shanemagee.com inspiration circulation

I am just after finishing what might possibly be one of the most intense experiences of my short span of life so far. A couple of weeks ago, myself, Colm and Matthias participated in our first hill race (thats where the above photo comes from), and enjoyed it so much we decided to go to the second race, which was held in the foothills of the Wicklow mountains this morning.

Darkened skies and plenty of rain greeted our arrival, but of course silly me saw no reason to change from my shorts and flimsy T-shirt apparel. The first part of the race didn’t give much of a sign as to what was to come. as we clambered up the mountain, we were well protected by forest cover, and began to settle down and pace ourselves.

About 20 minutes into the race, myself, Colm and Matthias were following each other as the path turned to go up another mountain. And then things started getting surreal. First we went into open country, with no protection from the winds that were blowing. The road was straight, uphill and seemed to go on forever and ever. And then came the hailstones. Big ones. And we thought that was bad, but then we reached the top of the mountain only to find that we had actually been protected from the full force of the wind, now coming at us from the side at sixty or seventy miles an hour. All the big heavyset runners had an advantage here; for me it was all I could to to stop the wind blowing me off the path. At one stage, I got pelted by a particularly vicious hailstone, which was kind of the straw which broke the camel’s back; I just yelled out loud at the top of my voice, declared I wasn’t going to take this nonsense anymore, and set off at top speed to show Mother Nature that it had just messed with the wrong Irishman.

We turned again, with a near-hurricane at our backs, and into a whole different kind of craziness. Such was the force of the wind that it carried you along at top speed without any say-so on your part, and I had to summon all the dexterity at my command to stay upright amongst all the rocks and boulders. Such was the strength of the wind that it even blew me straight up a steep uphill section without any effort on my part. But then I had a crucial lapse of concentration and followed two other runners into what proved to be a wrong turn! It was pretty galling after all that effort to look back and see a slew of runners who were behind you make the right turn and powering on ahead. I did my best to recover but the damage was largely done and I ended up 20th or thereabouts, where I could have at least been in the top 10. Colm ended up sixth overall, the best runner from our Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team. He said he really had a nice experience during the entire race where he was chanting ‘I am not the body, I am the soul’ over and over again and he could feel some soul’s quality powerfully bursting to the fore.

Upon finishing, we all agreed we must be insane, because nobody in their right mind would find themselves doing something like this. But then again, nobody in their ‘right mind’ seems to be as cheerful, smiling and appreciative of the joys of life as the people you find participating in these mountain races. And yes, we’ll probably do it again, crazy people that we are.

Giuseppe from Austria sent this to me today with the caption “return of the zombie” that forms the title of this post. This is my finish at the Self Transcendence Marathon in Rockland State Park in New York, which took place on August 25th. Basically, I looked up at the clock, decided 3:06 wasn’t going to turn into 3:07 anytime soon, and slowed down to a walk two metres before the finish line.

It looks like I had a pretty tough race; I did. (In fact, I decided not to publish some of my mid-race pictures in order to preserve the delicate aesthetic balance on this site.) Some of the toughness was actually quite a nice spiritual experience - you somehow realise that a lot of the pain is just you fighting and resisting and complaining inside, and as soon as you give all that up and just surrender to the experience, things get a whole lot better. I remember Suprabha Beckjord, one of the foremost women’s ultrarunners in the world and the only person to complete every edition of the world’s longest race, the 3100 mile Self-Transcendence Race, saying how ultrarunning “was a first-hand experience of God’s Grace and Compassion”. True that. It’s something you can very tangibly feel, when you let go of all the mental baggage; something reeling you in like a fisherman towards the finish line, something ‘closer to you than your own neck vein’, as the Koran would put it. In daily life, we live in the mental world, where all of these ideas - the soul, God, bliss - float around, capable neither of being proved nor disproved. It’s only when you take the plunge and do something outside the realm of the mind that some direct experience of these things can make itself available to you.

