While most of us no longer believe that the Earth is the centre of the Universe, and is a disc around which the Sun moves, we continue to be subject to other, much more important illusions about ourselves. For example the illusion that we are awake, conscious and free, able to do what we want, able to make and carry out decisions, that we are a single, permanent person whom we refer to as "I" and have a positive will. But as long as we are bound up in this myth and fail to see the prison bars, we cannot become free, for why work to achieve capabilities that we already believe we have? Lucky is the person who has no illusions about the situation, like Sam in the limerick below, but rather makes every effort to bring about an improvement!

An earnest young seeker called Sam
Said, "I think I've found out what I am.
I'm a creature that moves
In predestinate grooves.
I'm not even a bus; I'm a tram."

Sam is a winner in the sense that he no longer has illusions about himself, but his situation is not quite as desolate and hopeless as he thinks. Not everything is predetermined, and certainly not for the very few who are prepared to work hard on improving themselves.

All the characteristics we ascribe to ourselves and take for granted are our inherent birthright; they were created when "homo sapiens sapiens" was designed, but they are not yet all operational. Only we ourselves can activate this potential by making continuous personal efforts. While we fail to do this we cannot really do new things. Until we have made the achievement, time will always go around in a circle, and everything will merely be a repetition of old situations, problems and feelings we have already experienced. As Friedrich Nietzsche already knew, "If you have a character, then you also have a typical experience that always returns". We will always "fall for" the same types of people and always find ourselves in the same difficulties.
Although clock-faces tend to be round in the intuitive knowledge that time goes round in a circle and repeats itself, and although we can see that everything in nature follows cycles – day/night, summer/winter – we steadfastly believe that the passage of time alone will bring us the fulfilment of our dreams.

Like the other animals we humans have our feet planted on the ground, but our head is stretched out to the Universe, for we are to some extent conscious. We may have been created "in the image of God", and we carry this potential for individual, psychological evolution in ourselves. But as I will never tire of warning: this is not a collective evolution as in the case of the other animals. I rather think this has come to a halt with the breakdown of the so-called "bicameral mentality". The individual can achieve completion, but humanity as a whole will become neither better nor worse.
The lift doors have opened, and each one of us must now find his way further upwards on foot. Neither can we spare ourselves the effort by paying membership fees or buying indulgences. No god, no holy man, no guru, no -ism, no book, no mantra and no journey to so-called "holy" places can help us attain more consciousness and personal responsibility while we still take our old "I" everywhere with us.

Keith R. Kernspecht

P.S.: This last finding does not only belong to me, it belongs to all. I dedicate it to those who are on an eternal "guru-tourism trip" and never arrive at themselves.
So what has all this got to do with WingTsun? Well, not much with the first and second levels, but a great deal with the third.
The maxim at the first, physical level is "Make yourself free from your own strength" and practice the "Siu-Nim-Tau" (little idea). At the third, the psychological level, this corresponds to becoming self-aware and examining everything afresh, starting from the beginning, questioning everything, not blindly believing and first doubting yourself, and examining whether things really are the way our senses would have us believe.