife and I courted.

Now, we both find ourselves attempting—and not always succeeding—in applying the framework to the new—and very welcome—challenges of emergent parenthood, as my son embraces accelerationism in a way I could scarcely have imagined before I was blessed enough to know him, to protect him and to see his mother and my wife love him more with each passing day … each shadowed minute slipping forever beyond the veil we can’t revisit or reclaim, and yet, each of which we wouldn’t dare claw back at the risk of holding him back from his own discovery and his own pursuits.

His own way, and the seeking of it.

The style of no style.

“Here I am, as a human being. How can I express myself, totally and completely? Style is a crystalization.”

In the Truth Community, this Bruce Lee mentality has been a boon to me, and has helped me navigate internal and external turbulence both within and without the strange and amorphous—and yet, immediately recognizable, to this audience—contours and boundaries of the Info War and the Mind War married.

From my fondness for the Q Op that I wrote about in what remains my most-read feature at Burning Bright (linked below,) to my frustrations with those who would attempt to prevent others from questioning anything and everything they see from the shadows on the wall of this great, grand and yet, sometimes-haunting War of Stories playing out before us—as, whether they wear white hats or black, the shadows are always cast in gray until you turn away from the wall—granting myself the permission and even the fortitude to turn away from a given cognitive or rhetorical path in this game within games has allowed me to continue moving forward, acknowledging patriot plans and even divine ones without losing my own sense of agency in the process.

Something that must—that will—feel a lot like parenting, I suppose, and something that God, that our creator must feel with alternating bouts of tearful pride and mournful melancholy as He watches us march and toil in accordance with our wants and worries … our ways.

And isn’t that the point of it all?

Isn’t that the challenge?

To cultivate faith in plans both big and small but most of all, GOOD, even while forging our own paths and our own plans en route to self-actualization?

Wasn’t that the point of the American experiment? To go forth boldly, proudly and yes, sometimes foolishly, and to endeavor to do what none had done before, which starts, of course, with thinking like none have thought before?

This is the strange paradox that is not a paradox at the heart of the Truth Community, and that animates both the decentralized bond and yes, the sometimes-animus of one Anon to another. One seeker. One wanderer along the way, at once wondering if the wandering has been provoked or perceived, the pathway illuminated by external forces or internal guideposts, and whether there is ultimately a difference between the two.

This is the contradiction that is not a contradiction, the frustration that is sometimes a buoying, radiant joy for me as I continue to toil in this war for the many that is truly and always will be a war for the self. A war for the spirit. A war for the soul.

After all, who are ‘patriots’ if we take away their faces and names?

Bastions of sovereignty and first principles radiation, perhaps. Cognitive cyphers to awakening, I’ve argued countless times in these very digital pages, and certainly I won’t waver from that approximation and observation now, when so much good has been wrought through them.

And yet, as I have also argued many times, and as I personally believe the eponymous ‘drops’ suggested, are we not the power these patriots seek to project? Are they returning that power BACK to the people … or are they instead seeking to remind us that it never left, only that it was forgotten?

Have you remembered it?

But then, maybe I’ve lost the thread and the plot along with it. Certainly I wouldn’t be the first writer who lost the destination in the journey. Certainly I won’t be the last to forget what was sought in the seeking.

And yet, I feel solid in recent days. Calcified, and not in a crusty, stony, immovable way. But rather in recognition of the way. Of my way. Of doing and of seeking, of believing in plans and even referencing them, and yet, in pretending they’ve come to naught, or could without my—without OUR—conscious will, and the animating engines that are our hearts unified and our minds projected forward in the seeking, and in the making of the new world.

So, if we have difficulty defining what ‘the way’ is … how then can we cultivate the eyes to see it, the minds to discern it and the hearts to recognize it when it happens upon us, or we upon it?

Well, I’m not sure we can ever know completely and yet, I think that’s quite the point, and it’s part of what I’ve attempted to imbue into many of these writings, ramblings and everything in between around these parts for the last three years and more, which has in some ways felt far longer.

You see, Musashi was a warrior, and yet, he delivered that line in the context of an argument he forwarded—a belief he had come to form late in his life—that the gardener could understand what he referred to as ‘the way,’ just as well—more so—than the warrior, so long as he understood what it was he was seeking.

And yet, even that doesn’t quite do it justice.

To me, what Musashi was really hitting on was the idea that the practice of the thing, when done so with full presence of mind, body and spiritual intention was as meaningful—more so—than the accomplishment that might have originally spurred it into motion.

A ‘perfect’ gardener, then, isn’t necessarily the one who has the most perfect garden, but the one who fully commits himself to the task of gardening, of understanding it not so much on a granular level, but on the Macro, perhaps by blurring the lines between the two.

After all, surely there’s no objective way to measure the worth of a garden that everyone will agree on. Yes, ‘objective’ measures might be attributed to the practice—the yield of one crop against another, the preponderence of flowering plants versus green, even the relative crowding of the garden beds—and yet, even these measures come up wanting when it comes to taking the measure of the one who tends, because only he can know his own mind and what dreams it draws, made corporeal in the light of the waking dawn.

Musashi was a wandering warrior. He was a fighter who dedicated himself completely to the nuances of combat. His sensory perception was supposedly unmatched by any of the peers of his day, and it was even said that he often pictured his spars, his matches and yes, even his fatal duels in real time, as if from the perspective of a hawk or an eagle flying far overhead.

This separation from self ironically seemed to imbue Musashi with a certainty OF self few could match either in his time or in the modern day, and I believe the first principles he later espoused all add up to his personal encapsulation of ‘the way.’

The language, the seeking, the yearning and the settling into self by way of perspective OF the self reminds me of the awakening, of anons … of whatever it is each of us feels we were called, trained and yes, perhaps born to do in this time we collectively refer to as the Great Awakening, a journey AND a destination—in which order, I have yet to decide—that emanates from the Micro while imprinting onto the Macro.

Or was it the other way around?

Perhaps both. And perhaps that’s the point, as I round into form on a piece that might strike you as formless.

Whose way are you walking?

Whose war are you waging?

What sort of self are you seeking, or have you left the seeking to those you deemed your betters?

And when you look at the back of the cavern wall, and see the rising yellow light or the lowering amber carve figures from the murk, do you see a sea of shadows, or the memories of a dream you would retake?

Which way?

Until next time, stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.

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(Author’s Note: Well … that was a weird one! But you know what? We’re gonna go ahead and keep it. What started as the introduction to a piece I’ve been meaning to write for a while merged into thought rails I’ve been charting in recent days, and apparently decided to ignore completely the Info War toiling I engaged in throughout the week as I sought to put together another in a long line of more analytical fare of late. But then, I suppose I needed a break from sussing out stories, and a return to trying to seek to draw their souls.

Maybe it wasn’t to your liking, but it needed saying from me, and maybe hearing from some of you in whatever ways neither of us can guess.

If you did get something out of it, please consider supporting this work—whatever it is—in the form of Paid Subscriptions to this publication (cancel at any time.) Otherwise, consider revisiting a piece that I suspect will only get more timely with the passage of time, and of course, the stories that define it.

Or don’t do any of that. As always, that choice—like so many others—is yours.

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