David Gallaher's Gung Fu Institute

As I mentioned in a previous article, change favors the prepared mind. A mind that is willing to understand change is needed. There are many epiphanies a person will need to go through in life before they realize change is even needed. Character is simply a billboard of teachings from parents, mentors and experiences throughout your life. The way that you act and behave represents who you are. Take a few minutes of silence, prayer, and meditation. Allow your eyes to turn inward and begin to inspect your life. What decisions have you made? ; The good, the bad, and the ugly need to be examined and dissected.

Epiphanies can be giant revelations. Death is often an epiphany. Imagine you see someone suffer and die of heart disease and many other complications from obesity. This may also be a challenge of your own and seeing a loved one suffer can lead you into a type of truth and may be your key to unlock the shackles and chains to this type of bondage. Perhaps it’s attending a seminar on nutrition or just being mentored by somebody who has great wisdom, it could even be a revelation that occurred during a movie or a song. It may happen walking on a nature trail or on the beach. You may inwardly hear a voice calling to you to change. Whatever has spoken to you to get to a point where you know change is needed, let me assist you in a deeper understanding of yourself.

One of the things you will need to do is be willing to be totally transparent to yourself. Only then will you be able to have true freedom. Transparency will allow you to have an honest, inward discussion with yourself. This will allow you to self inspect and self examine. This will lead you to an awakening of who you really are; the true human being without the world of self-labeling or without all the programming. Your job is not who you are, it’s simply what you do. Who you are is the person laying in bed at night contemplating life. Who are you really? By this I mean, your true DNA, not all the artificial conditioning from birth until now. Once you step into this inward exploration you will be awakened from your slumber, a move from the unconscious to the conscious.

As you may know if you have already read any of my articles, I’m a firm believer that all of the habits that you have picked up since birth are actively steering your judgments and decisions. Lacking self awareness will certainly lead you down an unfruitful existence always feeling there is something missing in your life. You will try to fill the void with all kinds of earthly wealth, which is only temporal. Your happiness generally comes in stages based on what you buy; a new car, a new house, a vacation, a new gadget. These stages are also temporal. Soon the feeling of despair or the need of something else to fulfill the void comes roaring back to existence. So the question should be- why do we have a void to begin with? And what can we do to fill the void and maintain joy throughout the journey of life?

Habits will manifest and crystallize and it takes a total revolt of all of the conditionings and the negative influences to begin a new you. Look at negative influences like a virus that attacks your computer. You need a solid firewall, great antivirus and spyware software actively working, or better yet sandbox technology to filter out damaging input. You want to concentrate on positive habits and positive affirmations to bring clarity. Strive to allow statements of life and beauty to enter into your mind. You have to set your environment up for success. Dream big and be a student of life. Habits are formed in the body, mind, and the spirit. You need to address all aspects for total transformation. The treatment depends on your starting point. Remember there are many good habits to cancel out the bad habits, like a pH scale the extremes balance each other to become neutral. Like Chinese medicine, if you are extremely yang (hard & rigid), extreme yin (softness & fluidity) will be required for your well-being. Everyone looks at your character; how you react to certain situations in your life, at your workplace, in your family. You’re judged by your character. Words that you speak quickly fade, but your character will be a lighthouse for those that are lost and need direction in their lives.

Grandmaster Gallaher

It is interesting for me to think there are people that believe they come into this world with a predestined idea, a predestined viewpoint, and a predestined existence, and have no ability to manipulate their destiny. If this were true, then there would be no reason for moral teaching because it wouldn’t affect you since you are either destined to be good or bad and you have no say in the matter. I personally think this is a silly viewpoint, a lazy viewpoint, and a lot of times, a religious viewpoint. Even at a young age, I had a tendency to observe my family’s friends and there were points where I thought, “This person is righteous and very successful, seemed honest, and came across as a man of integrity.” Only to find several years later, he has become an alcoholic, been divorced, and seemed like a totally different person, destined for destruction. If you go through life not observing people, you will never see this phenomenon. Other times, you will see somebody that seems like they are flesh bound and totally into self indulgence, gossip, and party hard. This is the type of personality that consistently flows into the least denominator. Then to my utter amazement, several years later I find this person has become a successful lawyer, businessman, and entrepreneur. He has risen from the pits of hell and has become a beacon of light in his community. It is an amazing contrast of two individuals, seemingly going in one direction and abruptly changing course, as if they had a total role reversal.
My personal viewpoint is that they were neither born successful or unsuccessful. They just made choices that affected their destiny. Some of these choices can affect you temporarily, other choices can affect you for a lifetime, some choices can even affect you eternally. (Whether you believe in a Christian, Buddhist, or Taoist viewpoint of life.) I’m just a firm believer in that you reap what you sow. I also believe that we are uniquely entwined in the ripple. What you choose to do affects a multitude of people around you, and in turn other peoples reaping and sowing can affect you. Most often your destiny is made of poor choices and brilliant choices. You’re currently reaping what you have sown; the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I believe that men and women can change their destiny. If you begin right now, sewing seeds of righteousness, integrity, love and kindness, you will bear great fruit in the future. Perhaps you are dealing with the seeds of the past and you sowed many bad thoughts, bad decisions, and deceived many people. You are reaping your harvest. This is what you planted. Again, remember you are uniquely threaded into many people and you can be influenced by decisions that others have made, including your parents and siblings. I believe that we are all predestined for greatness and the decisions that we make today will affect today and tomorrow and will bring back the proper alignment of yesterday. Make decisions so that you will be a person that will have many friends around you and you will leave this life with a smile.

