“How long do I have to do this?”

When I was in Taiwan for a year, I decided to learn a form of the martial art Kung fu. I saw it everywhere in movies.Fighters using Kung fu twirled, kicked, jumped and punched with grace and skill through every life threatening challenge, including dragons, sorcerers, assassins and armies. So advanced were their skills that they could see in the dark and moved so quickly they were all but invisible. Then I met a man who taught kung fu.
I asked him to teach me and he agreed.On my first day, he arranged my feet in an awkward position. This is the “Horse stance,” he said. Then he told me to stand this way without moving, and walked away. Soon my legs, especially the quadriceps muscles in my thighs, began to ache.By the time he returned, my legs were quivering with the strain. He gave me a gentle push on my right shoulder and I almost fell over! He rearranged my feet slightly and walked away again. I remained that way until the end of the lesson.My next lesson, and the next, and the next, were the same. I stood in the same position, and he watched, sometimes pushed me gently, made a small adjustment, and left. My legs began to grow accustomed to this strange position, but the process was slow and they never stopped hurting.
By the second month, I was becoming impatient. I wanted to twirl, kick, jump and punch. I wanted to move in the fluid, lethal, villain-killing ways I saw in the movies. Instead, I was standing day after day, not moving at all, and feeling the pain in my legs.

“How long do I have to do this?” I complained. “As long as necessary,” he said, and left again.
The experience of learning Kung fu was not what I thought it would be. My impatience grew into exasperation, even as my legs began to strengthen and the pain in them began to lessen. At last, I asked my teacher, “How long did you have to do this when you learned kung fu?”
“Three years,” he answered calmly, adjusted my shoulders slightly, and walked away again.
His answer shocked me. It was not because of the enormous amount of time involved, but also at that moment I realised that kung fu, and perhaps all the martial arts, were very different from what I had imagined. I imagined I would be able to learn kung fu and remain the same person. Now I realise that learning Kung fu was going to change me. I could learn kung fu, but the person who acquired the ability was going to be different from the person who set about to learn it.
I left Taiwan long before I was able to learn kung fu in anything like the way I had wildly imagined. But I did learn how to stand firmly on the earth, anchored like a tree, strong like a horse. I has begun to build a foundation – the Horse Stance. My teacher was wise enough not to waste his time or mine teaching me movements before I knew how to stand while doing them. He would not let me believe I was learning kung fu in that way, because he knew that nothing he taught me without the Horse Stance would benefit me as it would, when I had developed the foundation that practicing kung fu requires.
Spiritual growth is like that too. You must first build a foundation. You may want to spring into a new life of kindness and compassion, a life that is grounded and appropriate in every way, but until you build the foundation to support such a life, you will not be able to accomplish it. Emotional awareness is one of the foundations – the aligned of your personality with your soul. It requires commitment and courage. It is painful to become emotionally aware because there is so much pain in the world, and that pain is in you. There is also joy in the world, but you cannot reach it until you can reach the pain you feel, also. Then, you can begin to cultivate the sources of your joy and challenge the causes of your pain.
Your emotional health and your spiritual development can not be separated. You can not be angry, resentful, jealous and live in violent fantasies, negative judgements and also be compassionate and kind at the same time. Kindness and compassion are the skills you need to develop. Awareness of your emotions is your Horse Stance.
Don’t forget to build your foundation. And foundation is needed in each and every aspect of your life.
– Gary Zukav.