Ego

This will be an indirect continuation of last weeks post. I thought about how much I thought I knew and just how pleased it made me feel about myself. How ego driven my journey through kung fu has been. A good deal of my time has been an exercise in proving what I can do and how I can excel to those around me. It is one thing to have confidence in one self, but if the motivation to do better is only to climb the mountain just because you can, then there is no substance to the accomplishment.

When you are doing a form with the intent of looking good at it, you are missing the point and in fact not looking good to those who can recognize pure intent over the surface illusion of skill. This approach is in fact counter productive because when you look back at what you have done, you are disappointed because you know you could have done so much better if you simply kept your mind on what you were doing, not how you appeared.

Perhaps I am judging myself too hard. The original motivation for increasing my skill and knowledge may have been my own personal mission to prove how great I can be, but over time it has changed. The question of how much it changed is still in my mind. Sometimes I feel I have made great strides in my approach, creating a more selfless and focused path. Then I reflect on where my mind was the past week and see that I only thought of how I could do better for me, rather than what I can do to influence those around me. How I let my ego poison my perspective of how well I grasp the concepts I am learning.

Even writing this I have a sense of ego, hoping this post is good enough for those reading it. Does it make sense, or am I just shoving words together in another attempt to make myself look good to those around me?

How do you analyze how well you are doing without letting ego into the picture? How do you recognize when you need to improve without looking to the past or future? It must be quite the balancing act, one in which I am still figuring out.