Meditations on God

Wake Up (Your Creativity)
If you want to wake up your creative voice, wake up earlier.

We are all creative beings. We all have within us a deep intelligence, a guiding force that wants wants to express itself, through us, in the world. It wants to design and create. It wants to say something, to make something. It wants to be heard and seen.

When we are children, this creative voice is loud and powerful. We play, paint, draw, sing, dance, and tell stories. We are curious about everything and nothing seems impossible.*

As we get older, we become aware of and involved in the social order. We are given or take on more responsibilities. We become more active and begin to have goals and aspirations, as well as the fear and internal resistance that come with these. Something or someone vying for our attention and dictating our schedule. Unless we are dedicated to nurturing it and giving it room to express itself, our creative voice loses priority in our lives.

If it is important to us, and it should be important to us, we can get our creative voice back. We can find it again. Our creative voice is selfish, however, as it does not share time and attention with other things well. It needs room to grow and express itself, free from other distractions. It needs alone time with us.

For this reason, if we truly want to grow into our creative potential, we will have to wake up early (or go to bed late), before the rest of our life is awake (or after it is asleep). We have to set time aside so that we can listen to the voice inside us, without distraction, and put our ideas on paper, on canvas, onto an instrument, or whatever medium we are drawn to. If we make this a daily practice, it will begin to shape and guide us into the creative beings we were always meant to be.

*To be fair, to my preschooler, some things seem quite impossible, but these are usually things like napping, getting ready, and eating food she doesn’t like.

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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October 12, 2019

creative voice, creativity, wake up
A Truthful No Vs A Dishonest Yes
No one will like you less for saying you cannot do something than they will for saying you can, but not following through.

We all get overwhelmed and overloaded at some point in our lives, especially with the constant barrage of input and information we have coming at us every day in our digital age. There are only so many hours in a day and we only have so much attention to give. It is okay to admit that we are at our maximum capacity, that we don’t have the bandwidth to take on new tasks or responsibilities.

When we agree to do something or to take on some new responsibility, we are making a promise to both the other person and ourselves that we can and will complete the task or fulfill the obligation. If we value our word, this is a serious commitment. If we cannot follow through, not only does this harm our reputation and devalue our word, but we also fractures us internally, dividing who we think we are and who we want to be from who we actually are and how we show up in the world.

The more we overextend ourselves, the more we fail. The more we fail, the more fractured our self-identity becomes, and the more frustrated, disappointed, and angry we become at the world for asking so much of us and at ourselves for not being able to live up to others’ and our own expectations. Our mental health demands that we create boundaries in our lives to protect us from becoming overextended. It is better to say ‘no’ honestly than to say ‘yes’ and make liars of ourselves.

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, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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October 11, 2019

boundaries, commitment, dishonesty, honesty, mental health, our word, overextended, overwhelmed, promises, truth
Forgiveness Precedes Forgiveness
Mistakes are nothing more than an opportunity for improvement.

There are very few things in this world that are unforgivable if we are sincere in our attempt to do better. That said, other people may not forgive us, but, if we are honest about our error, if we admit fault, and if we try to make amends by changing our behavior, that cannot be our primary concern. Our focus must remain on being better and doing better.

The fact is that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does something wrong, sometime, to somebody. No one is perfect. What separates the righteous and unrighteous is often simply a matter of his or her intention, willingness, and ability to improve. Even with this, even with the purest of motives and most virtuous of actions, not everyone will like us, accept us, or forgive us. They too are imperfect.

Keeping this in mind, knowing that we will fail. Knowing that we will falter. Knowing that we will never be all that we can be to all people, we must ourselves be willing to forgive. How, if we understand the depth our own imperfection, can we not also be willing to understand that of another person.

This does not mean that we must continuously associate with those who have wronged us, especially if it was done so maliciously and unapologetically. It does mean, however, that we must rid ourselves of ill will, indignation, and resentment because, being imperfect ourselves, not forgiving others for their flaws is hypocrisy. The only way for us to be forgivable is to first be forgiving.

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, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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October 10, 2019

compassion, empathy, errors, faults, flaws, forgiveness, mistakes, understanding
Trading Our Time Up
Money is only really valuable if it can be used to buy something of greater worth than the time and effort that went into earning it.

Beyond our basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing, money begins to lose its intrinsic value. Once our needs are met, what we spend our money on is more a matter of want and preference than need. It is natural to want to eat better food, to live in a larger home in a safer neighborhood, and to wear nicer clothing, but even if we can afford these things, we must consider their real cost.

Too often, we get caught up in the world of comparative value, looking at what other people have and assuming that those things are somehow necessary for our own fulfillment and happiness. Beyond that, we have a natural tendency to assume that a newer, nicer, better, or bigger version of what we have is going to give us a greater level of satisfaction and give our lives greater meaning. The problem is that material possessions all cost money and money costs us something we can never get back, our time.

Money is neither good nor bad. It is neutral. It is simply a means of convenient exchange. We exchange our time for money and then our money for someone else’s time. The goal of this exchange should be to trade up, to gain value, not to lose it.* Before we can trade up, however, we must know the value of what we are trading. We must ask ourselves how much our time is worth to us and what we truly want in exchange for it because we do not get it back once it is traded away.

*Note: Ideally, both parties in an exchange are gaining value because value is relative to the individual. See: Create Value for Profit

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, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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October 9, 2019

creation, effort, energy, money, time, value
Do First That Which Matters With Those Who Matter
If we are doing innovative, creative, and useful work with and for people who truly matter, there should be very little time left for debating.

There are a limited number of hours in a day and, within those hours, we have a limited quantity of energy, focus, and attention. If we constantly give away our time and our mental resources to people and activities that give us little to no true value in return, not only do we gain nothing, but we actually lose our only non-renewable assets. We can never have that time back and we can never have back that which we could have done with that time instead.

For every piece of ourselves that we give away during the day on that which is trivial and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, there is that much less of us left for work that matters and for people who matter. The answer is not to become a hermit and to ignore what is going on around us. We simply need to learn to prioritize in such a way that people who matter and the work that matters come first.

Prioritizing our time and attention should begin with our most important work and with the most important people in our lives. They should not get our leftovers. They should not get the scraps of us, after the world has picked us clean of our worth. If we focus on doing good work for and with good people, we will find that there is very little left for distraction. By being selfish with our time and our mental resources, we allow room in our lives to be truly generous.

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, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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October 8, 2019

energy, meaning, time, value

Wake Up (Your Creativity)

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A Truthful No Vs A Dishonest Yes

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Forgiveness Precedes Forgiveness

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Trading Our Time Up

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Do First That Which Matters With Those Who Matter

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