The sensei’s son Zach, a third degree blackbelt,who’s in the Navy, taught the karate class last night. He taught us how to break boards for fun and profit. Okay, no profit. Out of about 14 students I went first. Zach said he was calling on someone who he knew would break it, guess who?
Anyway it was a little intimidating. The thought in the back of my head was, "Hitting a board with your hand is going to hurt, a lot. The thought in the front of my head was, "It’s going to be pretty embarrassing if I can’t break this," especially since Zach told us at the beginning that his 9 year old daughter had done it.
So after Zach’s instructions on how to do it, (The most important factor is the guy holding the board, if he flinches or moves back, the board isn’t going to break and you’re going to be hurting.) I stepped up measured the distance a few times, delivered a hammer fist, a kiai, and amazingly the large piece of wood broke in half. Here’s my board, it’s, i.e. it was, 12x10x1.
Okay, well almost all the other students broke theirs too including 60 something Mrs. Long, who though very slight, broke hers on the first try. A few people had to go more than once. Watching them it seemed that they were not committing to breaking the board. They were just hitting the board. It seems that you have to make a commitment to break it, to go through the board. You must committ to breaking the board or being broken by it. What came to mind was Yoda’s admonition, "Do, or Do Not, there is no try."
Faith is like that. You must commit yourself to getting the answer. Ken Copeland put it this way once, "You must make a determination that if you can’t get it from God you’re going to do without it."