Black Belt

Oh My, you have now achieved the level that not many do. Yes there are many black belts in many different styles and systems, but not in this one. Reaching black belt with Ky Moo Kwan is not the same a going for a black belt in a martial sport style. Not saying we are better or worse. What I am saying is being a black belt in one style, is not the same as in another. When you reach the level of black belt with this system, you are going to a level which has been the same for hundreds of years. Plus nothing has been removed for modern mankind, and commercialism. 

 We have not changed our curriculum to make it easier for people to pass to the next levels. We have not made it easier for commercial gain, as this was and is completely ridiculous. Nor have we started allowing children to reach black belt levels. As black belt was always supposed to be for only those who would work hard for this achievement and be worth it. Yes black belt is only making it through the basics, but these basics are in many categories of technique. Unlike in a martial sport, we still train students in ancient weapons, meditations, " And I am not talking about being told to sit on the floor with legs crossed when you start and finish classes, with absolutely no instruction on how to meditate. This is completely ridiculous, and is going on to this day, people that are unable to teach meditations, should not pretend that is what they are doing. We also teach forms of motion, ground techniques, meaning using techniques from the ground, or using techniques to keep you off of the ground. Grappling techniques, restraining techniques, self defense techniques, and much more, this is not what you will find in a martial sport.

 Some will reach black belt faster, others slower, the main thing is to always try hard and to always make sure to stay on course. There are times with all of us when we ask ourselves why are we doing this to ourselves. Why go through the pain of learning how to stretch, or the first time we do a push up and the next day our arms, chest, shoulders feel like they are on fire.

But in all reality, we know this pain is not a severe type of pain. We know that what we do now for our bodies, will make our bodies stronger for tomorrow. With each day that goes by we push ourselves to a higher level. With each week that goes by, we finally learn how to do that technique we could not do before. With each month that goes by, it brings us closer to that next level, to stay with the curriculum set before us and make sure we accomplish our goal, slowly but surely we know we can do it.

People will always tell you, it is a waste of time. People can be very cruel, but most of all, when people can't do something that other's can, they become jealous, trying to cause us problems.

 Another thing is the change of life style the martial arts will bring us. We change the way we eat, we change the way we watch our time. Always making sure to leave enough time in a day to do the few things that most will not do. When others leave work and drop by the pub on the way home for a beer.  We go home right away to do our forms and techniques before we eat dinner.

 When others watch the latest sitcom while sitting on a couch. We watch the same show, yet sitting in a deep horse stance. Every time the picture changes on the TV, we make a punch or block. Just try it and see, just how often the picture changes to another angle, or visual. With in half an hour, you will have punched and blocked thousands of times for one show. Think of the training time you will gain by doing these types of things. You would not believe how creative we can be, when we want something bad enough. When we know what we are doing is excellent for not only us, but our families. Not going out any more to party, not going to bars to talk stupidity, no one remembering what they said the night before, talk about a waste of life. But what is good for us, is not good for someone else, everyone is different, and every one should be allowed to do what they want in life. However because most will not try to improve their bodies and minds. They hate us even worse for being able to do something they can't. But people are people, and the longer we are alive on this planet, the more we see people for who they are. Again that does not mean we should not trust people. We should trust people, but not to the point where we can get hurt. Always trust, but never to the point of allowing someone to hurt you. Remember this, it might help you some day.

Then there is the way that we act around other people. For instance, the way you act with your family, with your friends, at work, and at the club where you train your martial arts. The way you act around people is very important, sometimes we can all be a little huffy because we are angry about something that happened earlier. But that is still not an excuse to treat others badly. Whether you are a student, or a teacher, it makes no difference, we all should have compassion for our fellow humans. People today are very strange, people can turn on others in one second. One minute they are your best friends, the next you will hear them talking behind your back. This is hurtful, and it is a surprise especially when you always treated those same people with respect and honour. Not everyone learns about philosophy, in fact it is a shame that they don't. Going to church this day and age seems to be dwindling. These are the places where we learned right from wrong from the time we were little children. We learned not to lie, steal, cheat, or all of those things which are negative. Same with other cultures that might be in an area where they learned Buddhist teachings, which are much more strict then Christian. Not to say one or the other is better, both are good, because they teach us to live properly, and to treat others with respect and to always be loyal to family and friends. What is really bad is people do not seem to care to much who they hurt as long as they get ahead. That is why it is so important to learn one of the ancient teachings, it matters not which one we learn, what matters is we learn from one or the other. Because of the way our culture has turned away from learning from the elderly, it is only in these other places where we can learn how to act, how to treat others, just as you would want someone to treat you, it is the same thing. People are very cruel, if you have not run into this type of behaviour, you will, and when you finally do, you will really be hurt, because you never ever knew that people acted this way. Or they could lie right to your face, and not bat an eye. Or steal right from under you, and still dinghy it even when you seen them take it. As we grow older, we meet all kinds. But the one thing that city people have over small community people, is that they learn much faster about these bad attitudes. People from small communities, go to university and because they grew up trusting people, leaving doors unlocked, all of these things. They are basically shocked when they see these things for the first time in their lives, it sort of takes your breath away, as you can't even begin to believe that people can be so cruel.

