I live in Texas. I live in this house and work at this place and there is no escape. I've always escaped or somehow been moved on. So much so that I didn't realize how I was taking Texas as a temporary thing.
But yesterday, I bought a bookshelf for my upstairs bedroom and moved books from boxes onto the shelves. Somehow, this lent an air of permanence to my residence. People who move might leave the stuff in the boxes. People planning on staying some place will unpack and settle in.
The new bookcase tells me what I have decided.
This weekend was almost my first private multi-day since foot surgery. I jog/ walked for 5 hours and 20.5 miles on Friday. I cross trained for 2h47min on Saturday. Today, Sunday, I did another 3.5 hours and 15.35 miles of jog/ walk. I don't really plan all this. When I go out for a long run, I just go until I run out of time or it starts to hurt real bad. So yes I am training for a marathon. But no, I am not following a training plan. I just go out and if all is well, I keep going.
I don't know why I like to do miles. If I lived in the mountains, it might not seem so strange to spend a day hiking. But, it is very boring where I live. The deep reason for why I do this have not been discerned. But dreaming of endurance has been in my brain since a very young age. But like silence, my brain does not speak of why this must be so.
I have to quit asking questions of silence. I should quit expecting it to make me wise. Silence just is and must be enjoyed without demands.
To be in the world but not of it: At the practical level, it means not participating. Like not eating the food of the masses, or watching their TV, or doing a family, or ... get the point? But one level down it means thinking different. This is possible if you train your synapses to respond differently. Another level down it means a focus in another direction. This means that life and all of its purposes and awarenesses and desires are in a direction not of this world. This is possible but not easy since distractions come along continuously.
They built monasteries to help this process. Men went to the desert to help this process. Had I stayed in the monastery, I'd have to be "of this world." A small enclosed world different from society; but a world none the less. I'd have to conform to them and their religion. The knowledge that makes this world an illusion would not have been obtained. The deeper thinking is possible for one allowed intellectual and spiritual freedom; but not one confined in a religious prison.
I live as a solitary. I study spiritual material. I don't eat the meat or watch the TV. I don't have any ear worms except those from the 60s and 70s which are triggered frequently but not that often.
Jesus in not Lord. Christ just is.
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