A Running Path That Never Ends…
At the end of Anadi’s birthday celebration meal we were brought a huge heap of delicious ness, with lashings of cream and a candle burning brightly on top – this was due to my heralding birthday ness!
At the beginning of the meal we planned to go the whole way, and in celebratory style enjoy a three course birthday bash… But we were fading at the end and had turned away from our original plan for dessert…
But it came anyway!
In the spirit of receiving the gift, we enjoyed two of the five brownies piled high, but we brought the other three home…
I am very grateful of them today… As a sort of lunch come afternoon snack they are going down very well, and I have even left one for Anadi!
Today the sun shone hot and bright and we could feel its effect… In the last four, I have averaged 58 per week… I have been loving the training and the feeling of invincibility it is bringing, but I have decided to back off the miles for the next three or four weeks.
I have learnt over many years – and through the many times I pushed on to breaking – that the way to keep building is to recognise that progress is not a linear thing, and neither is training…
Limitlessness arises from very fine tuning and learning about forever, and that there is much more expansion than we know…
In the past I used to get a strange feeling coming over me during any big endeavour, particularly running… I would be right in the middle of real improvement, the training going well, the miles flowing, the performances getting better… I would then get a feeling that was quite overwhelming … What next? I can’t keep this up? If this is what it takes I’m not sure I want it/ it’s worth it…
It was a feeling something like bursting…
That the balloon would inevitably land on a spike and all would be lost… Which of course it always did and I would crash off the road, out of the game with injury or illness – always disappointed – and then have start all over again…
But it seemed back then, that I was ironically more ‘happy’ with this pattern than being able to truly follow through, to keep going so that I might uncover and discover what forever is like, to embrace the truth that there is no end… There is no finish line… There are destinations along the way but there is no end…
Either in this life or the next…
When we reach one staging post in life there is always another… When we reach the end of a day, we can be certain that the next will dawn bright and ready to go again…
So we need to be too….
And to be ready to keep going, we need to let go of anything that is trying to get there, or anywhere… Whilst committing to our own unique journey from birth to death and by committing to journeying where our own energy and heart is leading us…
Because this is how we learn to stay in the here and now…
There is no end, because there is nowhere to get to, or to go to.
We live in the illusion that there is, because goals and the way we experience life in this dimension challenges us to let go and trust the step…
My own running path – through its orientation of measuring distance run and how long it takes to get from A to B – has been, and continues to be the most wonderful teacher of staying present and embracing the experience, living life fully, setting goals and destinations to journey to – whilst fully understanding that this life path is challenging me to let go and stay fully in the step I am in….
What a joyous way to learn, on a running path that never ends….
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.As a little girl I ran barefoot for many years, and then I put on shoes to race around the world. Fifty years later I am travelling the world as a nomad with my husband Anadi and I have taken off my shoes and I am running barefoot again….
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