Meditations on God

Create (Don’t Vacate) Your Reality
Too often, we spend our time and energy trying to escape what we think of as reality, but the fact is that we create our reality.

Vacation is a funny concept. We work hard all year long, living our lives in a way that we find tolerable at best. Then, once or twice a year, we try to escape this life by fleeing or ‘vacating’ it to some place we imagine is better than what we have at home.

We treat our everyday lives as a burden that we someday hope to escape. Vacation, we imagine, is a luxury, some extravagant adventure, far removed from the toil and drudgery of work and responsibility. We save up our money, we save up our time, and then binge-experience what we think ‘the good life’ must be like.

As our vacation comes to an end, as we begin to imagine the life we must face when we go back home, the remorse sets in. We start to mourn the loss of joy we will experience when we wake up on the first day of our ‘real life’ after our vacation has ended. Before we even step into our home, we begin fantasizing about our next vacation, saddened by the fact that it will come no time soon.

There is a major problem with this approach to life, however. We do not need more, better vacations. We need fuller, better lives.

We need lives that we are proud of living, lives we do not yearn to vacate, and daily experiences that bring us the same amount of joy and fulfillment we imagine we will find on vacation. In every, seemingly trivial moment, we must create for ourselves a reality so full of amazement and wonder that there is no reason to ‘get away’ because we are happy to be whereever we are.

Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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November 6, 2019

be here now, carpe diem, escape, escapism, holiday, presence, reality, vacation
Fear of Success is Fear of Change
When another person tells you that your idea won’t work, it may be because they are afraid that it will.

We should not take all feedback at face value. We must always consider the source, the source’s history, and the source’s agenda. It is very rare to find someone who is objective and transparent enough to have an opinion on our lives and our dreams untainted by his or her own ego.

Keep in mind, however, that the same is true for us. We, ourselves, are not exempt from adding our own fears, desires, and prejudices to our opinions and advice for others. As much as we fear failure, for ourselves and others, we may fear success even more because success, like evolution, requires change.

Quite often, the fear of success, and the change that comes along with it, is so strong that we sabotage opportunities for growth in ourselves and those around us simply so that things stay as they are. The problem with this is that stagnation is not benign. Fearing change is fearing life itself and that’s no way for us or the people we care about to live.

Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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November 5, 2019

advice, change, ego, evolution, fear, success
From Stupidity to Brilliance
It takes many of moments of stupidity to have one moment of brilliance.

What appears, from the outside, to be a single moment of brilliance is actually the result of lots and lots of trial and error, stupid ideas that became the platform off of which the one great idea grew.

The reason for this is simple. If we are not trying things that don’t work, if we are not making decisions that lead us first to failure, if we are not making mistakes, we cannot be doing something new.

The well-worn path is smart and safe. It takes us where everyone else is going or has already been. In order to get somewhere new, we have to start with an idea, or many ideas that, at first, do not seem so great.

In order for moments of stupidity, mistakes, and failure to lead to something great, however, we must have the humility to accept our errors, the agility to course correct, the vision to look into the future, and the will to push forward.

Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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November 4, 2019

brilliance, creativity, failure, genius, mistakes, pivot, stupidity
On Fear And Vulnerability
Vulnerability opens the door to empathy.

Deep down, we all know that we are imperfect. Our greatest fear is that this imperfection makes us unloveable. Whether we admit it or not, we are all waiting for or looking for, a person who will see, not see past, our flaws, failings, and shortcomings, and who will accept us and love us, not in spite of them, but along with them.

By understanding this about ourselves, by admitting it and embracing it as a deep, even sacred truth, we begin to look at others in a new way. We begin to see the truths that they are hiding or hiding from, that they are scared to reveal, and that they fear others will not understand or accept.

Once we see these vulnerabilities, if we can find in ourselves the strength and kindness to hold them fully and gently in our hearts, we gain the ability to truly love.

Love like this is powerful. It is uplifting. It changes lives and it changes the world.

Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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November 3, 2019

compassion, empathy, fear, love, vulnerability
What Do You See?
When you look at someone you love, do you see the ways in which they are being their best or the ways in which they are failing to meet your expectations, and perhaps even their own?

In our own ways, we are all trying. Some of us have more success than others and some of us have an easier time at it than others, but we are all doing some version of our best. We should treat each other accordingly.

This requires patience. It requires reflection. It requires compassion.

If we want to see past our expectations for another person, our often selfish desires for who we want them to be to us and for us, and the ways in which they have or will inevitably fall short, we must be willing to always be the better person.

Being the better person has nothing to do with superiority, arrogance, or self-righteousness. Instead, even when we perceive ourselves as having been slighted or wronged, we must remain humble, gracious, and forgiving.

We must remember that, in our own ways, we are all flawed and broken. If we are at all trying to live, we will fail in some way. Each and every one of us is perfectly imperfect.

Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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November 2, 2019

compassion, empathy, expectations, patience, understanding, vision, vulnerability

Create (Don’t Vacate) Your Reality

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Fear of Success is Fear of Change

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From Stupidity to Brilliance

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On Fear And Vulnerability

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What Do You See?

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