Good thing I am stupid

Last post I left on vacation. I went driving around the country, sightseeing and doing this and that at various interesting places along the way. It was fun and relaxing. The states I traveld thru were beautiful at that time of year. I like the warmth and I like the wide out of doors. I went to Arizona which has some fantastic desert landscape. Most people feel it is inhospitable. I like the desert. There is something about the sparseness of vegetation. Looking at those vast open expanses with a few cactus here and there provides a sense of nature that I have never found anywhere else.

I went to New Mexico. New Mexico has gorgeous mountains. I remember the color purple the most. New Mexico is desert sort of like Arizona. There are many more rocks and hills in New Mexico than Arizona. Arizona is a flat kind of desert. New Mexico is the rocky and hilly kind of desert. I went thru Texas and Oklahoma. Texas doesn't do much for me. It is open grassland. Flat for miles and miles. Oklahoma always seems dirty. I can't really explain why. I never remember anything of Oklahoma except a sense of dirt and poorness. Weird huh?

Eventually I ran out of time and had to turn back home. I was obviously driving all this time. I was exhausted by the time I returned. I missed a second weekend meeting just as I thought I would. I didn't do much of anything that following week. Whatever I needed to do.

The next weekend roles around and I am ready to head back to Ba Gua and my friends. It has been two long weeks and I miss them. I am a driven kind of person that likes to work on things that need working on. Now that I was convinced that Ba Gua was going to cure me, I was ready to practice all the time. Ready to do whatever I needed to do to progress. I wanted to be healthy and the faster that happened the better.

Sunday arrives and I get ready to go to class. Suddenly I find myself thinking, "you know what. That vacation felt really good. I could skip class this weekend and continue my vacation. Relaxing is great, the weather is fine. I think I will just go ahead and stay home this weekend".

That was weird, but I didn't think too much about it.

I went ahead and enjoyed my life during the next week. I love nature so I could talk about how nice the weather was and what it was like outside forever. The sun nice and shiny, the breeze fresh and brisk. The flowers and trees healthy and bursting with energy. The area I live is the greatest.

The next Sunday arrives and I get ready to leave. I have my clothes on and my bag ready to take with me. I find myself thinking "I should stay on vacation another week". I hesitate and go back and forth. Literally. I am pacing back and forth between the door to leave, and back into the house to stay. I finally decide, "what the heck. I think I will take one more week's vacation".

The next week goes by as expected. The next Sunday is here and I am ready to go to Ba Gua. By now it has been 3 weeks or a months since I left for vacation. I am chomping at the bit. Vacation is nice. I love it. But I need to be at Ba Gua. If I want my health back, which is the only thing in the world I want, I need to get back to Ba Gua. I need to learn. I need to do what they tell me so I get better.

I get dressed and grab my bag and head for the door. Once again I think to myself "You know? I should just goof off for another week. This vacation stuff is great. I am having the time of my life". Then I said "NO! I want to go to Ba Gua. Vacation is fun sure. I have had enough. It is time to get back to Ba Gua and to rectifying the problems in my life". I was actually angry at the thought of more vacation.

I head out the door and I make it this time. I walked to the Ba Gua class. It was at one end of a long, maybe 1 or 2 miles long park. I live at the other end of the park. Every weekend, I would leave my house and walk the one or two miles thru the park to the class. That was one of the things I looked forward to every week. Being able to walk thru the park, alone for the most part because it was early on a Sunday morning, and enjoy the plant life. The park is bursting with energy from all the plants and trees and grass. I feel like I am in a wonderland every weekend when I walk thru all of it.

I make it to the far end of the park where the class is. As I approach I see the men there and I smile, thinking, "I have returned! I can't wait to say hello and to see what I have missed. The men as a group stop what they are doing and approach me. I am thinking they are all glad to see me and coming to greet me. I have a big smile on my face.

Mike says "what are you doing here?".

My jaw dropped. I thought, "What the heck?". Mike says "You haven't been here for weeks, what are you doing here?".

I said "I went on vacation". Mike says "you should have told us". I said "I did tell you. I plainly said I was going on vacation and I would be back".

During all of this, the other men are standing by Mike in a group. As if they are a gang of thugs. I am feeling truly mystified. I don't know if these people are stupid or forgetful. I told them to their face I was going on vacation. I said goodbye, told them I would be back later. Now they are saying they didn't know I was on vacation. Even more strange, instead of saying "Oh we are glad you are back", they are standing together like a gang and questioning me in a harsh and unfriendly way.

Are these people insane or what?

I am looking at them like they are crazy or stupid. I can feel that on my face right now just thinking about it. Mike might have said something like "you should have told us you are going on vacation". Then he turned around and walked away.

When Mike turned around and walked away, the entire group of men, as a unit, turned around and walked away with him. It was like this group of men was one person and they all turned their backs on me and walked away.

I am standing there thinking "I don't know what these people are so angry about. I plainly told them I was going on vacation. Instead of welcoming me back, they are treating my like an alien and now they have turned their backs on me and are walking away".

Then I thought "Oh well. Everyone has a bad day", and I followed them over to the practice area. We get to the practice area and I cannot really say what things were like. I only remember talking to the men and asking what I had missed etc. Arol and Tim were not there. I asked about them.

