I am a runner—a reluctant runner. After nearly three decades
of pounding the streets, my runner’s high has reached an all-time low, and
unless I am filled to the brim with caffeine, I mostly grin and bear it, and
wait for my run to be over. And
yet, I do enjoy the post-exercise endorphins, and the feeling of presence that
physical activity so reliably delivers.
I also know that running is good for me physically and thus I continue
to lace up my sneakers—because I should.
During a recent outing, as I gnashed my teeth and counted
the minutes to thirty, my mind posed an interesting question. What if—right now—I were running the
final lap of the Olympic marathon? What if this minute were the minute I had
trained for all of my life.
Suddenly, miraculously, I felt an incredible rush, as if hurled down a
magic tube into run itself. The trap door
had opened and I was deposited into now. The “me” who had been enduring it, who should be exercising,
was gone without a trace. The run was no longer something happening to me; no longer
something I needed to get through until I could return to my life. There was just this body moving.
Furthermore, I no longer needed to protect myself from the experience, to
reserve my energy or control my movements in order to keep “me” from suffering
some imagined future consequence.
I had made a conscious choice to transform my relationship with the
moment, to turn it into the moment that mattered. Poured into my legs, my feet, my breath, there was only an
experience unfolding, and my absence was exhilarating.
As a long time equestrian athlete as well as a practitioner
of Advaita Vedanta, I have had the good fortune to dip into the “flow” state on
many occasions. But what struck me
about this particular event was my mind’s participation in the process. Never before had I been able to employ
my mind in order to gain entry into the non-mind state. In the past, when “flow” occurred, it
was organic—something that resulted effortlessly through my passion for and
engagement in the experience at hand.
But in this case, I had somewhat initiated the non-separate state with a
proposal from my (normally) separating mind. Had my mind known the consequence/benefit of what it was
suggesting when it came up with its Olympic proposal? Or perhaps was it awareness itself that
had used the mind as a tool to realize itself?
Regardless of the answer, my mind was delighted to claim
credit and assume its new role as the “one” who could remove itself—could
successfully “do” the disappearing. It wanted this feather in its identity hat. Nonetheless, it was clear that
something important had happened.
My mind had participated in its own disappearance, and in the
realignment with awareness itself.
If I could harness my mind to help in this uncovering process (and keep
it from taking over) then I had discovered a potentially powerful tool in
accessing the pure state. Perhaps
I had—at last—discovered something that the mind could actually “do” to help me
lose it.
What if we were to choose to live every moment as if it were
the last experience that we would ever get to experience? If this were my final moment as an
embodied human being with the gift of senses, would I stand on the shore
clinging to my small and separate self, denying myself a last experience, a
last swim? Or, would I surrender
into the gift of this last sensation, dive into its fullness, swim it with full
gusto? Me thinks I would go swimming!
To say that we should pay closer attention to now is a good
start, but not the whole story.
Running those last strides as if they were the final lap of the Olympic
marathon, I was not paying closer attention to the now, but rather, I was it. I was not running because of what it
would do for me or say about me, nor for the ego goodies that would come with
my imminent gold medal. It was not
“about” me at all. While it sounds
like it would be a loss—to take away the “I” who would get to “have” the experience,
to live it, and then later keep it as memory. But as it turns out, being the experience ends up being far
more direct and delicious than any thing I could ever “have.”
We have a choice as to how we live each moment—as something
to get through, to have, to use as proof of who we are—or simply, blessedly, as
the moment itself—from within its very unfolding. For me, it was the Olympic scene that cracked the barrier
and deposited me inside now. But
discover your own scenario, your own Olympic moment. Invite yourself to dive into now, with whatever words or
ideas point you there. If we can
harness the mind as an ally in this process, we may just be able to initiate
our own passage into the epicenter of experience and being—the eternal
now.
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