Running With The Absence Of A Runner

We think we're runners - but we're not. We are motion, light and distance called forth to express ourselves. Our steps carry us beyond labels - and in this sense of freedom we gain the truth of our identity. We are not one thing. We are everything. We are the ground covered and the distance viewed. We are motion wrapped around the stillness of the soul. We run - and yet the runner is simply the ride taken by spirit. We run - even in the absence of a runner.

Peace,

Eric

Running With The Ocean

As the ocean waves in its caress against the shore - we too are an expression of something infinite. Running is our crash against the wild shores of life. Running is a display of Being. We give little thought to the action of running - it is matched by the simplicity of breath and beating heart. There's no need to question or find reason for our pursuit of nothing more than motion - it's simply what we do. We are waves to an even greater ocean.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Renunciation

We are renunciates on a momentary path - devoted only to the given distance of the day. A single stretch of time becomes our holy order. Everything else is left behind until miles are completed. We don't renounce the world- we surrender the attachments that bind us to sedentary comforts. Running is the path chosen by those who seek effort. We aren't searching for answers - it's enough to know a mystery exist just beyond our every step. Each day - if only for certain distance - we renounce all but our desire to simply run in mystery.

Peace,

Eric

Running Grateful

We are runners - our grace is in receiving and giving motion in return. We are sustained by earth and air and every step and breath is offered as a grateful prayer. We seek to run as an expression of the life we have been given. Nothing is taken for granted. No step is promised. We are fully aware of the miracle of simply being - running is an extension of this awareness given wings to fly. We are joy in motion. We are not only grateful to be runners - we run because we're grateful.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Snow

A world transformed - as if innocence regained by the cover of snow and trackless stretch of land.  We are artist, runners - each step a stroke of motion left behind and a canvas of miles ahead. We are eager to explore. Running opens the world - snow is simply shades of what a season offers - flakes of white cold against the running grounds. Yet still we run. The world is always waiting.

Peace,

Eric



Running With Power

We run with power - drawn from earth and received from the sky. Nothing is forced. We are beyond need, demands and desire. Our wishes are met in the simple action of a breath drawn while in motion and steps given to the pull of the ground. Power is the reality of our connection to the whole - we run in the fullness of all things and with the realization that there is nowhere that we leave off and the world begins. Awareness is power. We are aware of our continuation - the distance we run no more than a portion of Self spread for exploration. We are aware of our Source. We come from the Infinite and the Infinite is power. To run with power is simply to remember our Source.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Darkness

There is light behind everything. Our darkest steps lead to the light of our existence. Running brings us to the edge where shadows play-  dark thoughts of illusions cast against interior light. We embrace darkness as a means to reveal a hidden truth. Our light has only dimmed in surface thought and memory - yet in our depth we are a true light that can't be extinguished. We are Beings of light. Running is the process of our remembrance -however many steps it takes.

Peace,

Eric

Running Reason

Our steps find Presence with the earth. The air we breath is holy. We run to experience God through motion. There is no other reason.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Meaning

Even a single step has meaning...one breath is enough to wake us to the subtle language of the world. We run to reach the depth of our existence-distance spread as our souls reflection. We feel the push of earth against our feet, giving itself for travel. We give thanks for the support of air.

We share a common language the world.

Peace,

Eric

Running With The Earth

We are of the earth - dust given life through light and love. We run to know ourselves again as earth. Each step a returned caress against the ground. And the earth too rises to our presence - our steps met by what the ground offers in the moment of our passing. Our connection to the earth is vital, alive and full of meaning. We are supported - urged to run as a prayerful sweep across the earth and breath given to the air.
We are told that we belong.
Our steps accepted.
And so we run - grateful to be whole.


Peace,
Eric

Running As Light

We are light - an extension of the very stuff of sun and stars. Running is an illusion of form in motion. In truth -we a reach of light beyond form. We run to know ourselves as a play of light against the ground - a shadows game with darkness. In the end only light remains.  We are light - our bodies cloaked in the thought of form. Running is our escape to formless. We return to original light. We run - to simply shine.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Suffering

We don't seek pain. We seek to know the gift of suffering - running to the tender points of our brokenness with a willingness to simply be present to its existence. We don't seek change. Only a return to wholeness. Running is our deliverance - it brings our presence to the experience of suffering. We find the spacious nature of what once felt solid in its ache - exploring a depth matched by the distance of our run. All suffering is internal. Our steps are the means within and our awareness a shine of compassion. Suffering is the gift of reconnecting fragments of a whole self shattered by pain, grief and sorrow. Running brings us to the edge of every fragment - our steps threading broken parts of soul, mind and body through a tapestry of time and distance. We will emerge whole - healed of the illusion of separate parts. Suffering is not the truth - but it leads us to what is true. Running is how we discover this gift.