“If your running is going well, it’s a sign that your spiritual life is in good nick.” - so a fellow student of Sri Chinmoy and long-time runner, Jogyata from New Zealand, likes to say. It’s certainly true that you can have experiences in running that have a life-transforming effect. My running has increased in the last few weeks as a result of the marathon training program myself and all my friend have been doing, so I have been having fair share of experiences - you can read about one race I had in Paris a couple of weeks ago on another blog post, but here are a couple of experiences I’ve had since:

The Sunday after the Paris race, I did a three-hour run in which the pace gradually increased towards the finish. I usually need to call on quite a lot of inner strength to finish these runs and I’m normally left with a fair degree of stiffness afterwards, but to my amazement and gratitude I enjoyed the whole experience from beginning to end, I felt I was just like a child running, not thinking about what pace I was running or how long I had left to go. And there were no bad after effects either, thanks to the warm-down routine I’ve recently adopted (I’ve actually just written an article about it on allaboutrunning.net). It was really quite something.

And then, in total contrast, there was the training session a a few days after, a set of five 1km fast intervals on a nearby track. No zip in the legs whatsoever, and I was struggling just to put one foot in front of the other. In the middle of that run, the previous three hour run came to mind and I marvelled at how two runs could be so different, how one could be so easy and the other so hard. But then I remembered something my teacher, Sri Chinmoy said about good or bad experiences: “If we live in the soul, we will see that everything that happens here on earth has some meaning, because God does not do anything contrary to His own ultimate Fulfilment. With our human eyes we see unbearable pain and sorrow; the whole world is full of suffering. But when we pray and meditate, when we go deep within, we see that there is no such thing as suffering or joy. It is all the operation of God’s Will. When this Will is in operation, sometimes we call it suffering and sometimes we call it joy, or we use some other term. A spiritual person tries to identify himself with the experience that God Himself is having, and not with what is taking place in the outer manifestation.“ And so I realised that, similarly, Sunday and today are merely two experiences - one day an experience where everything goes like a dream, another day an experience where every step is effort. From then on the run became much better to handle - I could somehow stand aside from what I was feeling and treat it as just another experience, rather than be caught up brooding over how tired I was and any discomfort I might be having.

At the end of that week, seven of us from the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre were off on a four-day cycling trip around the county of Waterford. The trip included a stop by the village of Dunhill about ten miles outside Waterford city to run a 10k race (like the Paris race, it was exactly on the 10k race scheduled on our training plan this weekend). Cycling over to the race start, we realised one thing - it was going to be hilly - very hilly. I was doing my usual race warm-up when it occured to me that I wasn’t actually in much of an inner frame of mind to run a race - I was a little tired from the cycling, a little mentally scattered, and also it was shaping up to be quite a hot and sticky day. I realised perhaps the best warm-up I could do for the race would be to meditate for a few minutes! So I found myself a nice quiet spot and meditated; and a beautiful clarity of the heart accompanied me on my way out to the race start.

Then the race began. They told us it would be a bit of up and down hill at the start, flat in the middle, and uphill at the end. Well, I reached the first major climb and came down at speed, thinking that was the extent of it, only to find a second climb straight after. Everyone I spoke to after the race said the second climb is where they really suffered, and that was only at the 3k mark. It was strange, because we were running through some of the most beautiful scenery I can ever remember looking at, but it was kind of hard to appreciate any of it! But at one point I thought of the meditation I had before the race, and specifically I remembered how good I felt walking back from it…right then, I could feel something from that experience entering into me now, and giving me new impetus. When your inner attitude changes, everything changes. We were still running through some of the most beautiful roads, but now I could really take it all in and let the serenity of my surroundings enter into me - outer movement, inner stillness. (That isn’t the race trophy I’m holding by the way - its actually the prestigious Munster Cup which the Waterford hurling team had won the previous week, and which happened to be making a guest appearance for the race)