For instance, one time while in Toronto, we found this homeless man, sleeping outside of this place were were staying. We all talked about allowing him to come in to get out of the cold and have a nice warm place to sleep for the night, and give him something to eat. He actually started to cry when we bought him a hamburger, he told us that no one gave him anything in his life and how lucky he was to find people like us. We all went to sleep that night thinking how great we were to help someone, feeling so good about ourselves. When we got up, Oh My Gosh, everything that was not nailed down, was gone. He stole everything, the guitar, the records, and 8 track tapes, everything that was worth something was gone that next morning. We were baffled. We could not even begin o believe what had just happened. We help someone that is freezing, we take him in, we feed him, and he steals everything from us. We were shocked, that was one of the first times, I seen people act this way, that was when I started to see how people were from other areas, and especially from cities. Please understand if you are from a city and you know many good people. I really do not doubt that, but the fact remains, you have much more types of people in cities, and it seems that anyone can meet either or, the worst, or best it all depends on your fate that day. But that is when I started to be a little hesitant when helping people.

There are other times in your life, when you give someone you know a chance to do right, because they did so much wrong. Again and again they let you down, whether it was getting them another job, again they screw the job up, and make you look bad. It might have been the twentieth time but you still feel bad for them and try to help. As the years go by, and not once, but three times you caught them stealing from you, or they borrowed money and never paid it back, and yes I could keep on going. But the main thing here is there comes a day when you do forgive them for all that they did to you. But that does not mean you hang around with them any more at all, no more chances, no more Mr. nice guy. I gave a few people chances that others would never have given. And still I was stepped on, still I was taken advantage of, it was horrible to see this unfold in front of my eyes. Basically what I am getting at is, yes we do forgive everyone for what they do to us, but some, you have to say good bye, as much as it hurts to let them go, you have to let them go. As the years go bye, you see that no matter what you have done for them, they have not learned a thing. They still steal, they still lie, they still cheat and they will still take advantage of you no matter what you do. And that is why I have to make sure you know this, for your own heart, not for theirs, but yours. Make sure you always forgive everyone. The reason for this is your own spirit, your own soul, and believe it or not, your, "Chi", if you have any type of bad karma inside of your heart, it can hurt the development of your, "Chi". You have to be pure of heart, remember that saying, it is the truth. What does this mean to be pure of heart. Well think about this for one moment, what is the heart, what does the heart do, why is the heart related to the word love, why is the heart so important in internal martial arts. One very secretive martial arts system is " Heart Method", or " Sum Yi". Your heart does so much more then pump blood. When things like being jealous happens to us for the first time, look at the way it eats you alive in side. Look at the way it makes you feel, you got to know that being jealous is something terrible, it hurts the person that is jealous more, then the person they are jealous of. Some people are so jealous that it can make them insane. But that is the way jealously can play with your emotions, it is a terrible place to be. We all know by the time we are adults that jealousy is not something sane. It is only for the insane. In fact one sure fire method of never having, "Chi", is to have all of these negative emotions inside of us. Jealousy, not forgiving someone for something they did to you in your life, stealing from someone, cheating someone, and yes even lying to someone, all of these things, can create a very black heart, not one that is pure, not one that is happy, not one that is blissful. You have to clear these things away, like cleaning the cob webs out. Or doing house cleaning, you have to get rid of all bad emotions. This is more important then you can ever know.

And please always remember, do not feel guilty if you have truly helped someone and in your heart and soul you know you have. That person might be taking advantage of you, that person might be someone that always makes you feel like you did something wrong turning the whole thing that happened upside down, when in fact it was not you. There are people that go through their whole lives treating people terrible, playing heart strings, and always causing problems for everyone else.