Peace,

Eric

Running With Rain

There is a message in rain - a holiness of given drops and a grace found in reception. Every drop is singular yet still identified as rain. Rain falls in a subtle wholeness. Our steps too are given to the largeness of the stride and the stride in turn to motion. We are runners - and more we are joined by running. Rain drops are a collective force in various modes of falling - each drop matters and each drop is given selfless of concern. This is the holiness of falling. Gravity becomes the pull to an ever greater existence. We run with the rain -receptive, cleansed and vital to the holiness. This is the grace of receiving. We are a touch between earth and heaven - our steps falling with the rain in a grace of their own. There is a message in rain told only to those who seek it.

Go.

Peace,

Eric

Runnining With Love

The path is always love. Our steps are drawn against the earth in a long caress of distance. We run in an exchange of equal pleasure. Both ground and air delight in subtle ways to tease our touch. Running is the expression of all we have to offer - love displayed by steps and motion. The path is love. It's the only path we truly travel.

Peace,

Eric



Running With Emptiness

Our path is a stretch of emptiness - each step provides a brief meaning of its own and then is lost within the larger stride. We don't run to find answers. We seek continuous questions to lead us further into the unknown. Within the infinite there are only possibilities - running is the art of choice and expansion. We are not bound to a single step. We explore and allow the emptiness of the path  to be the template for the fullness of our life in motion.

Peace,

Eric

The Running Scriptures - Enlightenment (11)

"Body and mind dropped off"

                                 -Dogen (On his enlightenment)

~

Perhaps we never know the moment - our steps mindful to the very instant - and then nothing. Only motion. Our body and mind cease as separate illusions and join in a peaceful flow to cover distance. Not even the path exist on its own.

Our steps merging earth and stride as

something whole.

Perhaps we never know the moment of its coming or

how long it may have lasted.

Yet we never doubt the truth of its

existence.

Peace,

Eric

Running With...Cold

We give ourselves to the cold - offering no resistance - a carried warmth sliced through air and season. Cold seeks the bones. We are saved by the warmth raised by steps taken and an inner fire that burns to cover distance. Cold waits. It won't be outrun. And so we take our borrowed warmth and give ourselves to cold and stride.

There is distance to be covered.

Peace,

Eric

The Running Scriptues - Being

See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.

                                              -Matthew 6:28

~

There is no need to cloak ourselves in the guise of a runner. We are beyond definitions. We are past any effort needed to cover distance. Motion is simply another expression of Being and one we lend ourselves to gladly. It's what we do - our steps given to stride and earth as a means of exploration of Self and world.

Peace,

Eric



The Running Scriptures - Gold (10)

But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me,

I will come forth as gold. - Job 23:10

~

We are not concerned with surface - running is the depth of world and runner exposed. We seek shadows not so we can hide but to test our light against our own darkness. Distance is a stretch of self laid bare - nothing remains hidden and our steps probe within even as they carry out the purpose of the stride. We run with certainty. There can be no failure - a runner seeks the broken nature of the self which allows the escape of light. We are running for our true nature. We are running for gold.

Peace,

Eric

Cherishing - The Holy Art Of Running (And Other Stuff)

Grace is the spacious nature of

surrender.

Our path - is to give ourselves away.

~

The Buddha spoke a Noble truth - to cling is to suffer. Any grasp outside the present moment is to invite suffering. If we run towards or away from a fixed outcome we lose the fluidity of running with spirit - again - we invite suffering. Distance brings its own form of anguish, pain and grief - none of this is suffering. It's the divine madness of distance running - the edge of what we hold to and what is surrendered. Running teaches us the difference between clinging to a goal, object or ultimately the self and the holy art of cherishing. To cherish is to see through the solidity of thought and possessions to the formless aspect of all things. The breeze is cherished as it slips though branches, water is cherished in its caress, our steps cherish the ground even in their passing. Cherishing is sacred sight - to see the unmanifest in the manifestations of the world. Nothing stays forever yet nothing is ever lost. To know this is to escape suffering. Cherish what seems to slip away - and know that it is always present. Run with grace.

