Today I slept until 6 am. Yesterday’s 5 hours of sun seem to have pushed me over the top and broken me. The good news is that I did not wake up limping. I woke up in lethargy.
I find myself at a moment of truth: It is not how far I went but how long, not the difficulty of the trail but the long term patient endurance of the workout. Anyone who has a seeker’s mind and determination will seek the edge of their envelope, their cloud of lethargy, and push through that cloud to something else, the extraordinary. There beyond the cloud, with enough patience, an extraordinary world is found. But that extraordinary world vanishes into memory as the seeker stops to rest for the night.
In the morning after doldrums and dregs, the seeker’s mind finds a thick lethargic cloud between their current state of consciousness and that extraordinary state. It may seem like a physical action generates the energy to get going again, like drinking coffee or eating. But the physical world action is really a lagging illusion which follows behind the seeker’s mind. That is, my seeker’s mind has already begun movement through the cloud of lethargy as I begin to feel like I will get up and go today. The feeling of hope, which I follow and experience as ordinary reality represents the fact that my real mind is really always in the extraordinary reality and I am hearing its call and allowing its grace to pull me into the extraordinary.
For today I define the cloud of lethargy as ego. Whatever I see in the cloud that holds me in this world is ego. Even prideful things can hold me in this world. Even religious trappings can hold me in this world. Fame and fortune, donuts and steaks can hold me inside the cloud of lethargy.
As a seeker, I use endurance to shut down the ordinary, the cloud, and join the extraordinary. The extraordinary is the real home of the Son of God (our one Self).
The lethargic cloud can be pushed through, superseded, dispersed, in a variety of ways. I choose fitness. So every day I work out. Even today: I woke up in the dregs with red splotches of heat rash on my legs and soreness in my shoulders from carrying a hydropak yesterday. At first, exercise seemed out of the question. As the physical world me drinks coffee and completes spiritual studies, my seekers mind has metaphysically moved forward through the lethargic cloud and sees already the sunlight of the extraordinary.
The feeling of hope is the call to move into another reality. The feeling of getting through the cloud is the joy and gratitude I experience every morning after about an hour’s workout and as I run to the top of a hill. I look behind me and see many who never attempt to get through the lethargy.
Fitness is my way, my truth and my light. Fitness brings me to joy and gratitude. In the extraordinary beyond the cloud of lethargy, I am in communion with truth, the Son of God, our one Self. Joy and gratitude are Jesus.
Joy and gratitude are my true home. I follow my seeker’s mind. I set my seeker’s mind free to soar beyond the cloud of lethargy and into joy and gratitude.
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