Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Wow! This is a surprise

I still enjoy watching martial arts movies and looking into things related to martial arts. I was looking at some kung fu tapes the other day. There was a whole section of Shaolin tapes. It looks like there is some corporation pushing Shaolin or something. They had a whole lineup of nice looking videos.

Anyways, I cam across one called "Ba Dua Jin". I was shocked to discover that the tape showed what appeared to be one of the sets of exercises that Mike taught us. The warmups we did every week before class.

Honestly? I cannot recall of Mike said "These are special Ba Gua only exercises that you are learning from me, the Ba Gua master". I cannot swear to that.

I know that I had the impression they were Ba Gua exercises. Something he had learned from Gong Bao Zhai.

It added to the sense of disillusionment that has been growing within me as I write this book. The more and more I critically examine the class and what occurred there, the more and more it appears to be a bunch of baloney for a young man to make a million dollars before he is 40.

He was never shy about that. He always told us he wanted to be a young millionaire. I don't know if any of us thought it was on our backs, our montly tuition an personal visits. He didn't come right out and say that.


This fits right in with something else we were taught. At some point in time Mike taught us some long pole exercises. Again, I do not recall him saying "these are Ba Gua exercises". I just assumed it since he was teaching us Ba Gua.

Honestly I don't really care if the staff was Ba Gua or not. It was a lot of fun to practice it. I enjoyed that immensely. What bugs me is that if I knew it was some ordinary Shaolin or other style form that was common, I could have gone and bought a video tape to help me practice.

Mike was a real hard case about teaching things. It was part of maintaining his dominance over us. He would teach us something once or twice and then refuse to talk about it. His point was that it was teaching us to think. I understand that and I agree with it.

I also think he refused to talk because he purposefully was not teaching. He showed us the form to give us something to do so we would feel like we were progressing and would still be willing to continue paying monthly fees. If he talked to us about how the form was properly done, soon he would have to come up with something else new to teach us.

By telling us it was for our own good to figure it out ourselves, we might be satisfied for another year of monthly payments.

It really hurts to speak and think like this. Really. I can feel it in my heart and stomach. A literal physical pain. I.....loved is too strong a word. Respect doesn't seem strong enough.

I was totally committed to the ideals that Mike spoke about in class. Helping the world to be a better place. He said that was what he wanted so I felt that same total commitment to him.

To realize now that he was playing people to become a millionaire off of their monthly payments.......It hurts not only because I feel taken advantage of, but because the dirtiness of his actions spreads to the act of helping the world.

He contaminated the goodness of the idea of helping the world with his crass misuse of the idea in order to obtain money.

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