Chapter 14: Sword Dance

After Finger Roberts let us stop for the day, I walked a short distance out of the camp to get a little time alone. I found a little clearing in the under-growth about 700 meters from the camp and sat down to practice the meditation that we had been taught that morning. I struggled for a long time to clear my mind but found it to be absolutely impossible. Every time I thought I had got it right, I found myself drifting off on some tangent, thinking about something that we had done that day, or remembering where I had come from, or just feeling the general aches and pains that I had gathered during the day.

After a while of this I decided that it wasn't going to work for me and just relaxed. As I sat there I started listening to the sounds of the forest around me and after a while it felt as if the peace of the forest had crept into my mind. I wasn't paying attention to any one thing, but just allowing everything around me to soak into me. Slowly I felt more and more as if I was becoming almost a part of the forest, instead of an intruder. As I thought about it, I realised that I had built up a mind picture of the area around me; almost a 3D map of the terrain and the flora. I decided to experiment a bit and found that I could treat it as if it was a virtual computer simulation, and turn it around and around in my head to examine each part of it. I started to get excited when I realised that I could look at everything from any angle.

I wasn't sure exactly how I had accomplished this; whether it was a live image or it was something built up from observation of the area while moving through it. After some experimentation, I saw that it must be 'live' as I found I could 'zoom in' on any area and observe from close up the insect and animal life there.

I concentrated on the process that I had gone through to get into this state and to call up this image to make sure that I would be able to duplicate it, then deliberately shook it clear and started again a few times. On the third time I did this, I realised that it was actually a permanent image in my mind, and it seemed that it had been there all along. I had simply not known it was there or how to access it. I stood up and started to move around while trying to keep the image in my head and discovered that with a little effort, it started to feel natural to have this image and I thought that with time and practice it would be there constantly almost as an extra sense like sight or smell.

It struck me suddenly that this might be the situational awareness that I had observed in my first meeting with Roger de Vries.

With the success that I had achieved in a direction wholly unexpected from the meditation, I thought I may as well try to apply what I had learnt to using the sword. I drew the sword from the scabbard slung over my shoulder, and took up a stance in the first position. I closed my eyes and centered myself, slowing my breathing and narrowing my focus to the feel of the sword in my hand and my awareness of my surroundings. Once I had done that, I started moving slowly through the forms that we had been practicing that day. As I moved, I ignored the sword and concentrated on my body; on the way that the muscles in my arm moved, how my back swiveled and arched; the way that placing my feet differently effected my balance and how the combined movements of my body effected my control of the sword's movement and the speed and power that I could apply.

As I went through the forms again and again, I started to adjust the way that I moved all the different parts of my body as I could feel that subtle changes made an effect. I experimented with what worked and what didn't and slowly I felt myself coming into balance. That's the only way I can describe it. It was as if I had been off balance all my life, and I had only discovered the true meaning now for the first time.

I started moving slightly faster and and then speeded up again and discovered that once I was in balance, going faster was simply a matter of nudging my balance slightly so that it became natural for my body to move in that way.