Integration – between body and spirit, self and other, humankind
and nature, truth and beauty – is a condition that all people should
strive for, and integrity is a moral state as well: Those who are
whole can act in the best and fairest manner. Harmonia (in Greek)
is a “fitting together”

As Hippocrates wrote, “All things are in sympathy.”
In present-day physics this is stated as: “The amount of positive
energy in the universe is exactly equal to the amount of negative
energy; the universe is, and always has been, a perfectly balanced
energy system.”

The intuition that “all things are in sympathy” was a common
belief in both East and West. Tragically, modern civilization
has been poisoned by the misguided intentioned of some that
life is nothing more than an intense rivalry between species
and only the fittest can survive. Life is always a trial, and people
need to be physically and mentally fit to get along. This is one
of the reasons we practice Budo.

But the pernicious view that existence is a constant battle against foes that must be totally
subjugated or annihilated, is a direct cause of much of the exploitation and destruction of both
humankind and the environment that has surfaced violently in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries                                

Excerpt taken from
SECRETS OF AIKIDO by John Stevens

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