I have to tell you all about a style, or a few styles, from China that worshiped the devil. Grand Master Chow told me about this Taoist system that practised one of the old Taoist methods, it also had to do with alchemy. For giving up their souls, the students would have three chances to live when they should have died. For instance, they are fighting with someone that has a sword, the sword goes right through their heart, and yet they live, the wound heals up right before their eyes, and now they have two more times. Again they go through some fight, and again they are basically stabbed, or cut some where that would have killed anyone else. But again this wound heals, and again they walk away from a life threatening situation. However there does come the last time, they are killed, and right away their souls go to a bad place, I will not say hell, but I will say to a bad place, because hell I believe was invented by Christians to make us frightened, and try to make us all go to Church. The Church wanted to frighten people to go to Church, the more people they had in attendance, the more money they brought in. I do believe in spiritual levels of existence, and I do believe that the higher we develop our spirits and souls here on earth, the closer we will be to the highest levels of existence. If one is bad and goes to a bad place that is known as the lowest level of existence. Anyone could could say no way, that this could not happen, and it is just some Chinese fairy tale. Grand Master Chow was not someone to make things up, in fact everything he did tell me that was off of the wall, all came true. Everything he told me that seemed to be impossible one day, came to be possible years later. That said, I am sure his Grand Master told him about a style like this to make sure he stayed away from such a style. Everything has positive and negative, good and evil, one side or the other. When Sifu Fiedler was very young, he witnessed very strange events twice, not once, twice. Once was alone, the other time was with three other people, and everyone witnessed what Sifu Fiedler had also seen. Once Sifu Fiedler seen this, he knew right away, that if there was something so evil, there had to be something good on the other side of the coin. That is when he really started to go to Church when he was a teenager. He did go to Church all throughout his childhood, but then stopped going once he thought he was to cool to go any more, around the time when he was twelve. Then when these strange things started to happen around him at sixteen, seventeen years of age, it made Sifu Fiedler go back to Church, not just back to Church, and not just going to make the motions, he really did pray and get involved in Bible studies. In fact by the time one year had gone by, Sifu Fiedler was on his way out west. But it was not to learn the martial arts, it was to go to Bible collage. The young Sifu Fiedler wanted to be a missionary. He wanted to help the poor, and needy, he wanted to walk on the side of God, and change his whole life. When he was talked into going out west, he was told he would have a place to stay with the two that were driving to Edmonton. They were all third year Bible collage students, and Sifu Fiedler was going to go out west with them, to start a new life. One problem he had, was shaking the old friends he had living in Pembroke. To be close to them, he would always run into them and would be to easy to fall into that life of partying, again, or anything that was unconstructive. So he decided if he was going to move away, it had to be far enough, so that he could not come home. All the way to Edmonton these third year bible collage students, meaning one more year and these would be the people preaching to others about being such good people. Now get this, when Sifu Fiedler got to Edmonton, after spending all his money on gas. They dropped Sifu Fiedler on skid row Edmonton, at this Christian house. There were two bed rooms, and Sifu Fiedler got one. It was just his luck too that this man who owned the house, gave Sifu Fiedler a chance to get a job and then pay him as he got paid. With in one week Sifu Fiedler had two jobs a day, he would go to work in the morning, not like the job, stop and go to another job site in the afternoon, stop and go to the next one the next morning. He di this for one whole week, before he stayed at the hospital which he liked lots. As it seemed, everything was meant to be, because at exactly the same time, Grand Master Chow, had just moved from Hong Kong to Edmonton, and got a job as the hospital same time as Sifu Fiedler. However Sifu Fiedler had already joined a martial arts school that was close to where he lived. The school was not on skid row, but all Sifu  Fiedler had to do was walk under the CN Tower building tunnel, that brought you right out into downtown Edmonton, and right one block away from the CN Tower building, was the martial arts club where Sifu Fiedler joined, a few weeks before meeting Grand Master Chow. But again all things happen for a reason, and had GM Chow not told Sifu Fiedler he had to stay at the school he started, Sifu Fiedler says he would never have seen all the things that GM Chow taught him, especially how to defeat this same type of style. Around two years after Sifu Fiedler started to do kung fu, was when GM Chow started to pay his way to join every other martial arts school in Edmonton, only for the month, but it was the only way to get into a club, and be able to spar with the students without getting charged. You see if you joined a club, you had to sign a paper saying no one was responsible for injury. This was very important also, as Sifu Fiedler was not being sent to these schools to learn martial arts, he was being sent to these schools so that he could pretend to be wanting to learn. All the while waiting for them to ask him to fight, and that was when Sifu Fiedler would wait to see if they were going to be friendly, or if they were going to be cruel to new people joining. If they were the type of school that would beat the living tar out of the new students, that was when Sifu Fiedler would really show them what martial arts was. And if the school had nice instructors and or teachers, and students, Sifu Fiedler would never ever start anything that was wrong. The only school that Sifu Fiedler went to where he did not have to fight at all, or at least no one was sparing all the time that Sifu Fiedler went to that school. It was Green Dragon Kung Fu School. The teacher was Grand Master Chan, and he was a very good man, and very good grand master. In fact all Sifu Fiedler's life he has never ever met to many masters that were like this, one of the few Grand Masters that Sifu Fiedler says really was who he says he was, was Grand Master Chan, He was one of the nicest people you could meet, he would take his time to talk to everyone, even the new students. Once he got to know you, he would ask you to stick around to chat after, he was and still is from what I hear, one of the nicest masters Sifu Fiedler ever met in Edmonton.

Sifu Dee

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Last modified: 10/30/07