My Teacher's Gift

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I was born in Ukraine. Since the age of 14, I have started practicing martial arts. At the age of 16, I have met a prominent Praying Mantis instructor, who was only a man of enormous fighting abilities, but was a complete character of a man who succeeded in life without a single note of pessimism. It happened so that my family had to move to Canada shortly after I met my teacher. Yes, that's right - his teaching went beyond the scope of martial arts. The whole philosophy covered all aspects of life. Before I was leaving to the airport, he gave me a gift which was very suitable to the occasion and which contained just the information that I required. The gift was a combined collection of Richard Bach's two books, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions." Of course, I completed those books while I was in the sky - on my plane. These were two remarkable pieces of the esoteric literature that made it possible for me to look at the world very differently. Some of the most prominent quotations for me were the following: "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, and nothing can stand in your way." "Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation." "The gull sees farthest who flies highest." "Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too." I have seriously then started looking at a lot of things in my life like that. We put a lot of effort and power into some sentiments and occasions that, overall, do not necessarily have any positive effect on us. Finding what's beneficial, perfecting it, mastering it to the core and improving oneself - that's what is important and that's how we should enter the next stage of our existence.