A running experience
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.
This is a compelling and uplifting story. You’re already achieving your goal of making the world a brighter place even through this post alone. Thank-you.