I want Balboa. I want Balboa.
You hear that, old man? You tell Balboa.
Nobody can beat me. Tell him what I said.
And he's next. I'm gonna kill him.
Nobody can stop me.
You tell Balboa that. I'm comin' after him.
I want a shot at the title if Balboa's got the guts to meet me in the ring.
My whole life's been directed towards this title.
I live alone. I train alone.
I'll win the title alone. I want him.
He can't duck me forever.
He can run, but he can't hide.
““One time, sparring with another white belt, I was choked out with a ‘guillotine’ choke, where one arm is round your head like a playground headlock and the other under your throat pulling upwards.
Because it was another beginner, not Chris or another warlord from the control end of the room, the sparring was competitive and – this is interesting – my ego was suddenly invited back into the equation.
When I’m sparring with Chris the relationship has explicit and implicit safety built into it, I’m not competing, I couldn’t compete, I’m learning. When it’s against Dave, Smasher, my ego would do just as well to pit itself against the hydraulic jaws of a garbage truck.
Against another white belt, my ego sees a little chance for glory and sidles in where it would best be left out. As the choke took hold and I felt beaten and submitted it were as if the wrench on my neck had opened a valve to an inaccessible cellar where my bruised adolescent self lay hiding.
I sat quietly afterwards, uncertain of what I felt.
My wife remarked that I was quiet that evening and I, reluctantly (ego, again) told her what had happened.
She almost thought it funny, not in a derisory way or in a way that made me feel more ashamed and defensive, but in a way that highlighted the idiosyncrasy of my feeling.
I spoke about it to someone else who doesn’t drink and does Jiu Jitsu and he explained that it’s a contact sport and that these feelings are normal and have to be accepted. I learned an important lesson through that particular experience.
I had avoided an entire aspect of my nature because of an unwillingness to confront the vulnerability, no, the shame, that is inhered within physical defeat.
It came to me in this way, this may not be historically true, but mythically it is:
I.
As a boy I could fight, I had no fear.
II.
As an adolescent I was not initiated.
III.
As I awoke, I was not shown how to live at the new frequency, I had only women to observe and ‘role model’.
• When violence came, as it does to all teenage boys, I was not equipped and the shame killed a part of me, it put it ‘underground’.
• I was too afraid to try and revive it; it was in adolescence of course that I became a drug addict.
• I did not become willing to go into The Underworld until I killed the person I had to become to survive my youth.
• When I finally went there, in my middle years, through the means of Jiu Jitsu, I needed a mentor, in this case Chris, to hold the space for me.”
Russell Brand,
“Mentors.”
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
What is the meaning of the virgin birth?
In India, there is this system of the kundalini, as it’s called, the idea of the centers, psychological centers up the spine.
And they represent the psychological planes of concern and consciousness and action. The first is at the rectum, and this is that of alimentation.
The serpent represents this, you know, a traveling esophagus going along just eating, eating, eating, eating.
And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t eating.
And then the second, the second center is at the sex organ center, and that’s the urge to procreation.
The third center’s called, is at the navel, and this is where you eat and want to consume.
And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s the mastering and smashing and trashing of others, do you see? This is the aggressive mood.
Now, the first is an animal instinct, the second is an animal instinct, the third is an animal instinct, and these three centers are located in the pelvic base, do you see.
The next one is at the level of the heart, and this is the opening of compassion.
And there you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual.
Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form.
At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction.
At the heart chakra, there is again the male and female organs in conjunction, but in gold.
This is the virgin birth. It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. Do you understand?
BILL MOYERS:
And it happens?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and to suffering with the other person.
That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.
BILL MOYERS:
You say it’s the beginning of humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, the virgin birth, it’s a god who emerges from that chemistry.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Yeah, and you know who that god is?
It’s you.
All of these symbols in mythology refer to you.
You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been reborn?
Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?
BILL MOYERS:
Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Well, it is that the begetter is the spirit.
It is a spiritual birth.
The virgin conceived of the Word, through the ear.
BILL MOYERS:
The Word came like a shaft of light.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Yes. And now, the Buddha was born from his mother’s side, at the level of the heart chakra.
That’s a symbolic birth; he wasn’t born from his mother’s side, but symbolically he was.
BILL MOYERS:
But the Christ came the way you and I come.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Yes, but of a virgin.
BILL MOYERS:
Which is a power greater than…
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored.
So nothing happened physically, you might say.
It’s not a physical birth.
It’s symbolic of a spiritual transformation, that’s what the virgin birth is about.
And so deities are born that way who represent beings who act in terms of compassion, and not in terms of the lower three centers.
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