Reaffirming Spirituality
To commune. That's why I run...in the dead of night...with no music to fill my ears, just the sounds of evening, my footfalls, my breath. I don't do it to be healthy. I don't do it to impress anyone. There is no one forcing me to be out there in the chilled air pushing myself up and down hills like a piston-pumping, steam-billowing locomotive.
Communion, that's why. Every night I'm out there, I reaffirm myself. I remember my newfound purpose. I reassert my credo. This is ME talking to me.
I read part of a book this summer about meditation and how one needs to quiet oneself to converse with a sort of overself. One should be in a completely quiet enviroment in order to achieve the state needed to communicate with this hidden being that is beyond flesh, emotion, and intellect. I'm doing exactly the opposite it seems. In running, my body begins to push its physical limits and my mind spirals out of its normal thought processes like a kid getting flung off a merry-go-round. I find myself not in creating dead silence, but in turning up the noise. It's then that I go below everything and find that secluded self, and together we prove our strength. When I realize that my body is just a machine, and true self-respect entitles more than just eating right and exercising. It's when I remember what the scars are truly worth. What the driving purpose really is. Where my emotions stand and why. I'm finding my very own deus ex machina.
Everynight I run farther. Everynight I gain a little bit more strength. And everynight I prove to myself that there is such a thing as mind over body. Last night I realized just how in tune with this machine I was...full awareness of every limb and muscle...every physicality plainly revealed...the subtlest sensations caught red-handed.
I wish you could find me out there and hear the crazy words spewing from my lips like I was a desert prophet speaking in tongues. I wish I could remember everything that runs through my head and write it all down so I could have a glimpse into where I go when rationale releases the ties that bind. I wish I could show you what it's like to feel blood pumping so hard that you swear flames are licking up and down the back of your arms and shoulders. Then that moment when the weight of your body begins to sink in on the upward climb and the lungs just can't seem to get enough of the abundant and yet ever so precious air into them...when your mind simply pushes everything else forward because that is what it decrees, no matter how much your flesh screams its objections. Equanimity.
Communion, that's why. Every night I'm out there, I reaffirm myself. I remember my newfound purpose. I reassert my credo. This is ME talking to me.
I read part of a book this summer about meditation and how one needs to quiet oneself to converse with a sort of overself. One should be in a completely quiet enviroment in order to achieve the state needed to communicate with this hidden being that is beyond flesh, emotion, and intellect. I'm doing exactly the opposite it seems. In running, my body begins to push its physical limits and my mind spirals out of its normal thought processes like a kid getting flung off a merry-go-round. I find myself not in creating dead silence, but in turning up the noise. It's then that I go below everything and find that secluded self, and together we prove our strength. When I realize that my body is just a machine, and true self-respect entitles more than just eating right and exercising. It's when I remember what the scars are truly worth. What the driving purpose really is. Where my emotions stand and why. I'm finding my very own deus ex machina.
Everynight I run farther. Everynight I gain a little bit more strength. And everynight I prove to myself that there is such a thing as mind over body. Last night I realized just how in tune with this machine I was...full awareness of every limb and muscle...every physicality plainly revealed...the subtlest sensations caught red-handed.
I wish you could find me out there and hear the crazy words spewing from my lips like I was a desert prophet speaking in tongues. I wish I could remember everything that runs through my head and write it all down so I could have a glimpse into where I go when rationale releases the ties that bind. I wish I could show you what it's like to feel blood pumping so hard that you swear flames are licking up and down the back of your arms and shoulders. Then that moment when the weight of your body begins to sink in on the upward climb and the lungs just can't seem to get enough of the abundant and yet ever so precious air into them...when your mind simply pushes everything else forward because that is what it decrees, no matter how much your flesh screams its objections. Equanimity.