Overcoming fear

I've had my copy of the Bubishi now for a couple weeks. Fascinating reading. Great historical resource. Grateful that Patrick McCarthy has provided us English speaking martial artists with such a well researched and well translated text. As I was reading "Article 2" under History and Philosophy I came across the following passage that spoke directly to why I was at one time such a frustrated and disgruntled karateka (I still am in some ways):

"Lacking confidence about self-protection is the mind's subliminal message to the body that more training is necessary to overcome fear. Indomitable fortitude illuminates the darkness of fear." (pg. 104)

On a deeper level, I can see now that what I was searching for when I first walked into that karate dojo was something to help me "overcome fear". I imagine that being proficient/effective in personal defensive skills can be a huge booster to a person's innermost confidence and self-esteem. To a point where you feel you don't have to fight because you don't feel you need to prove yourself; it's the other person who has that need when they call you names or spit on you. Your deep knowledge of self, gained from your training, allows you to walk away from those "monkey dances" and to exemplify what Shoshin Nagamine says in The Essence of Okinawan Karate-do, "The ultimate goal of all martial arts is to defeat the enemy without fighting back." (pg. 82). Now that sounds all well and good and ideal, but the key point to understand here, for me at least, is that your training has to actually help you develop functional self-defensive skill. You need the "dō" and the "jutsu", the hard and soft, "go" and "ju", yin and yang. Your martial arts may be verbal (non-violent communication strategies) or they may be physical. I don't believe you can just develop one over the other or that one is more important than the other. They are both integral to the whole. And I say I imagine that being proficient in martial skills is a huge booster because well, I honestly don't know what that feels like. I only know what it's like to feel so shitty about yourself as a martial artist and a person so as to make you feel like you want to quit or beat-up on weaker people because it makes you feel stronger. Training in a "traditional style" in a "traditional dojo" has had the same effect on me as a public school student; I grew to have an intense dislike of school and its subject matter. I felt that the subject matter had no relevance to my life. It was just testing me to see if I had the competence to become part of the status quo of which I  have no desire to be a part of. I have a desire to know myself and my purpose in life, not how my round head can fit into a square hole. So I think we need to radically re-imagine how we teach karate/martial arts so that it provides the learner with relevant subject matter that they can apply in their life (the jutsu) and the space for them to grow into their own individual martial potential so as to help them gain a deeper understanding of self (the dō).  

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até