Peace,

Eric 

Running With Dreaming

We are dreamed as runners.

Dreaming is the origin of the world - the unmanifest made known and

given to expression. Running is in the dreaming - within and beyond

the body - primordial and the wild call to motion.

We are the response.

Our steps a sacred function of the dream.

And so we run.

Peace,

Eric

Running As Transcendence

The outcome is transcendence. Every run is no less a subtle shift of being - our steps an edge to different worlds. We exist as form, thought and ego and this is the true world of our illusions. We are something all together more - and less. Distance is the great lessening - form and thought become spacious through miles and ego has less to hold to. We wander the great space we once occupied as merely a runner. We are travelers now - coming to the infinite as if an open road. For a length of distance we are running pure and formless as spirit. It doesn't have to last. We only need know that it has occurred. And will again.

Peace,

Eric

Running With...

With...

We are joined by

what we love.

~

We run with - the earth is laid as a path for our travel, the sky is open in its wide embrace, there is nothing that stands between us and the soul of the world. We need only to co-operate. Run with this single thought - we belong. And we will.

Peace,

Eric

Four Elements Of Running With Spirit - Non Attachment (4)

With no concern - our steps released

become a stride.

And distance holds no

boundaries.

• 
  

We intend - yet remain unattached to the outcome of our intention. We run by faith that the unseen supports the seen. A single step joins in the creation of the stride by its release - before then it holds the potentiality of timeless travel. Nothing matters but that single step. There is no concern that it will find its place amidst the stride. We take the step - and then let go. Miracles follow.

Peace,

Eric

Four Elements Of Running With Spirit - Least Effort (3)

Surrendered - and every step to

grace the ground.

We run with the ease of our existence.

• 
  

In the true sense of running - we are goalless. Motion is our stillness released to grace the world. We may run with the perimeters of a certain set of values - a race, a quest - yet in the end everything is surrendered to the gravity of love and we express ourselves as motion. We are at ease - a step taken and let go and so continued. Nothing else is needed.

Peace,

Eric

Four Elements Of Running With Spirit - Reverence (2)

Given lightly - our steps fall

holy to the

ground.

We are received by the grace in

which we offer.

• 
  

We run with reverence - knowing well that we too are sacred by design. It's a holy exchange - our steps an extension of self given fully to earth, air and path and in return we are received by the grace of nature. Running is a prayer caressed as motion. And the sky answers with light and rain - the ground offers the whole of itself for our delight and the world is ours for exploration. We too are revered and found holy.

Peace,

Eric

Four Elements Of Running With Spirit - Singularity

Once given...our steps become

their own destination.

Motion seeks expression.

Nothing more.

• 
  

A step is singular. It's given and then the entire span of its existence is gone - no other step of its unique suchness will touch the ground again. A step is singular and yet more. Everything exist within the whole of creation. Everything ends and everything continues. One step is infinite. One step is its own conclusion. We are fortunate to be part of something so large - and so small.

Peace,

Eric



Lesson From The Wind

Against me - the wind reveals not a solid wall of bone and flesh but an

illusion weighted by thought and form. I run heavy into the wind.

There is met resistance - my will and body fighting the very

nature of the wind. I will lose. The wind has no will and

doesn't fight. I place my limits against a force with no

agenda but to simply be.

There is no fight.

Only a moment caught in an illusion.

I can't give up form (yet) but I too can refuse to

fight. I can simple be.

No less than the wind - I am a force belonging to

nature. My power is letting go and allowing

the wind its presence without the

weight of my opinion.

I run into the wind.

Lightly.

Peace,

Eric

A Course In Running (With Miracles) #3

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the

barriers within yourself that you have built

against it.

                                             - A Course In Miracles

~

One pure moment - our steps a kiss against the

earth. The air parts across the flesh as a

sweet caress.

There are no barriers.

Only love

exist.

• 
  

Running removes barriers. We find ourselves as a body in motion yet more - we

are beyond the physical. Motion blurs the line where we leave off and the

world begins. We find ourselves in a spread of distance - constantly

giving steps and receiving all the earth has in return. The air is

pressed against us - light and full in it's caress.

We are a link that connects above and below.

We are vital and humbled.

The world exist because we do.

We are because the world is.

This is love.

Peace,

Eric