Q: Dear Athos, I have some questions to ask you...
A: Dear G, one of the extraordinary aspects of the human thought is that each question contains the terms of its answer within itself. This is because both question and answer proceed from the same cause: conscience. Question and answer are nothing but the descent and re-ascent of an informal and intuitive concept not yet solved on the formal plane of physical conscience.
Q: ...I often think that the Way (the Do) coincides with what you call the ‘Path that leads man from the emotional Chaos of passions to the quiet and detached wisdom of the inner order’?...
A: The Do of Judo, for example, is not only a martial discipline, but more precisely it is the exterior ‘manifestation’ of an inner quality called Ki or Chi (spirit). The Do is the way that, if understood, goes back and ‘reenters’ towards its own inner source that is the Ki. If this doesn’t happen and the Do is only understood as the exterior way of action, the Do induces to continue on an ‘activity segment’ which, carrying on towards the outside, detaches man’s mind from his own inner barycenter. This is the point of very fine conjunction between what is immobile (spirit) and what moves (physical form) and it is the essence of the true Self. Furthermore, the very fine line that joins the two different poles is the Way of the Sword. The Sword is the symbol of the fusion between will and spirit. The search for this unification is the Way of the Warrior where, in the initiatory field, the most precious pole is the Yin (!).
Q: … it often happens to me to be able to make evaluations on objective reality, when someone asks me questions about events and/or situations, remaining at an outer point of observation; in other circumstances I have to create such requirements and I often have personal opinions…
A: If you are able to develop what you can describe so well you introduce yourself to the method of detachment. This is the gift of the observer. It is not by refining observation abilities, which is a common talent, that we reach a goal of superior level, but by developing inside ourselves the conscious observer. I’ll explain it better. The observer is only man’s sense, but the physical man is only the ‘instrument’ of the observer, which is the Ego, superior Self or soul. Therefore, to develop in one’s own personality the conscience of the observer means to reach the stage of egoic conscience through it. In other words, the individual personality is ‘filled’ with the conscience of Self and the latter reveals itself to the outside through the physical mind that now belongs to it.
Q: …as far as your answer is concerned, I am aware that only through pain we can fall down to ground zero and then turn our defeat into a fortifying experience; that of judo has been peculiar but not the most painful. Furthermore the spirit with which I appeal to you is not devotional but is directed to someone who walks a path of his own will…
A: The layout of your thought, though, shows a strong devotional influence which, on the other hand, is often impressed in the adolescent stage of education (imprinting). The applicants are taught to transform the thought of the ineluctability of the pain that accompanies man’s life into the principle of error, because the principle of pain often follows that of sin and this is another worsening of the devotional layout.
The initiate doesn’t fear pain but avoids it with intelligence and skillfulness. Therefore the applicant (warrior or mystic) must learn to providently watch out for error in order not to cause pain. The devotional man seeks in pain the motive for the atonement of his own nature (?) but the way of learning is not pain, but rather in the wisdom to avoid it. Pain can be mostly avoided through prudence, yes, but especially through knowledge. Therefore most of the meanings of initiatory wisdom could be reduced to the term Knowledge. And if knowledge is referred to those who ask, it becomes generosity and love. What you pour outside yourself on those that struggle to live is precisely this: Love.
Q: Certainly one must not lose his own ‘inner barycenter’…
A: The inner barycenter, viz. the junction point of the hypothetical axis between the lower self and the superior Ego, that is between personality and soul, cannot be lost ‘if it is not built first’…! Indeed, we cannot lose what we don’t own as well as we cannot destroy what has not been built yet.
The egoic barycenter is the conscience point where the perceptive short-sightedness of individual reason is focused, up to ‘confusing itself’ with the awareness of the superior Ego. Then, between individuality (soul) and individual personality (the terms are always partial conventions) arises a junction point that joins the differences, turning them from conflicting into complementary elements. As I told A. a long time ago the egoic barycenter is a mental status where the maximum of the minimum (physical reason) and minimum of maximum (animic conscience, if we want to call it that, using usual terms) meet (see. ‘Knowledge by contact’).
Fragments of an Initiatory Reality (see) is, in actual fact, a Trojan horse, where under the formal appearance we try and highlight certain unusual ‘strategies’ that indicate the Way (DO) of the Sword; where the Warrior is the allegory of the rational will that in Self Sacrifice becomes spiritual will. And don’t worry if I use Freemasonry or the Church as a touchstone. These are two initiatorily ‘flat blackboards’ that allow (give me a point of support and I will lift…) to highlight certain concepts that found room only in abstruse intellectual journeys, where, after all, ‘practice’ is always in a position too far from ‘theory’. I am a supporter of practice, provided that it is continuously corrected by a good intellectual orientation and a right motive.
Whilst I don’t believe in the everlasting theorization of certain clubs or associations, where the only initiatory element is their dialectics. Among them I also put Church and Freemasonry, where there is the annunciation of theories which, covered up with pathetic alibis (man is weak, the mind is weak, the flesh is weak, etc…), I never actually saw being fully accomplished. But we will see later; for now I say goodbye to you, thanking you for your esteem.
Fraternally. 