This same feeling came to me during another three-hour run I had only a couple of days ago. This one started and continued on at a faster pace than I would have liked, and when I finished, I had absolutely zero in the tank. And i mean zero. But what kept me going was my surroundings, and the feeling of moving at speed through them. I am increasingly perceiving during running how everything around us has a kind of energy we can use - for example, running through forests or near water always seems to pick me up, as long as my mind isn’t off on holiday somewhere and I can stay in the moment and attune myself to the surroundings. You can feel it most obviously in a race with plenty of crowds, as the pure goodwill of the spectators lifts you up and encourages you to keep going - plenty a marathon runner can vouch for that! Even on our lonely training run, there was people with kind remarks as we passed by - the guys working on a manhole who told us we were flying, the guys playing volleyball who joked about our speed, the old lady walking our dog who smiled and said ‘fair play to you!’ - sometimes this means more than all the energy drinks in the world.

(Photo by Pavitrata Taylor from London, you can see more of these aphorism cards on his photo gallery… )

I have just spent the past weekend in Paris, meeting up with all my friends and fellow students of Sri Chinmoy, meditating, taking in some of the sights and sounds of Paris, and having lots of inspiring conversations on life, happiness and the meaning of it all (in other words, a typical Paris café conversation). The weekend also coincided with the arrival in Paris of the World Harmony Run - a global relay in which an Olympic style torch is passed from hand to hand as it makes its journey throughout the length and breadth of the world, bringing the people and communities it reaches together in a shared wish for a better world.

On the Sunday, all the World Harmony Run members went to the famous Bois de Vincennes, home of the kings of France before the mighty Versailles was built, to participate in a 10k race. In a wonderful coincidence, my training schedule for the August Self-Transcendence Marathon also has a 10k race pencilled in for today! So today I went along with the team, aiming to try my luck and come home somewhere under forty minutes.

They say that every experience in life is a lesson that helps you understand more about yourself and the universe, but for me, a race is much more like an intensive weekend workshop in self-discovery than a lesson! Every time, I find I really have to go deep within and bring out the absolute best within myself in order to keep going. And today was no different. Even before the race, there were all kinds of things gnawing away at me: stomach troubles, tiredness - all things which can really make you miserable if you let them! Thankfully over the years, meditation has given me a certain amount of inner strength and made me realise the importance of staying happy and cheerful no matter what. So I went and started warming up, and found out that I was actually feeling quite good after all.

The first part of the race I enjoyed tremendously. There is something about French organisation that always brings a smile to my face, and the sight of five race marshals at the starting line having an animated discussion amongst themselves whilst checking that the front runners were toeing the starting line was an amusing distraction from any nervousness I might face. Then the gun went off and everyone tore away at breakneck speed; I joined them for about ten seconds before reminding myself to run my own race at my own pace. The race was two five km laps through roads and park trails, and some lovely stretches where I could really feel Mother Nature giving the runners an extra boost of energy.

The sacond lap is where the problems started. A familiar sensation started occuring down the right side of my body, the beginning of a pain in my side that comes from not having enough electrolytes in the system. Over the last few years, i have had to slow down to walking pace because of this problem; it had been on my to do-list over the past week to get mineral supplements now that I have started marathon training, but life of course got in the way. But now the only thing I could do was just keep running and hope I wouldn’t suffer a repeat. But around this time, I also discovered something very interesting - I remembered reading some advice given by my teacher, Sri Chinmoy to use if you were feeling down or depressed: “Your outer smile can help your running considerably. When you smile, you disarm your opponent. Take running, for the time being, as your opponent. While you are fighting or struggling with your enemy, which is running, if you give a smile, naturally your enemy will lose some of its strength. So play a trick on your enemy by smiling. This may sound absurd, but I assure you it is true.” And so I started smiling as I was running: all of a sudden I felt myself going just that little bit faster, as some of those energy-sapping worries began to clear a little bit.

