📍 Coordinates: Jungle Mountains, Plantanillo, Costa Rica.
📖 Reading Time: 4 minutes.
🏴 Vibecheck: Returning to the world after our recent Apotheosis retreat. Feeling calm, strong, and inspired. I had a painful yet beautiful reminder of how important writing is to me. I feel like I let myself, and you, down with my absence here. But alongside this I feel a ferocious clarity and passion – the essence of my work and life honing themselves. I’m excited to be back in the arena here, and I will honour the time and attention you give to this, pushing us all toward beauty, mastery, and the spirit of serious play. I’ve made some aesthetic updates — I hope you like them. Now, onward!
“A true sparring partner is not an opponent, but a comrade in the pursuit of excellence.” – Emily Brooks
We are dying to be challenged…
Starved of difficulty. Dragon slayers reduced to dog walkers.
Yes, we’re up against the ‘meta-crisis’ and a series of nebulous, amorphous, always-around-the-corner crises. Cost of living, monetary inflation, climate change. The hydra of hellscapes remains.
But you can’t stare into the eyes of climate change. You can’t grapple with inflation. You can’t slay the cost of living crisis.
The space between “me vs. me discipline” and “intangible world crisis” is lost.
A sacrificial victim of increasing isolation, lack of deep relationships, and—without mincing words—the ‘lack of a spine’ of most people we’re surrounded by.
For those committed to growth, excellence, and the spirit of kaizen – the yawning lack of a ‘worthy rival’ consumes them.
By definition, you can’t see your blindspots.
You need to test your limits. Hit your growth edges. To put your living thesis up against a worthy adversary. It’s the only way to get direct feedback from reality.
You need sparring partners.
In martial arts, a sparring partner steps into the arena with you. They attack your technique, challenge your art, push your thesis to its limits, provide feedback, and hold you accountable.
This experience and camaraderie is invaluable.
How else do you discover where your growth edges are? How do you know what works well? How do you identify the limits of your capacity?
Sparring partners have been a background obsession of mine for a few years now. I alluded to the concept back in the “Creative Evolution Manifesto” in 2021.
I extend the concept of sparring partners far beyond the walls of the dojo and the martial arts. Intellectual sparring partners. Philosophical. Emotional. Relational. Spiritual. Personal.
Anyone who meets you at your level and provides the tension required to test your technique, willing to provide critical, direct, and supportive feedback is a sparring partner. All domains of life are the arenas.
There are a few critical components of a good sparring partner:
Their ability is greater than or near your own
They are willing (& able) to provide specific, direct, caring feedback
They will not hold back out of pity, mince words, or beat around the bush
You have a foundation of trust established
You respect their word/opinion
For years I lived in frustrated agony. Lacking these partners but unable to name that which I was missing.
I knew my ideas, theories, and techniques were incomplete, incoherent, or inadequate; and yet, when I tried to dig into it with those around me, I was met with blank stares, incoherent ramblings, or an inability to provide feedback.
I was stuck in a liminal space, having outgrown my arena but unable to find another. I have an insatiable hunger for being ‘the dumbest person in the room’. It lights a fire in me like nothing else.
Nothing has catalyzed my growth like being a beginner around experts. Around people a few steps, or several miles, ahead of me on the path.
While I worked hard to meet them as equals, and to return the untold value that their sparring presence gave me — my time in the arena with these mentors, teachers, allies, and friends launched my capacity forward.
The Ideal of the Sparring Partner infuses all of my work.
I organize psychedelic rites of passage, pushing people physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually into the next stage of their development.
I create 100-day initiations, dojos of personal development for those hungry enough to challenge themselves. Seeking those who hold excellence as a virtue, and are eager to cultivate it.
Even within these writings, I hope to challenge, inspire, and push people toward deeper levels of service, mastery, and greatness.
Two final notes ring out to me whenever I reflect on sparring partners:
Find a partner, or build a dojo. Coaches, mentors, retreats, experiences, and dojos of all kinds can serve this purpose. You can ask people directly about this. If you can’t find a suitable arena, make one. Call in the people who will challenge you and whom you can challenge in return.
If you truly love and respect someone, own your responsibility as their sparring partner. Provide loving, direct feedback. Encourage their greatness. Help them stay accountable to their goals. Being an enabler in the life of other people is a sin difficult to measure in its perversity. It is the opposite of loving care.
Find those who make you better, and be someone who makes others better.
This is the Way of the Sparring Partner.
Thank you, EB.