Arol and Tim had quit.

I said "WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I felt I knew Arol and Tim by then. The idea that they quit was impossible to believe. The idea that anyone would willingly walk away from the chance to learn from Mike was the stupidest thing I could think of. I was in shock.

Then they tell me, "You weren't here for 3 weeks or a month and everyone thought you quit. When they thought you quit, they quit too". Then I said all over again how I told people I was on vacation and I had no idea where they were getting all this stuff about how they thought I left or quit. Get this. I told them it would be the stupidest thing imaginable to voluntarily quit Mike's class. Mike was about the best kung fu teacher I had ever met.

That paragraph above is very very very very important in the scheme of things. You will learn why it is important eventually.

The class went normally for the rest of the day as far as I can recall. I went home happy I had finally returned to where I belonged. With my friends. We were all going to save the world.

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Good thing I am stupid.

Have you guessed what happened yet? They tried to get rid of me. Again! The first time, in case you did not read that post, Jeff brought a friend of his to class. The friend stayed for 1 month, then voluntarily left because the class was not right for him. The entire thing was a setup to make me think it was OK to voluntarily leave the class. It didn't work because leaving the class was not a thought that was anywhere in my head.

When I came back from vacation and suddenly decided to stay home an extra week instead of going to class. It was Mike. Mike had manipulated me mentally to encourage me to stay home. I knew him and trusted him so I was open to his mental manipulation. I did not resist as I might have with a stranger trying to control me.

The second week, the same thing happened. Mike controlled me to stay home instead of going to Ba Gua class. It was him telling me I should stay home one more week.

Then the third time, it didn't work. It didn't work because of my thoughts and feelings. I wanted Ba Gua more than anything. By the third week of vacation, I knew I had been gone to long. I needed to get back to where I belonged. Nothing was going to stop me. That strong desire prevented Mike from mentally manipulating me into staying home another week.

When I showed up at class anyways, since mental manipulation had not worked, they went with the physical manipulation. The entire group walked up to me. This large group of men looking at one man. The leader of the group questioned why I was there in an aggressive, angry, mean and dismissive way. The group of men surrounding him emanated the same feelings in order to support him.

The entire purpose of the act was to drive me away. A large menacing group of men speaking harshly to one man in order to drive him off.

Good thing I am stupid. I am looking at them like they are my friends. They are my Ba Gua buddies. I really truly believe they are stupid and forgot I told them I was going on vacation. I really truly believed that Mike was going to help me with my health as he said. I really truly believed he cared about me, and that I was part of his Ba Gua family style.

When the came at me with that group and that pushing away attitude, I acted like they were my friends that had a wild hair up their butt. I never for an instant considered that they did not want me around anymore. That they were trying to drive me away with their aggressive behavior.

Looking back on it, I laugh uproariously every time I think about it. Here are these men being mean and aggressive, trying to drive me away. And I am looking at them like, "You guys are my friends. We are all Ba Gua family. I don't know why you are angry, but I forgive you".

If you understand real kung fu, you will know that there was nothing they could do. My simple and honest believe that they were my friends stole their power. They could not be mean and aggressive to a person who was smiling at them, laughing with them, and telling them how much he missed them, and was glad to be back.

And I did it by accident. Many people do those kinds of things on purpose. That is how they manipulate others. I was just being my honest self, and I was employing a powerful kung fu concept no one had ever explained to me.


To complete the story, Mike had also driven off Arol and Tim. Remember the men's meeting I told you about? The one at Jeff's house where the room separated into Chris, Jeff and Steve on one side, with me, Arol and Tim on the other side? And I said I just happened to be on Arol and Tim's side because I refused to let people force me to move?

I believe that night was the pivotal night. I believe Jeff and Chris reported back to Mike. I believe they all decided that Arol, Tim and I did not fit in the group. All because Arol decided he would be a man and stand up for what he believed in, instead of backing down and doing what Jeff and Chris told him.

When I went on vacation, I provided the opportunity for them to get rid of us. While I was on vacation, Mike mentally manipulated Arol and Tim into believeing that I had quit. Since I had quit, they should quit too. Being the sheep they were, it was easy to mentally control them. Arol and Tim quit.

Then I came back and Mike was set to finish the job. He mentally manipulated me 2 weeks in a row to stay home instead of go to class. There was a problem though. I really was a kung fu man. I really wanted kung fu. Arol and Tim were taking it as a lark. They didn't care so it was easy to mentally snuff out their interest. Because I was a driven kung fu man, my interest was not so easy to snuff out. I beat Mike's mental manipulation to stay home that 3rd week.

Then I beat their physical manipulation because I believed in their lies. That they were good men who told the truth. That they had devoted their lives to helping others. That they liked me and wanted to include me in their group. That I was a "generator" as Mike had so proudly pointed out a few weeks earlier.

If I wasn't so stupid, believing their lies, I would have seen the group of thugs that approached me with an angry attitude that day. I would have seen Mike telling me "Go away. We don't want you here".

I am laughing right now thinking how I, a physically and mentally sick person, beat a 20 year Tai Chi, 10 year Ba Gua, trained psychologist and chinese medicine doctor, and his group of thugs, with nothing more than my simple and honest belief that they were good men and they were my friends.