Saturday, I was in this location and doing what these people are doing: running a marathon.
It is the long way home.
I ran a fantastic race; 12 min miles on average for 26.7 miles. The extra distance is because I didn't run the tangents of the course hence I ran more than 26.2, a marathon. During the race, I had to think about my body; how are it's knees and heels. This leads to thinking about my training situation in Houston and my training situation as a 56 year old. It turns out that training in the Houston heat is very slow, but when you do run a race in a drier climate, you ARE trained.
While I was running, I heard someone mention the inner person. To look for the inner person. This alone provides my reason for being here. I began to think about the inner person of the Clydesdale runner; and then about young obese Americans in general.
But as I got to 20 miles in 4 hours, an hour faster than any of my training runs, I entered the race mentally. I decided that my body was good and I would not give up. I kept my pace for the next 6 miles.
Keep it Simple. Let the Universe be in charge. Just do the miles. It is looks downhill, be careful. Don't give up on the uphills.
This weekend, running a marathon, I got to escape my real life for a few days.
United Airlines did a fantastic job. I worried all weekend about my Denver connection for the trip home. It only allowed 30 min and I feared they would give my seat away. But I came in on time, got my bag from the gate checck, walked 20 gates to the next airplane and walked on during the announcement saying I must be on board. I flew on a 787 Dreamliner. That is a nice plane.
My company is in a turmoil as the parent company has decided to IPO our division. I think most of us will have jobs, just not with our current company. We don't like that but who knows if it will turn out good or bad and for whom.
I continue to frame my life in A Course in Miracles. Company or no company, airlines on time or late, I simply must frame my life in ACIM. Right now I am reading chapter 4.II and I offer some statements about ego as described by ACIM:
- Undermining the ego’s thought system
- always evaluates itself in relation to other egos
- continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity
- “Self-esteem” in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory.
- always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego’s existence
- The ego literally lives by comparisons.
- The ego’s ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit’s acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are useless. Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego.
- While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself.
- The so-called “battle for survival” is only the ego’s struggle to preserve itself
- The ego cannot survive without judgement
- Who is the “you” who are living in this world?
"The ego must offer you some sort of reward for
maintaining this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence,
which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you
this life is your existence because it is its own. Against this sense of
temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and
unshakeable being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever
fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail
against the glorious gift of God?"
Continually deflating my ego in order to experience my own spiritual inheritance is why I study ACIM. This is valuable to me.
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