Introduction to the May editorial:

This month I have not had a moment of peace in which to sit down and write a new editorial for you: in the interests of our WingTsun I have been in Ireland, at the int. Seminar for the Saarland Police’s special units, GSG9, the military police, customs and the Austrian Cobra unit. Then off to Paris with Victor Gutierrez, where we were able to get holders of senior Dan grades in karate up to the 8th Dan interested in WT, and have already received another invitation to a seminar on 23.6..
From Paris I went directly to Majorca to hold a seminar lasting several days with Victor, Oliver, Giuseppe, Andreas and Roland.
From Majorca I am going straight to London and the England seminar, then on to the next German seminar in Hanover.
So much travel offers an ideal opportunity for self-awareness and refusing to be swept along by hectic events, for otherwise we miss what is best: ourselves! Fortunately I am able to fall back on a large collection of articles I wrote earlier. 
As I am currently “very physical“ and “political“, and am above all concerned with feeling, perception and physical work, as well as the strategic aspects of heading our association, and all of them very successfully to make things worse, I would not have been able to write this editorial on the 3rd level in my present state of mind.
So it will not just serve you as my readers, but also myself, as a reminder to reflect on ourselves.
We must not forget ourselves, for we are everything we have.

The monk said to the wise fool:
“Thanks to my profound faith, I am
internally so free that I no longer
think of myself at all, but only of
my neighbour.“
The wise fool countered:
”And I am as objective as a video camera,
therefore I can look at myself as if I were
another person, and that is why I can also
permit myself to think of myself.“

We can only change our lives if we change ourselves!

WingTsun is about change, as is very clear in external WingTsun (self-defence): we become an attacker rather than a defender, if the opponent is stronger our punch turns into a Bong-Sao or a Jam-Sao, our advancing step becomes a turn or even a backward step. If we are rigid or refuse to change, we lose our balance.
We cannot change anything about the opponent’s attack, we have to accept it, but we can change something about ourselves. Instead of pushing the opponent’s arm away, we push ourselves away. If we picture the opponent’s arm as an immovable object like a wall, the problem becomes clear: we cannot push a wall away, but we can push ourselves away from even the strongest wall. ”Don’t be wallpushers!“ my Si-Fu Leung Ting always says during his tutorials. ”Push yourselves away!“

For many years I have concerned myself with internal WingTsun, the 3rd level of WingTsun. The object here is no longer to defend yourself against an attacker, nor to gain control or influence over others, or to achieve fame and fortune. The third and most important level is about yourself. It decides what kind of a person you are, how you feel, and whether you lead a contented and harmonious life.
You can win several million Euro/Pounds/Dollars, but if you think this will decisively change your life, you are wrong. You can move from London to New York, but if you think your life will be different, you will be disappointed. Whether you drive a new Mercedes or an old VW beetle, whether you are rich or poor, you will not feel very much different – indeed probably worse, for you will always encounter the same problems and have the same difficulties with the same types of people, will always feel overlooked as before and think you have been cursed or dogged by fate. In short, you will suffer, and the world will seem like a vast factory where suffering is produced.
This is because you believe you can change your life by changing your circumstances in life. You think you can solve problems! But this means that you are what Grandmaster Leung Ting calls a “wallpusher“, i.e. somebody who believes he can push the wall away!

You can travel to the most beautiful South Sea paradise, but after a while you be confronted with the same problems, as you have brought yourself  to this paradise. And you have remained the same. The way you are, your nature, attracts a certain way of life to you like a magnet. However much you know, how thick your wallet, how powerful your car or how vicious your dog.
But you can change your life if you change yourself. For as long as you stay the way you are, you will attract the same life and the same difficulties. The way you are determines your life, and will keep confronting you with same intractable problems. Your problems will not become solvable by changing your external circumstances, by finding another job, a different flat, a better-looking girlfriend or a more attractive man. After a short time you will be in the same, uncomfortable situation.
Accordingly the highest level in WingTsun concerns yourself, so that you can push yourself away from the ”wall” of external events. If you can do this, you can change your nature and become a different, new person who will attract a new and different life.

How does one become a different person? Only by wanting to be one. When the strain of suffering becomes too great, such people feel the wish to put an end to their suffering.
The first step is a kind of self-observation. “Know yourself!“ People do not really know who they are, though most would insist that they know themselves very well. But while we are usually able to assess others fairly accurately and can pinpoint their weaknesses, our own negative traits always remain concealed to us. If someone were to mention them to us, we would vehemently deny that we are like that. Some form of integral shock absorber prevents us from seeing the truth about ourselves that is so obvious to the outside world.
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We are not the pleasant, friendly and lovable person we think we are. All the difficulties we have are in some way due to our nature – we are to blame for everything ourselves, nobody else.
When the spotlight of self-observation falls on us and we start to recognise that we are not the wonderful person we imagined, this is the start of a process of change*. Although nothing about you circumstances in life has changed, although you still live in the same flat, do your shopping at Tesco and cannot afford a holiday in the South Seas, you have begun to change yourself and therefore your life.
Let me reiterate: do not try to change your circumstances in life or push the wall away, push yourself away from the wall and change your position – change yourself!
In order to change you must take snapshots of yourself like a dispassionate camera, and recognise how you really are.
And you must become aware of how rarely you are aware. We humans are like robots, like machines who are driven by the great wheel of life but do not know it. We live in the illusion that we control our own lives, and that we always act responsibly and consciously.
Accordingly we must observe ourselves to recognise how seldom we act consciously. Realising how impotent we are automatically makes us a little more conscious. So observe this living being that bears you name, and catch yourself out when you do nasty things. Do not excuse yourself. Do not look for reasons that justify your behaviour. Recognise that you are no better than the person you are condemning for the same actions. After all, it is you yourself! Whenever you condemn something in another person, look inside you and check whether you do not exhibit the same behaviour towards others!
We ourselves are to blame for all the problems for we like to blame others. We do not really know ourselves, and it is not clear to us that as the individuals that we are, we attract a certain life. We give everybody else the blame - the circumstances, bad luck, the lack of opportunity, the envy or malice of others – and prefer to assume conspiracies and mobbing, but we leave one unknown out of the equation: ourselves!

Perhaps our creators or guardian angels are sitting on some cloud and making bets about which person will be the next to recognise his true self and his greatest weakness, thereby taking the first step on a long journey towards individual psychological evolution and transformation.