Bruce Lee - Personal Awakening

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“Of course, this writing can be made less demanding should I allow myself to indulge in the standard manipulating game of role playing, but my responsibility to myself disallows that… I do want to be honest, that is the least a human being can do… I have always been a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, but above all, am actualizing myself someday to be an artist of life. Yes, there is a difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization.” [Source]
The wisdom Lee revealed in these papers is perhaps best summarized in the following quotation where he acknowledges the understanding that his life, and therefore all of our lives, are processes, and we are never fully complete. So long as we continue to inwardly reflect and pursue self-inquiry, we will continue to grow as spiritual beings.

“I have come to accept life as a process, and am satisfied that in my ever-going process, I am constantly discovering, expanding, finding the cause of my ignorance, in martial art and especially in life. In short, to be real…

“The truth is that life is an ever going process ever renewing and it just meant to be lived but not lived for. It is something that cannot be squeezed into a self-constructed security pattern, a game of rigid control and clever manipulation. Instead, to be what I term “a quality human being” one has to be transparently real and have the courage to be what he is.” ~Bruce Lee
Furthermore…

“Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are too busy in wasting their vital creative energy to project themselves as this or that, dedicating their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like rather than actualizing their potentiality as a human being, a sort of “being” vs. having — that is, we do not “have” mind, we are simply mind. We are what we are.” ~Bruce Lee
At the stage in his life, just prior to his surprising death, Lee was arriving at similar conclusions as many of the world’s greatest philosophers and sages.

In The Book of Five Rings, legendary Samurai Miyamoto Musashi wrote, “there is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”





Eminent mythic scholar Joseph Campbell is noted for saying, “the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

It is even inscribed on the ancient Helenic sanctuary at Delphi in Greece, ‘nosce te ipsum‘, or ‘know thyself.’

There a number of other inspiring and eye-opening notes in these unpublished letters, which be viewed in greater detail here, and are discussed in the following podcast from the Bruce Lee Foundation:



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About the Author
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist esoteric arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com, the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com, a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. His remarkable journey of self-transformation is a testament to the power of the will and the persistence of the human spirit. He may be contacted at wakingtimes@gmail.com.

This article (In Unpublished Personal Letters Bruce Lee Describes His Own Process of Personal Awakening) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.