 So once me and a friend of mine who's training a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we spent a lot of time together. He was teaching me and presenting me Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I was presenting him Aikido. And I was telling him a lot of stories that I came across myself or seen a lot in the area that I live in, in Lithuania in the country, but also I heard stories from other countries or witnessed some of them. That in Aikido, despite the fact that it's an officially non-competitive martial art, where the founder himself would say that Aikido is meant to bring people together, not for them to compete, there's a lot of competition in Aikido. And maybe it's not very obvious, it's a lot of times between different dojos. For example, in my country, since I'm running a dojo and I've had a chance to talk with some of the dojo trolls, it would be a common sight that one organization would be opposing another one. Even in our city, there's another club with which there is a tension. And we definitely don't bring any tension from our side ourselves, but when I reached out and I said, well, let's cooperate, let's be friends, let's do some projects together, it never worked. And the stories that I hear and the feeling that I get, they don't really like us. So there's a lot of that kind of competition. And that friend of mine started to ask himself, so why is there so much competition in Aikido? And he thought a lot and then a few days later, he came into one of our discussions and said, you know, I think it's because there's no real competition. There's no tournament fights, tournaments. And I thought for a moment, I thought that's a pretty good idea, there's some truth. And we discussed about that. And the true side of it was that, for example, Brazilian jujitsu, as far as I've got to experience it, if you claim to be the best, if you claim to be the best, somebody else is going to come and he's going to fight you on one-on-one in a preset set-up match. And if the other guy is better, he's going to kick your ass. So it's very easy in Brazilian jujitsu to become humble, because if someone is better than you, it's going to be obvious. He's going to kick your butt. And I experienced that myself. That brought some humility to me, too, which I appreciate. But then in Brazilian jujitsu, it's hard to boast that you're better than others and to have that kind of mentality. But in Aikido, there's a lot of... I keep hearing a lot of times when different senseis, different dojo chose would say, we're the good ones and they're wrong, that we are doing it right and they suck. I'm the best instructor and what they do is crap. And that's kind of the focal point of our discussion. And what's interesting that I realized that there's some truth to that, that if there would be competition or tournaments, then you couldn't just claim. In Aikido, it's basically easy to claim that you're the best, because there's no real way to compare. Aikido is quite subtle and it's hard to compare that subtle level. So it's easy to make an assumption that I'm better, he sucks. There's no good way to really check who is better. But then that was just the first part of the story where I realized there's some truth, but it's not a final answer and it doesn't really actually matter. And the second part of the story is that when my friend, a few days later again, my friend came back and we had another discussion and he said, you know what, I thought more about Aikido and why that kind of a competitive, we're good, you're bad, Muir is there, the kind of discrimination between each other. And he said, you know, it's because I think it's because they're human. And I thought that's even better. That's even more true. And we again discussed about it and I thought it on myself, on my own level. And I think that's actually so much more important than making some kind of a competition. And trust me, I'm completely not into saying that Aikido should have more competition or tournaments. I think that would ruin it even more. But the realization that, you know, that kind of quote of my friend that there's that competitiveness in Aikido because people who are doing it are human, it's actually very true and very sincere. What is meant by that is that in our conditioning from very early age, we are taught to compete. We are taught to strive to become better than others, to seek out our goals despite no matter what we have to suffer through. So from a very early age, we are taught to compete, we are taught to strive to achieve our goals despite what we have to do. And there's even a saying that you have to, even if you have to go over the heads of other people, you will, it doesn't matter, you still have to do it. And that kind of conditioning is very strong in us. And it actually, it obviously goes back into Aikido too. And O'Sensei, you know, he would, he would stress a lot of different things. He would say, true victories, victory over yourself, that there shouldn't be no competition in Aikido. We shouldn't compare each other. But the fact that we are human, we have that human conditioning from an early age is making it difficult. And I can't say that I'm, I'm, I'm not touched by that either. It's, I can feel it sometimes come up in my own system when, you know, somebody criticizes the style that I do or criticize me as an instructor. It's hard that feeling of wanting to protect myself or protect my style, protect my instructor, protect my organization that definitely comes up and the desire to oppose. And it's hard to not go there. And even on the mat too, that, that happens as well. We, in the very first video I put out on this channel called the dark side of Aikido, I talked a lot about that in terms of how much we like to compete and compare each other on the mat, especially if different styles come up, but even senior and less senior students. So it's definitely there. But the question that I was asked and that came up was how to, how to deal with that. And I think, you know, we could try to make some rules. We could try to create a different frame of work. And I feel a sense in a sense tried to do that. And some of his students continued to try to put that frame of, okay, there's no competition in Aikido means there's no tournaments. But as you see, removing the tournaments, removing just an external, just an external part of it is not necessarily the answer. And it doesn't mean that putting it back either with the unanswer. I think it's, in the end, it's all about working with ourselves. And it may sound a bit cliche. It may sound a bit, it may sound a bit simple, you know, change yourself, change the world, etc. But I feel it's true. And I feel that on my practice, on my personal level, it's true too, that first of all, we have to accept who we are and how we are. First of all, we have to accept that what I'm inspired about these days is that there's natural flow to life. There's, you know, birds know when to fly where, trees, trees know how to change its form based on the weather, seasons change, our body changes, their cycles. It's, the universe is very intelligent. And even about that, Osensei spoke to him. And when you