How the night went?

I had started at 715 pm, and sunset was at 825pm. I immediately felt a pressure against time. I had to beat the natural clock of the sun. Impatience, ah there it was again. I had to slow down and follow my own clock. Throughout the entire journey my mind kept playing games in the forms of runners math. For those not familiar with this form of arithmetic, it is basically abut fooling the mind with tricks, such as a 10 mile journey is actually 8 miles, because I don’t count the mile that I am in nor the mile that I am ending in. And 8 miles is basically a 2x 5k ( 3.1 miles) or just a 10 K with a little left over ( 2 miles) but we don’t count the little left over so basically it is just a 10K that has to be run. Makes sense right? Totally not to any mathematician but for a runner now 10 miles is more achievable if they believe it is a more manageable 6 miles, or even easier just 2 rounds of 3 miles. That’s what I did for the next 27 ish hours. So I pushed to get 10 miles in by 9pm. Done.

Now I knew that after sunset the mind will play its fears of the darkness and being alone. Did I mention that I ran this endurance race entirely on my own, in the dark and day and then in the dark again? In 0.5 mile loops? 200 of them? This was not a race in the traditional sanctioned sense. This was a quest. To see what came up from the recesses of my mind, from my past, towards my future. What did the darkness push me to face? What does alone even mean? What does being out of my comfort zone physically,mentally, emotionally even mean? What is safety? How far can one tolerate risk? After all I am running in the streets after dark in circles. At what point does one call this insanity? At what point does one quit? Why? Why ? So many questions that are the keys to unlock the answers within. The answers are always there with us, but the right questions are needed to open the realities that lay hidden just out of the senses.

Different contemplations came along, join me as we explore them.

Round and round I went deeper into the night. The clouds passed overhead. The stars became visible sparkling away as they looked down at me and I at them. I wondered how our ancestors would look up at them on clear nights, and what did they think? These pinholes in the black matted hair of the night. Was divinity the light that we could see through these portals being held back. Why was I being kept separate from divinity? My eyes were full of tears as I ran. Not from any pain of physical running, but the pain of separation of all things and source. When we are alone in the dark, it is the dark that separates us from our senses like whisking eggs separating the whites from the yolk, the senses from the essence of who we are.

I noticed the sky had gone from the hue of orange as the sunset to a faint light and then to darkness, then a deeper darkness devoid of light as the city and house lights turned down for the long sleep. Trees moved and their shadows too. The noises of the birds were quietened as they snuggled in the trees. The mind becomes busy listening for every sound, and the eyes opened up wide to spot for wild animals in the neighborhood streets. Families of bears, foxes, and all sorts of creatures have roamed my streets at night, I have seen them. There were reports of mountain lions too. Who would visit me my mind scanned every edge of the landscape.

The clouds above that passed me by were like my thoughts of the past. Guilts, shames, judgments and fears. The clouds that had not yet arrived were like my future plans and ambitions, all living as thoughts. The next lesson was the realization that the sky holds all the clouds, the storms and everything. I was not the clouds. I was not the sum of my thoughts, but the sky that is the witness to all my thoughts. I was the awareness that noticed the illusion of all things around me that were changing. The time passed, so did the mileage. More loops, more miles. I was not exhausted or tired, I was curious. Who was I? Who am I now? The answer shifted as the time passed? Who is that that witnesses the “I”?

If nothing stays, and is in constant motion then what am I holding onto? I was attached to the echoes of my past and holding on to the projections of a future that had not arrived, but these were all just thoughts. Some gone, some not arrived. Like being at a train station waiting for the train to arrive just having witnessed another train depart. At the crossroads. The present moment. That is where it all begins and it all ends, in the present.

…………….

I love you