Richard L Haight - Unshakable Awareness: Meditation in the Heart of Chaos, Taught by a Master of Four Samurai Arts (Total Embodiment Method TEM)

Richard L. Haight

Shinkaikan Body, Mind, Spirit LLC

www.richardlhaight.com

Copyright 2020 by Richard L. Haight

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.ISBN 978-1-7349658-0-3 Disclaimer: 1. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.2. This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical or psychological advice of physicians or psychiatrists. The reader should regularly consult health practitioners in matters relating to his or her physical or mental/emotional health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.Published by Shinkaikan Body, Mind, Spirit LLCwww.richardlhaight.com

Unshakable Awareness is dedicated to my martial arts instructor, Shizen Osaki (June 17, 1951 July 27, 2020). He was a great mentor and a dear friend. I cannot thank him enough for all he has done to support my path and the Total Embodiment Method. If not for him, this book could not have been written. His spirit lives on through his children and his many students.

I would like to thank my students Barbara Becker, Linda LaTores, and Toni Hollenbeck for their early feedback on the manuscript and their suggesting a workbook be appended to the main text. They provided most of the questions that make up the workbook.

I would also like to thank my mentoring students for positively tackling the many challenges that this training offers and for their many questions, which have served to clarify the content of this book.

To my copy-editor, Hester Lee Furey, I extend my most sincere appreciation for the great work that she does and for her support of these teachings.

I thank my proofreading team, Barbara Becker, Linda LaTores, Toni Hollenbeck, and Rhoann Ponseti, for their quest to find every last error!

I thank the cover designer, Nathaniel Dasco, for the stunning design. He never ceases to amazing me.

I thank my wife, Teruko Haight, for her undying support of my awareness explorations.

Finally, I offer gratitude to the many supporters who financially contributed to help pay for the publishing of this book. Please know that I couldnt have done this without your support.

Below, I list each contributor by name:

A s I type these words , billions of people are in self-isolation, unable to leave their homes, and many of them are also unable to work. Millions of people are sick with the corona virus (COVID-19), and thousands are dying miserably each day because we lack sufficient testing, hospital beds, and ventilators. The stock market is tanking, having lost almost half its value in only a few weeks, a decline far worse than the Great Depression of 1929 (during which it took three years for the market to lose half its value). The price of crude oil has dropped into the $20 per barrel range, prompting oil producers to clamor for a bailout because most of them can't survive at such low prices. Will these things rebound or not, nobody knows, for we are in a time of chaos.

For years preppers have been getting ready for an utter collapse of the modern system. Just a few months ago, almost no one took them seriously; now ordinary people are hoarding water, food, ammunition, and toilet paper. Even in the United States in cities where most citizens identify as liberal, such as New York and California, ammunition sales are outpacing stores ability to stock their shelves.

Many of us are scared. We've never been in a situation like we are in now, but the fact is, whether we want to believe it or not, we are here, and we dont know what will come next. Time, a formerly rare commodity, has come to seem abundant for most of us as we remain at home in social isolation. Once we admit our condition, we can begin initiating positive action toward better health, inner strength, and awareness with the time that we have.

Not only do we have an abundance of time, we also have the lurking fear that our system may never recover, and that life as we have known it is gone. We're not sure what our future looks like.

Wishful thinking says that everything will return to normal in a few months. I understand how seductive such thinking can be, but it may not be as helpful as it seems at first glance, as it can lull us into inactivity and keep us in old, unhelpful patterns. Instead, we can use such moments to notice how we have been living in ways that are unhealthy, uninspiring, hollow of meaning, and unsupportive of our long-term well-being, by our own assessment.

While it is nice to hope for the best, we are wise to prepare for the worst. Maybe we don't have the money to purchase a gun, horde food, buy a fallout shelter, or whatever else that so many people are doing now. But we have another way to prepare. We can invest in the one thing that most people, including preppers tend to neglect: the fitness of our mind, body, and spirit. Of course, if you can establish secure access to shelter, water, and food, then you might consider doing so.

The truth is, even if you have prepared shelter, water, and food, if you have not conditioned your body, mind, and spirit to be powerfully capable under pressure, then you will not perform or live as well as you would otherwise. Consider a person lost in the forest. Most individuals who die in that circumstance do so because they panic and begin walking before calming themselves. They may walk for hours, possibly following someone's tracks, but ultimately end up exhausting themselves. They often die alone in fear. The sad part is that often the tracks they are following are their own, as they walk a large circle over the wilderness time and again, not realizing that they have been circling toward their primary arm over a span of miles.