realize that that universe is very intelligent, you realize that there's a certain goal, a certain role, we have to play in it too. That life wants us, there's an intelligence that wants us to do certain things. And we can either oppose it or we can either go with it. And Osensei said that too, there's a phrase of him that if you're going to oppose the universe, it's going to crush you. If you're going to go along the universe, it's going to support you. And he was very inspired about that. And he was showing that through an example. And that's living by that principle. He realized that competition doesn't work. There's no competition when you work with life. You realize that you are a part of the whole that you realize that everything that is around you. And again, I'll quote Osensei here too, everything is one family. We're all one family. And when you realize that the concept of competition just drops. And when people are afraid, which is crazy and funny, because people are afraid and believe that if you're going to remove competition, you're going to remove your source of motivation. That if you're not going to compete, you're not going to want to evolve or move further. And on a certain level, it's true, but only on the level of meaningless things. If you will stop competing, you will stop having the desire to achieve the wrong things. You won't need a better car to prove that you're better. You won't need more money. It doesn't mean that you won't be able to have more money or you won't be able to appreciate a better car or more money. But you will start to realize how meaningless these things are because they're motivated by the wrong things. And so that kind of motivation drops. But what's great is that another source of motivation comes up. And that source of motivation is very pure one. That's the sense of our purpose, raison d'être. In that moment, you realize that there's something you really desire from the core of yourself to do. And that in that, there's no competition. It's not in order to prove something to someone. It's not in order to become better. It's driven not by wanting to overcome someone or something. It's just, it's purely in the moment. It's something that you want to do at this moment without caring about the results. And when you're in that mood, when you're in that mode, in that flow, the desire to compete just drops. There's no reason for you to compete because you have nothing to prove. And I feel that, first of all, Ossensi was very much into that. He was living it all the time and he was talking about that a lot. And I feel that if we want to remove competition from Aikido, that's where we have to go. We have to listen to the words of Ossensi, what he was inspired to do, why he created Aikido, the way of non-resisting, non-resisting your purpose, non-resisting life, non-resisting others, non-resisting different situations. And when you're in that, competition is going to become less and less important. You won't have anything to prove to other dojos. It won't matter to you if other dojos support you or not, if others approve you or not. I feel that's a very great source of power. And Aikido itself, first of all, it is a way of non-resisting. It teaches you how not to resist, so that gives you a sense of understanding, okay, there is actually a way to improve your ability to not resist, to discover your purpose for Aikido. And so that's why Aikido is already very powerful. It has that frame already, which is supporting the non-competition, the working with yourself rather than against others. So the frame is there, but it won't work if you are not going to get involved into that process yourself. So I'll be very happy to talk more about that way of non-competing, that way of listening to life and fulfilling yourself, living with life, not against life. And personally, that helped me tremendously. If I wouldn't have followed that, I wouldn't have became Uchideshi, I wouldn't have opened my dojo. My dojo wouldn't have worked if I wouldn't have followed this non-resisting path. So, and even more, many more examples would be there. So we can talk about that more if you're especially if you're interested and how to live that, how to trust in that, but we'll leave it for another moment. Before we finish up though, first of all, I wanted to apologize that for a few weeks there were no videos. First of all, we had a couple of weeks of vacation at the end of the summer, but actually that was not the only case. So right now we're filming on a Sunday, so tomorrow Monday. It's probably already past when the videos are uploaded. But we're going to have the grand opening of our second dojo in Shulei. So we're going to have two dojos, but it was a lot of work to get it ready. It's going to be more directed by my wife Nila, and there's going to be a lot of yoga in it, but also Aikido, Ninjutsu. It's a long story, but two dojos right now. So we're happy to share that with you, and we're going to open it, so I'm going to have more time to edit videos, put more videos on the first channel, more videos here, so we're going to see each other more. Also, what I wanted to share is that especially since there's a second dojo now, so there's a lot of classes, basically we have classes six day per week. So every day Aikido, every day yoga, there's meditation, morning weapon classes, so it's a pact. It's a very busy schedule, and we also have a living space in our first dojo. So many of you connect with me and say that we're happy to see these videos, and I'm very happy to know that you're benefiting from them. But if you ever want to come, Lithuania is a much cheaper country than most of western European countries, so the expenditures are not expensive here. Basically, I just wanted to invite you, if you would like to be in Tideshi, even for one week, two weeks, or longer, live in the dojo, train every day. We could have these talks on a personal level. The space is there. There is a bit of a fee, but for a month, it's probably going to be around 200 euros for all the training, for living in the dojo, and the food is fairly cheap as well. So I think 400 euros, so that's about 400 dollars. For one month, training, food, lodging, everything should be enough. So if you're interested in that, connect up with me. You can write me a Facebook, right here in the comments here. I'd be happy to have you as a Tideshi and have a good work. We could work on a personal level. That'd be great. And the last thing I want to share is that in a few weeks, October 1st, 3rd, my main instructor, Patrick Astridi-Sensis, come to Lithuania to teach a seminar. If you want to come and participate in the seminar, also I'll offer free lodging and the dojo, so you won't have to pay for that. All other expenditures are not much as well, and the seminar is only 90 euros too. So if you have the chance to come, you're really welcome. You can come a few days earlier, so we could get to know each other personally. You can stay a few days longer. The space is there, so I just wanted to invite you. And yeah, I'm looking forward to meet everyone, not through the computer screen. So, all in all, this is Rokas, and I'll see you in another video.