Fallsburg Marathon - Prelude

Packet picked up. #149 and a nice hoodie with full zipper. I know where the race is and how long it takes to get there from the hotel. There is a Panera Bread near the hotel, so we know where I will be eating for the next 2 days!

In Chicago at O'Hare, there was a woman wearing a Philadelphia marathon shirt getting on my flight. She smiled at me (I had on a KC marathon shirt). On the back of her shirt, it said, "CLASS OF 2009," and listed all the names (small print). I teared up! Just something about "being here" that is awesome. It has nothing to do with times. The environment of a marathon is sacred ground for those of us who love it. I say it. The marathon and the marathoners who love it are all one being, a unity of runners celebrating one eternal event: the marathon. We are marathoners.

In the monastery, the sisters renewed their monastic profession at certain times and certain liturgies. Racing is the runners liturgy. I am here to renew my marathon profession: I am dedicated to the marathon (and well any other running too).

It will be a hot one tomorrow, but it is in a forest!

The Marathoner's Sacred Journey...

...is to a place beyond the ordinary world, to an alternate reality without limitation. The marathon validates and vets the heart of the athlete. 26.2 miles in this world is a quantum leap in the mental world and a matter/anti-matter shift in the spiritual makeup of the mind. To get to the finish line is to solve the impossible equation with imaginary and irrational numbers; to enter a Fourier transform which resolves the noise into harmony.

Everyone wondered why all these workouts, miles, and low-fat meals mattered. But the person returned from the marathon changed. They paid the athlete's price and returned with the athlete's perception. Nothing was ever the same again.

Can a marathon heal the psyche? Can a marathon enlarge spiritual consciousness? All things are possible....

As you might guess, I am going in a marathon on Saturday: Fallasburg Park, Lowell, MI, 26.2 miles. It is not my first marathon. In fact it is my third this year. Yet every marathon shifts my consciousness and I return different.

I am tapering. I am letting go of the workouts a little, sleeping some more, laying in the glycogen. I'm setting my intentions. I'm freaking glad to go to Michigan and escape this nasty heat wave that Kansas City is having.

I Wish God Would Love Me

So many of us spend our lives seeking approval and wanting others to love us. We want our parents to love us. We want our children to love us. We extend our needs to teachers and religious institutions and work places.

And we build our lives around this need for love. We try to achieve in order to be loved. We take vows in order to guarantee love. We help others. We seek enlightenment.

To achieve enlightenment, we participate in religion and liturgy. We fast and pray. We meditate. We have near death experiences in car accidents. We have cancer and nearly die. We become crippled. We become emotionally depressed. We take drugs. We run marathons, ultra-marathons, iron man triathlons and death marches through deserts. We may sit in solitude for years. We accept various therapies.

We wish for nirvana, for release from this terrible world. We do whatever we need to do to achieve the promised land. And because of this wish, many of us build wonderful and beautiful lives, exemplary and admirable in every way.

Underneath all this, is the grain of sand inside oyster which causes these pearls of lives to be created. The grain of sand hidden in the pearl is the tiny, quiet thought we have a hard time becoming conscious of, “I wish God would love me.”

Jesus loves you. God loves you. We hear this all the time but none of us really believe it (well very few of us). So first, acknowledge that you have this secret wish. Then realize that the second and even more hidden part of the thought is, “but I want to be loved specially.”

God loves us; but not me. God is love. Love does not differentiate between its creations. So God cannot love at an individual level. God loves the Son of God, Whom we are, thoughts of love in the Mind of Love.

So, acknowledging these hidden wishes and admitting that everything I’ve done in life was to earn special love, what next? I stop. I quit. I sit quietly. God loves us. I let the consciousness of that love surface in the quiet of my still mind. That’s all. Let Him in. Sit quietly and let Him in. then do whatever life seems to put in front of you with the power of God already in you; not attempting to earn it.

Now that I’m done scurrying around trying to find love, Love itself walks with me. We run because we love to run. We lift weights because it is part of our time together. I go to work. Let God be in charge; and come home to the holy instant where I am consciously and undeniably a thought of love in the Mind of Love. Nothing more.