All during a race like this I really try and keep my awareness in the heart rather on my mind or my body - I find that this is the crucual factor in my enjoyment of the race. After all, children are in the heart and they seem to be able to run wherever they want and never get tired, so I think that’s a pretty good example to copy! It has to be said that for me some races are better than others in this regard - for this race, the night before I had not slept very much, or meditated particularly well in the morning, so I was finding it considerably difficult to detach myself from my wandering thoughts. Also, I could feel a tremendous emotional resistance coming from my emotional being, which seemed to increase the faster I went! But I know now from many races’ experience that after a while if you keep trying to stay in the heart, all these problems just go away after a while, and you end up running from a beautiful inner space of enthusiasm and joy.

And that is what happened. I found myself running down a spacious tree-lined avenue, and all of a sudden something came to me that could not be described as a thought, but more an inner message that came from the depths of my being: that every step I take makes be better able to do my part in creating a better world. Each and every soul comes to earth with something to offer, a unique and peerless contribution to make towards a better world; through life we all wander, searching for that very something that will give it meaning and purpose, that will rise it above the mundane. And if we are truly lucky, we find something that resonates within the very core of our being, something that when we do it we feel this is what we are here on earth to do. I am one of the lucky ones. Everytime I sit down to write, everytime I am giving free meditation classes and introducing the joy of meditation to those who might never have heard of it before, even when I am meditating by myself and can somehow sense my silent outpouring of goodwill spreading like pond ripples to the rest of humanity: this is why I am here. And every day I find myself spontaneously praying to expand my capacities so that I can bring to these activities more inspiration, more joy, more love.

This is how God answers such prayers. A tree-lined avenue, two kilometres to go. The same obstacles I face in a race - physical exhaustion, emotional turbulence, doubts about my capacity - are only a more condensed form of the obstacles I face within as I try to expand my capacities in everyday life. And every step I take here and now is a step towards making those obstacles go away forever. And I finish the race with nothing but gratitude in my heart, for I am, indeed, one of the lucky ones.

My friend Martin arrived at the beginning of the week from Graz, Austria for a couple of months. The first night he was here, he placed a book on the kitchen table with the title of “Perfektes Marathon-Training” (Perfect Marathon Training for those of you struggling to understand German) and opened up two pages in the centre of the book - a ten week training programme to run a sub-3 hour marathon. And coincidentally, it is roughly ten weeks until the Self-Transcendence Marathon in August, a marathon I had planned to run without any great expectations of doing well. The possibility of doing sub three hours had never struck me before; I had injured my knee in March, and although I had gotten back to running three or four times a week, my running was more of the ’shake-off-the-lethargy’ variety rather than any serious training. However, the program seems quite reasonable; plenty of recovery running and a good mix of races, long runs and intervals, so we said we’d just start it it and then listen to our bodies as we go along. The last thing any of us want is a return to bad knees.

The great thing is that there are four guys in the house with broadly similar running capacities: Myself and Martin have marathon bests of 3:09 (thats me in the photo) and 3:10 respectively, Matthias has a best of 2:58 (!) and Colm did his best time of 3:21 only a couple of months ago. So we’ve agreed to all be back at the house at 5pm on training days so we can all head off together. I’ve always considered myself a rather solitary runner, but it is great to laugh your way through runs with a bunch of friends rather than shuffle on alone.

The other thing about a training schedule is that it has kind of taken away some of my preformed conceptions about running. I was always one for throwing away the stopwatch and roaming my way through nature; split times and pacing were not for me, thank you. But now I’m actually doing it, I can see the merits of it - you don’t have the luxury of nature to distract you when you’re going around a boring track again and again; you have to turn to the inner landscape and run from the soaring heart instead of the complaining mind.

So let’s just take it day by day; please God I’m not posting a doleful posting next week about injuries and the like…

PS:

If you want your dreams to come true, don’t oversleep. - My brother just read this on his calendar as I was finishing this post; pretty funny.