Sunday, August 29, 2010

Content vs Form

Yesterday's running wore me out. I slept 10 hours. then, I did my usual spiritual study of the Course in Miracles Text (23.II):

"...lack of faith in love, in any form, attests to chaos as reality...Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone...Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go."

This followed on a little explanation of form vs content. Form is the world of the ego. It is the world where most people live, never getting beyond the weather or money or family matters or TV or alcohol or indulgent eating or football or church or smoking and thinking thats OK or tossing garbage out the car window or etc; what I could call primative thinking, unconsciousness.
I don't drink because even one drink messes with the awareness of God. Primative thinkers don't even know they have a connection with God. Content, not form, is important.

The world of content is beyond the world of form. The ego is not present there. The world of content consists of mind and spirit. Living in the world of content disarms the ego because there is nothing but love in mind and spirit. The only consciousness is faith in love. To get out of the ego's world and into the spirit world, I ask my Friend, Jesus.

My mind this morning was on my years long attempt to live off the social norm grid. I exist in the world but in a shady non-average manner. I am processing myself into Heaven.

Then I began a 2 hour ex-machine workout. I was listening to NPR's This American Life, which was several stories about people who live their lives outside the norm. I felt good with this workout, happy to do all of the x-bike intervals at a higher speed. I mixed sit-ups and some weights into the intervals. I felt so good, that I decided after 2 hours to go out on the trails.

It was hot by then, but the trail is mostly in trees. I felt stronger and more capable today, even taking a fourth lap. I got to watch a "skilled" trail runner hippity hop down the rock pile. Someday, my quads will be able to do that. I added a little piece onto the end of each lap which consists of 4 flights of stairs (either up or down depending on which lap I'm on). At the end, I noticed another set of stairs to add in the next time. I'm also going to add in a trek up the dam and back. But I need courage for that.

I came home to a green smoothie. There is no better way to live than this: 4 or more hours of exercise each day of every weekend. I know people who are winding down their summer marathon training in preparation for an October marathon. One of them was so happy to have only one more 20 mile LSD. Crap, I'd do 20 miles every weekend even if no race was on the schedule. Yesterday, I only ran 18 miles but part was on trails. So it would have been more than 20 had I stayed in the park. You gotta love it.

Starting next Thursday, I'm going to do another personal endurance multi-day. It will be a combination of ex-machines, flat track and trails. I just ordered a set of exercise step blocks. This is to cover leg strength training as another option. They also double as a low bench, which I need because of some of the exercises my trainer gave me.

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