On the last article we addressed hacking away at the unessentials. Unessentials are things that we actually don’t need. Things like oxygen, water, food, clothing, and a house over your head are truly essential items. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, television, and the radio are not truly essential. Simply look at your life and begin cultivating. Look at your life as a garden; is it full of healthy & robust plants, flowers? Baring healthy fruit and pollen? Or is it producing thorns, briars, and thistles? Only you know what type of garden is on the inside, what you truly feel. You need to begin to take control of your life and take back precious time that you give whole-heartedly to the religion of TV.
Most of the time dedicated to watching television is not productive to the individual. The themes are generally negative, which include murder, drunkenness, rape, immorality, deceit, lying, stealing, cheating, the negative list can go on and it is much larger than anything positive you can get out of TV. There are a few educational programs that are beneficial, like the History Channel or Discovery Channel, but all programs need to be monitored for content. Television in its totality instead of its fragmented state can be negative, generally speaking. The substance of television programming is to get you to buy something. And most often, it’s not love, kindness, and mercy.
When you watch TV you are an open receiver. Images and audio are being downloaded into your system. A lot of negativity you aren’t even detecting, you are becoming numb and desensitized to the content. I was recently talking to one of my students about a movie that another student had told me about that had a lot of grotesque content. I was surprised at some of the scenes and that my 14 year old student said that it didn’t bother him. My question to you: Shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t seeing a body being mutilated on a giant screen bother you? Again, we as individuals are society and if the love and kindness is being stolen from us, what is humanity to become?
I have a garden of bamboo and some of it reaches 30 feet high. I also have a flower garden as well as a vegetable garden. There is a certain amount of responsibility based on time that I have to give to my gardens; pruning, watering, fertilizing, and general upkeep. What’s amazing is how fast weeds and pests can infiltrate a garden and turn beauty into ugliness. Lack of water or too much water can also have a negative effect on a garden. Pruning is essential to produce new growth, like our life we will get pruned, and it will hurt, but there will be growth after the pruning process. Our garden will die in a matter of weeks if proper care is not administrated constantly. Like our mind and our bodies, they also require nourishment. Peaceful time and contemplation is vital for our growth. There was a movie in the 80’s about stealing time, I only saw a short 15-20 minutes of the movie but I termed the word “langaliers”. Langaliers to me are people who steal your time, that produce nothing positive in your life and in some cases I believe they are put there only to steal time.
When I go through my week I identify langaliers constantly, but no longer just as people. A langalier is anything thats purpose is to steal time which we honestly don’t have that much of. Again to refer to the previous article, look at it as a football field, there’s a beginning end zone and an ending end zone. What we want to do is stay on the field as long as possible. We start on one side of the football field when we come into this existence. The half-way mark of the football field is the half-way mark of your life. The opposite end zone is the ending of your life. So, from end zone to end zone is your life lived here on Earth. Make it a memorable life.

Starting Sunday, October 3rd through Sunday, October 10th for anyone who would like to participate we will be doing a No TV or Movies Week, and replacing them with books, relaxing music and/or board games. We all know that most of us watch too much TV. We want to encourage people to evaluate how much time they spend watching television or movies as opposed to interacting with their spouse, significant other, family etc. Even if you are reading this at a later date, I encourage you to find a week on your own.

After the week is through instead of just turning on the TV and watching whichever program happens to be on, try setting a limit of how much television you want to watch per day. Try watching a movie with your family that everyone can enjoy. You will be surprised how much more you can accomplish in a day. If a movie or television program goes against your personal belief, it doesn’t make any sense to support the program. Try to pick movies or TV programs that edify you as a person. Movies and TV programs carry messages. I encourage you to look at what program you’re watching and find out what message it’s trying to convey to you without your realization. (Try to find out what they’re selling and make sure you want to buy it.)

