What seperateds victory and defeat?

A few years ago I was watching the Karate grading of one of my fellow students. He was a young man around 11 or 12 at the time. He was doing well and demonstrated the requirements of the grading to the necessary standard. He was looking pretty good - until he got up to the sparring section.

It was a junior Brown belt grading so there were about 8 minutes of non contact sparring, then 2 of semi contact. 10 minutes does not sound like a lot but if you think of it like sprinting for 10 minutes you get an idea of how tough it really is…

He was doing the last round and was getting pretty tired, and then the kid he was sparring hit him squarely in the solar plexus. Physically it didn’t hurt him much but mentally getting hit like that by a lower graded, smaller kid, in his brown belt grading…

He stopped and then looked like he was going to walk off the mat … the tears started and he hesitated, looking around. People were urging him to stay as he only had seconds to go. There was a lot of support - there were comments like “You can do it!”, “Only a little more!”, “Suck it up mate, you can do it”.

Then he ran out of the Dojo…

I was so disappointed - he was seconds away from achieving the goal he had spent years of hard training to achieve, and in one instant it was gone. I never saw him again after that.

I’m sure it was an event that will be pivotal in his life…

While attempting the spiritual work I have recognised this behaviour in myself. thanks to the teaching from Gnosis.

This theme has been written about in books and even some poetry, but it had no real meaning for me; until I saw it in myself then made efforts to overcome it and change my behaviour…