Everest Revisited

I've been fascinated by the videos of Everest treks 2019, and the huge waiting lines to get to the summit. I know for a fact, I'd hate it if I had to wait in line behind some slow poke idiot in order to summit Everest. Today I watched a video of a guy who made it up and down. Here is a screen shot from his video which got my attention:

Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA4_LLMMl4g


Yes, he climbed Everest and got the tatoo.

But we all have a mountain within. I consider my mountain within frequently. It is the mountain where I meet God. It is a mountain with can be climbed slowly, haltingly, or, on other days, I fly to the top instantly.

I like to imagine inner journeys, journeys into my soul. Paying attention to my soul. Connecting with my soul.

Last night, I slept nearly 10 hours. Today was my first day off in 5 days. 5 days in a row of working at Starbucks can exhaust a person. Especially since I am an opener, getting to work at 4:30 am. I almost never work 5 days in a row, but a couple of people had requested off. So my manager cheated on my schedule by jamming together 4 days one week and another day the next week.

This morning, I ran in Platte Purchase park. I had the whole park to myself. It is a slightly hilly park, but I found my average easy pace with hills is 11.5 min/mile. I'm really happy with that. The day started out reasonably cool, 72F with some clouds. But by the time I finished, it was closer to 81F and I found myself exhausted. I had to walk the last 0.1 mile up to my car. Awesome!

This afternoon, I did a 3 mile trail hike in the Parkville Nature Sanctuary. Even though the temps were in the 90s, the trail is in a forest, so hiking was not that difficult.

Its About the Energy

This morning, during my morning meditation, I had a big breakthrough in understanding. I'm sure I got a glimpse of the way my Inner Being sees things.

Here is a story:

10 months ago, I quit my high paying corporate job and started a part time job at Starbucks. And ever since, some part of my brain has been annoyed with this situation. See, I'm a 60 year old well funded, retiree, ex-engineer. What the heck am I doing working with twenty year olds for ten dollars an hour? Sure, I can make up some pragmatic reasons like I get my health care from Starbucks, or I'm too young to sit in the house "retired."

But thats not really it.

The reasons have to go deeper or they are not satisfying. The reasons have to be related to my conscious contact with my spiritual Inner Being, or they are not satisfying.

So, a little bit of back story.

The real reason I quit my job was to design and live Phase 3 of my life. I wanted to take my little ship and go off into the metaphorical high seas, exploring and learning, before I got too old to do such things. I had some writing ideas and I wanted to become a writer.

But what the heck am I doing at Starbucks? Especially since it is more difficult to work at Starbucks than you would imagine. There is a whole new language to learn, there are hundreds of drinks and sauces to learn to make. You have to learn the location of hundreds of buttons in the cash register, and quickly find them when needed. Being on your feet and using fast thinking is totally different from being an engineer who thinks everything through slowly and sits at a computer all day. Compared to the young people, I feel so slow and stupid. I feel out of place.

So what the heck am I doing there?

Well, it has to do with energy and vibration. And that is the break through in understanding I had this morning. Finally I might perceive how my Inner Being sees this situation.

At Starbucks, I am in a fast paced environment with young people who are trying to find their way in this world, still going to school and putting together the pieces. At the corporate job, I was in a slow environment with people who all made tons of money, had all the material possessions, were near the end of their careers, and basically were not learning or growing at all.

So, since my plan is to build Phase 3 of my life as something entirely new and different from my corporate life, then it is a huge blessing that I now hang around young people who are trying to build their lives. The young people have an energy and a vibration about them which is different than the old people I used to work with. My feelings of being out of place at Starbucks, and feeling like I can't keep up, are just symptoms of my energy pattern out of harmony with their energy pattern. But over time, my energy pattern is achieving higher frequency and matching the young energy pattern.

So, it is much better for a person hoping to build a new life at the age of 60 to have a young energy pattern. I need to vibrate like a young person in order to do what they are doing, putting together the pieces of a new life.

So, now I embrace the difficulties at work and am at peace with it because it is just a shift in energy patterns. The difficulty is just what it feels like when your energy pattern is out of sync with someone else's. In this case, I want to have their energy pattern. So I am living through the discomfort.

And you know what? Today at work, they put me on bar so I can start learning how to make some of those many many drinks Starbucks has.

Spiritual exercises are so worth it. If I don't persist in meditating and connecting with my Inner Being, I'd never know what is going on energetically. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to build a new life without understanding the energy, and hanging in there for the change. Maybe I would just vegetate and slowly die.

I really want to experience full aliveness in this life. In my old corporate job, I wasn't fully alive. I was going to jail every morning and collecting the money. I couldn't stand it. I'd much rather be out in the waves navigating new things. Maybe this is what self transcendence really is and I'm really doing it.

An Off Day

I woke up this morning not in alignment with my inner being, out of sorts as it were. And I knew it. I couldn't get my mind to quiet down when I wanted to meditate.

So I went running. Wow! I ran super fast: 10:30 min/mile on a hilly course. It was so beautiful because it was cloudy this morning and that kept the temperatures around 78F.

Then more contrasting experiences occurred with other people, so I decided to get into nature this afternoon:

And now I am eating vegetables and seeds and legumes.... and I feel better.

Running After 60

Anyone who reads this blog may have guessed that it is more about running miles than anything else. I frequently amaze myself that I am still in good shape physically at 60 years of age.

June was a great month for getting some miles done. In the past week, I've had 4 runs of 12.5 miles or longer. Two of these runs were at speed. And it is the speed that amazes me. When I was living on the Gulf Coast last year, I rarely ran fast because it was always so hot. Here in Missouri, it gets hot and humid but nothing like the Gulf Coast. So I am running faster this year than last.

I am actually "training." I have a marathon in 2 months which is very hilly and has a 6 hour time limit. So I have been working on hills and speed to prepare, and running in the heat.

On the FIRE front. I added up my assets at the end of June. I gained substantially in the past 2 months, so I am ahead of when I left my corporate job last September. The trade off is spending a part of every day outside in a park, spending more time with friends, part time work as a barista for fun, learning to be a writer.

On the writing front. I have been working on editing my spiritual writing. Last night I took two of the paragraphs to the writer's Critique Group. I got some very valuable feedback. I now  know that I don't really know how to edit my material so that others can understand it. I am enrolled in a class on that topic in August. I'll probably need to read some more books. But I also now have a friend who can steer me. I'll eventually hire an editor, but I need to get closer before I do that or I'll spend too much money.

I went to a talk by a professional blogger last week. Very interesting to learn what is necessary to be a professional blogger. But in the end, I noted that she makes most of her money from traditional publishing of books, and second from self publishing. And then she spend a bunch of time on social media, making speeches, blogging and going to book signings in order to sell her books. Traditional publishing houses now require authors to have a huge social media presence before they will consider publishing your book. So, yes you are doing most of the work selling, even if the traditional publishing house takes it on. So you might as well self publish. Most of what that blogger does is uninteresting to me.

I came away with this knowledge. I spent two years on spiritual writing. I believe the writing should make it out into the world, and I will support it after I publish it. But I'm not under financial pressure, so I don't need to worry about spending hours every day tagging things on twitter, instagram, fb or  other places. I am free to do the best job I possibly can at self publishing. I also deeply believe that my intuitive self will guide me and the little miracles I need to be successful will come. I'm also done trying to explain what I am doing to my social circle. To them, it is a pie in the sky project. They may humor me but they don't believe in me. My writing friends do believe because they are on the path with me and we are learning together.

If you do read this blog, thank you very much. If you haven't followed the blog, please do.