Running from the Heart

My lesson today is 189: I feel the Love of God within me now.

It’s the weekend. I am not excited about what I am going to do but about the not-doing of two days off. No, I don’t have a list of entertainments for the weekend. No, most of what people do not only ignores His Presence, but demeans the magnificence of the part of the mind which knows God.

And so I lay back and close my eyes. I reach out with some part of my mind which knows God. And everything stops.

I can barely drag myself away from the idea of God. I gulp. I shudder. I am quiet. I walk the quiet way. Maybe I jog the quiet way, but God is in the silence, the benign nothingness of peace.

Working out on my machines this morning, I thought, “God has no agenda. He merely is.”

Here are some excerpts from the lesson: "There is a light in you the world can not perceive…. Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is… come with wholly empty hands unto your God…. Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever…. The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be."

After an hour on the machines, I went to the park for running (17 miles). The park is full of “regulars.” Mainly we don’t talk. We nod or slightly wave as we pass each other. Today, we were all sweating.

I was thinking about my relationships with others. I don’t keep any close friends because I don’t have much to share about my life and don’t have a long term interest in anyone else’s life. I feel so false after most conversations because it is necessary to communicate about things and doings on the physical plane; and not only unnecessary but impossible to discuss the metaphysical plane. So conversations leave me feeling like an actor who played a part, but it wasn’t really who I am inside. That’s why I don’t bother to get together much. I just don’t need to talk and feel like a faker if I do talk.

Quietly, I can look at others and appreciate their heart. Everyone’s heart is the Heart of God and It is One Heart. I don’t like to leave the consciousness of Heart to relate on the worldly plane. I know how to be a friend and play nice; but I don’t like the way it leaves me feeling. But when I quietly see Heart, I always feel like I related to Truth. I feel genuine about relating to Truth.

I just can’t stand it when a conversation about running from the worldly perspective leaves me feeling like I just pimped my True Love. Yet, it is almost the only way I communicate with others.

I work out and go running in order to appreciate Heart. I do not “train” to achieve exterior goals. To train for a goal is to subordinate your heart to your ego. To train from your heart is to manifest the power of Love and Source. Training for a goal is to put the cart before the horse, to approach the magnificent from the limits of the physical. Training from the heart puts things in the proper order and also produces results beyond imagination. If you want to fly, you must fly free from the heart and in companionship with Heart.

25 years ago I quit drinking. 7 years ago I got kicked out of the monastery. Now, I am an athlete, a runner, an engineer; all with Heart.

Listen to The Voice For God

When I study A Course in Miracles, I often run across a sentence which just floors me. Then, I write it on an index card and put it on the treadmill. Then, when I walk/jog on the treadmill, I can think about the sentences. Last night, the card I read said, “What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody that pours from God to you eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and unheard before its "mightiness." You strain your ears to hear its soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you.” (24.II)

It fit very well with my lesson today: lesson 186 said, “All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God's Voice reveal to us what He would have us do.”

ACIM makes it very clear that my brother is not my enemy and I needn’t judge or be afraid. The reason is that what I perceive as another human being is based on my ego thoughts and not the Holy Spirit’s thoughts or what God created. God created one Son of God, which is our one mind resting forever in love and peace in our Creator. What I perceive as another human being is my ego delusion. Let it go.

ACIM depends on listening to thoughts besides what your ego is whispering and shouting in your brain all day. It depends on periods of conscious quiet listening and then bringing that listening consciousness into the ego world.

ACIM encourages the asking of the question, “Is what is see real?” And listening to the Holy Spirits reply, listening to God’s song of love for His Son. In this, I perceive something different and go home.

Prior to the Lunar Trek, I felt so grateful to be out running. This morning, I noticed I was fighting my consciousness almost the whole way, until I got to my door step. Then, looking at my watch, I thought, “45 minutes on the machines plus 61 minutes running,” and felt the gratitude then. Not many people get to go out and run around in the early morning swelter and feel the energy coursing through their system.