Recommended Books:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
People are Idiots and I Can Prove It by Larry Winget
Bad Childhood, Good Life by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
The Natural Way to Vibrant Health by N.W. Walker or any other books by N.W. Walker
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
The Wise Woman by George MacDonald

Recommended Board Games:
Sorry!
Monopoly
Pictionary
Taboo

Recommended Music:
Kitaro
Peter Davidson
Classic Instrumentals
Any soft, relaxing, meditative music

Grandmaster Gallaher

Recently in our martial arts school I have been talking about how to live an abundant life, how to seize the moment and enjoy life, fervently seeking a better way of living, passionately pursuing a greater way of life. After our Tuesday night stretching class I talked about creating a calm environment. This is an environment that is not temporal, but constant. Part of life is learning how to navigate through challenges, some that are positive, others that are negative. Like a cork in the ocean, fluidly flowing to the least resistant area, with the least amount of stress as you flow. This is living life on the high road.
Self fulfillment is vital to the individual and we need to cultivate our surroundings to achieve a higher state of being. The stronger I am, the more complete I am. The more positive I am, will allow me to meet the challenges of life. It is in this state of being that I can meet the needs of others. It is difficult to meet the needs of others and have a heart of charity if I am not complete and I do not understand myself. If I am sick and frail and lonely, I need to work on developing myself first. Again, it is difficult to meet the needs of others and have a heart of charity if I am living a life of deceit, anger, and hate. It’s through my strengths that I achieve a heart of charity which in my opinion is the heart of God. Virtues like love, peace, kindness, and mercy come out of a righteous man. Deceit, lawlessness and self idolatry (humanism) come out of the heart of anger and frustration, not out of the heart of love.
Bruce Lee said that he wanted to achieve a higher level of martial arts. He referred to becoming an artist of life, not just a martial artist. And that’s my mission in life, to live life and to enjoy the moment now, not tomorrow. Have a revelation of truth today, smell the roses, appreciate God’s creation and take the time out for rest and relaxation. Try biking, hiking camping, going to a lake or beach, and just enjoying life. Our martial art class is simply a tool to achieving enlightenment, assuming you want to drive on the high road.
I was driving to school today and all of the road signs caught my eye; school zone, stop sign, yield, speed limit, all kinds of signs. A teacher should help you on your journey by pointing certain road signs out to you. Let’s call these road signs “life signs”. True education is not to teach you conformity and to put you in bondage. True education is to create a free thinker, one who can create new ideas. We need to break the herd mentality by being accountable for our own actions. I’m sure you’ve heard the statement, “dead man walking”. This means you are living a mediocre life and you are just tapping into the resources of life that sustain you, like bread and water. It’s a substance but it’s not going to be maximum nutrition. I’ve actually met people that are not only a dead man walking, but buried alive. They have been so infiltrated and deceived that they are buried alive by all the stuff heaped upon them. We all have within us the resources to soar like an eagle but you will have to dig yourself out of negativity by replacing it with a positive mindset. This is only the beginning.

Let me finish with some finals thoughts that may help start your day off right. I encourage you to meditate and process these thoughts before applying them. Bruce Lee also had a famous quote, “knowing is not enough, we must apply; willingness is not enough, we must do.” Knowledge has a certain amount of power in the knowing, but the actual power comes from the application of the knowledge, that’s true power.
-Ditch the morning alarm clock that makes your day start off in a panic, replace it with an alarm clock that wakes you up with soft music or a tone that is not so obnoxious.
-Make sure you go to bed at a decent time. Our bodies require 8-9 hours for maximum rest. This will prevent that groggy, lethargic, moody feeling from lack of sleep.
- Make a habit when you wake up to take 5 to 10 deep inhales and exhales for proper breathing.
- Practice early morning smiles. I guarantee when you wake up, look in the mirror and smile, it’s refreshing.
- Wake up on the first alarm sound, don’t hit the snooze button.
- Have a nutritious breakfast, stay away from the greasy, sugary foods.
- Before you leave for work or school make a small list, let’s call it the “gratitude list”, start your morning off by giving thanks for what you have.
- Lose the morning coffee, if you need caffeine try green tea.
- Start off with a large glass of purified water, reverse osmosis, or distilled and a squirt of lemon or lime for electrolytes.
- Listen to music that is encouraging, soft, and therapeutic, stay away from hard obnoxious music, especially in the morning.
- Avoid the news for long periods of time. Generally speaking the news is seldom positive and has a bias to the negative side. Just hit the highlights and any major concerns that could affect your day.
- Take a minute to meditate and pray. Praying is talking to god, meditating is hearing from god.

I hope this helps and I encourage everyone to live an abundant life.

Grandmaster Gallaher