Seamless - A Goal For Runners And Other Non - Ordinary People

I guess my true goal in life is to become seamless - to extend my inner
world to all aspects of my outer world. I think of this often in regard to my running. A happy, serene runner is a strong, confident runner in all circumstances. In Chapter 6 Verse 7 of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna instructs Arjuna in the ways of the Yogi -
"For one who has conquered the mind, the Supersoul is already reached, for he has attained tranquility. To such a man happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same. "
Krishna is not talking about willpower here. No, he is teaching Arjuna a far greater power - the power of equanimity. Many ultrarunners seem to know this intuitively as the oft repeated mantra -"It almost always, never gets worse" has comforted many on a long trail. Willpower alone will only carry a runner so far - yet a tranquil mind, the mind of a Yogi, will carry a runner forever. And that's the goal of becoming seamless. In most instances when we refer to willpower we are thinking in terms of the individual will - which is indeed quite strong. But with limits. As Victor Frankl discovered in the concentration camps of the Holocaust - it was the person who lived beyond the individual self, who cultivated their spiritual strength and recognized a kinship with even their captors, who not only survived but later flourished once rescued.
As runners we limit ourselves when we rely on individual will and don't tap into the inner world that connects us to the Whole. Conquering the mind does not mean submission but relinquishing the smallness of the ego and entering fully into Spirit - where all things become possible. I think that ultrarunning becomes the grand experiment on this stage as we place ourselves on a direct path of ego crash and willpower collapse. Only to find ourselves rising, and stepping on new grounds of the spirit - seamlessly. That's my wish - for me. And for you.

Peace,
Eric