Space: the final frontier

Pretty good for a cheesy TV show. But perhaps it should read more like this:

"Space: the only frontier.

These are the voyages of the awakened:

To seek out and explore their own life form, 

To boldly go where they've ever gone before."

Let me explain. Consider matter: all of it, form solids to liquids to gases is simply a bunch of cells bound together by gravity; more dense in the case of lead and less with helium. Since they make up all matter, what then is a cell? Quite simply, a cell has a membrane, a nucleus, and some protons and electrons. But when observed under a microscope these four elements are dwarfed by the space in which they exist. So, if all matter from lead to helium is mostly space, and humans are carbon based life forms, this means that we too are mostly space. Quite interesting when one considers that a human being completely sheds it's cellular structure every seven years much like a snake shedding it's skin every few months. This means that the person you are today is physically one hundred percent different than the one you were seven years ago. 

So what is it that makes you you? The answer is that you are the space within your cells. This is the part that never changes. This is the common thread that connects us to everything else. This is the Holy Spirit: God within you. This is what was and what always will be. This is what can not be destroyed because it was never created. This is you and all. The Buddhists express it thus: "One. Just one. That's it."

This is what one tries to realize through keiko. Uke exhales and becomes empty and concentrates their life-space into a laser-like beam of energy for nage to inhale and merge with and then redirect. So in keiko one is not really working on their own physicality but rather the space within it. The only thing that matters is what matter tries to contain, but can't. This is why Aikido, not Ai-body-do. The way of merging our souls with the Universal spirit. When one sees the truth, that there is space within everything, and that space is all there really is, then things will appear as they really are: infinite.

So in closing, I'd like to end with a quote from another cheesy space show. This one takes place during another keiko a long, long time ago... in a galaxy far, far away...

"Size matters not.

Look at me.

Judge me by my size, do you?

Mmm?

Hmmmph!

...And well you should not, for my ally is the Force...

And a powerful ally it is.

Life creates it...

Makes it grow.

It's energy surrounds us...

Combines us.

Luminous beings are we.

Not this crude matter.

You must feel the Force around you.

Here... between you, me...

The rock, the tree, everywhere.

Yes!

Even between the land and the ship."

- Master Yoda