Effort

At the extremes of physical effort, one may find insight.

My heart was thundering and my breath laboured, as I ran past a bag lying by the side of the road. The thought of checking the object arose spontaneously. The personality I think I am, could not possibly be interested in anything lying discarded by the pavement. So where did this urge come from?

One can hold on to the ego and assume separate whisperers and demons. Or realise the incoherence of a known self.

The demands of the body returned my attention outwards. But that moment of introspection continued to percolate into experience. When the urge to slow down came, I noticed it from a distance and knew it to be a passing thought. There was a certainty that soon the urge to quit would reach its peak and then recede. And it did.

By the end of the run my awareness had spread out to the boundaries of vision. There was the sensation of my labouring body connected to the immense, moving bowl of the world. My arms, legs, and head were entirely unseen; vague concepts compared to the rush of the wind and the living presence of the trees and shrubs along the path.

In the distance, a mother was walking with a pram. She and her child seemed like passersby in the dream of my subjective reality. Well wishes flowed through my beating heart. For them, for the trees, for everything.

 

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