I workout and run because I can. I believe it is God’s plan for me or I would have stopped long ago. I do not believe it is the ego’s idea because so much of it is inglorious and humiliating. My faith is that something is being given to the divine plan of salvation through my manifestation of the running/fitness thought.

I lifted free weights last evening. I added smidges of weights and reps. I wonder if the gaining of three pounds through additional protein consumption is helping. I don’t know because the weight watchers scale indicates that the weight went on partly as fat, which could be a healthy thing. I just don’t know.

Want to be touched, read this: http://perfectionjourney.org/2010/08/03/i-was-just-the-willingness/

Lethargy in the Backwaters of Summer

“Ever since humanity was able to recognize a divine existence within themselves they have been trying to seek it out, and bring it forth from within. It is never easy to establish a constant inner oneness with this divinity, as so much of our outer nature tries to deny and negate even the very existence of this part of us that lies within. The very nature of our bodies and minds is to only to accept physical lethargy and try and ride the mental merry go round that really leads us nowhere.” http://perfectionjourney.org/2010/08/02/every-step-brings-me-closer/

The perfectionjourney blog is a daily reflection on the 3,100 mile race, which is winding down this week. Several men have finished. Two or three runners have been running every day, but not enough to get to 3,100 miles; maybe only 2,900 miles!

My workout was again disconnected from the world today. I spent the last couple of months looking forward to the Lunar Trek. Now that is over. I am signed up for some more races, but they aren’t very much on my mind. Maybe I haven’t recovered my energy. Maybe it is too hot to think. Maybe I have really shifted to a new reality and I don’t yet understand what it is about. Maybe my desire for inner oneness has claimed my running life, and running has disappeared over the horizon, beyond where the ego can perceive.

The daily volume keeps being driven higher. I keep working on the weights. My diet has shifted a bit. The increased protein has added a couple of pounds. I am silent. The noon-day devil circles, looking for an opening.

I ponder inner peace. I realize that keeping my hands off worldly goals and glorious plans is necessary for the contemplative life. The Holy Spirit must make the decisions. All things are for spiritual progress and not ego satisfaction. Peace is really quiet. Peace is and un-ripple pond. A person can work out in peace; but for me at least, as soon as there is an agenda, ego worry enters.

The contemplative life is a tricky thing. It must be wanted more than anything else; or the ego will sneak in and hide it. I must be willing to keep it consciously; no matter what else is going on in my life. I must be contemplating the Holy Spirit’s work in my life, not allowing ego agenda to creep in and take over unconsciously. It shouldn't be that God is so hard to remember; but for those of us with egos, remembering God must be a conscious project.

I lay on my bed in the evening and seek God. When I workout, I put a thought of God in my mind and keep it there.

The Heat of August

One way to leave the world is to meditate. Another is to workout.

Every ultra is a death and rebirth.

Every LSD is a retreat, a contemplation of "Something Else."

Lesson 148, "...what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you..."

I ran 20 miles at marathon pace on Saturday. I ran 25 miles at ultra-marathon pace on Sunday. I worked out for 85 minutes on my ex-machines this morning. This is not training. My running has no training goal at the moment. It is driven by habit, time and well being. It is a way of life.

Several guys have finished the 3,100 mile Self Transcendence Race; mainly by running 65 to 70 miles every day for at least 46 days. One of the guys has a running streak going. So he did not take a day off after finishing the race.

Over the weekend, the park had an event: "Bliss Fest." I noticed what alot of work it is to stage a bliss fest, how much one needs to buy to achieve bliss, and how it requires speakers to teach bliss methodology. One Sunday, after the event was over, the people who normally walk and run in the park were very blissful, although we did not go to the Bliss Fest. I have been out of the bliss business for a few years. I just run laps around the park.

It is going to be 98F here today, and all week. However, I noticed this morning that a new flock of Canadian geese has arrived at our plant. I guess it is cold somewhere else.