My Goalless Goal

The truth is - I'm not looking for the edge of my endurance or to face the abyss that holds my fear and darkness. This may happen and of course it is an option for runners who desire to stretch past limits and still keep reaching. Distance is certain in its challenge. My quest is more subtle and perhaps equal in the profundity of its nature. My wish is to lessen myself and join my steps with the earth and breath to air. I simply want to be a traveler on the path of all things. No identity - if only for a moment. A quiet mind of spacious allowance to all that passes. To be no-thing is my greatest challenge. I am fought by goals of the ego. Surrendering to a distance greater than the thoughts I hold is surrender of the fight as well. In letting go I cease to become and settle in the simplicity of being. There are no goals, no challenges and nothing to seek. Only running - and that's enough.

Peace,

Eric



Travelers

In fact, we are interior travelers - the distance we run a projected landscape of thought and quiet moments of the soul. We seek no more than the exploration of self through an outward journey. We wish for no less than the expansion of heart and soul.

Peace,

Eric

Further

With every step...our world

expands a little

further.

Peace,

Eric

Effortless Action

As if birds…surrendering to
The air –
We dance in the flight of
Our own imagination.

~

The Tao Te Ching calls it "effortless action" and it is simply surrendering to a higher wisdom. No effort is required to run - although it may certainly seem so. The struggle is the internal dialogue of doubt and expectations. We battles stories told of what has never happened or took place long ago. No story- no effort. Only action mindful of present needs. The real story is told by breath and steps and a smile. It's not complicated. It's running.


Peace,
Eric

A Most Powerful Prayer

Perhaps the most powerful prayer is the simple phrase: I am. What follows these words is no less then the declaration of our existence. We may claim our freedom or bind ourselves to conditions that no longer serve. The prayer is impartial to all but intent. A runners prayer is motion. Yet often it is clouded with statements that don't serve our purpose. Fear, fatigue and discomfort are all observations of passing a phenomenon - they don't exist outside the mind. Note them. Correct them. Release them. Honor the body and its message yet believe in more then a temporal truth. As a runner, as spirit residing through a body - we are grace and ease and fluid in thought and motion. Before each run we pray: I am...and then give ourselves to truth our existence.

Peace,

Eric

Complete

We are at once the far end of spirit and its true beginning. We are circular in our existence. This realization puts running in a different perspective. Before our first step we have arrived. Our journey now becomes one of singular recognition - we are complete.

Peace,

Eric



The Path Is The Journey

Each step is our awakening - but still we

dream of a distance yet to

come.

And so the path itself becomes our journey.

~

It's all just play - the pretend sleep of day to day and a great awakening. We chose this path. There are no real surprises - only joyful remembrance and a chance to learn. Running is the display of life in linear form. Our journey is the run itself and the destination is but a single step repeated. We have arrived. Indeed - we never left at all.

Peace,

Eric 

One Great Being

There are times - when it feels as if we could run forever. There is an allowance by earth and air for us to be received. This is resonance. We beat as one being of great perfection.

~

This is always. We are always accepted by earth and air and we are always part of one great being of perfection. We could run forever. We just don't always remember this feeling of belonging. That's the great gift of long distance - it break a runner down to the essentials - steps, breath and spirit. Even the will is abandoned for the greater sense of Self. There is nothing left but the run and path lays itself in welcome.

Peace,

Eric

It's Not Really About Running

It's not about running. That's simply the metaphor for our existence - motion, stillness - and the play between the two. Our story is told by steps given and the infinite ways the world receives them. Running is spirit expressed as flesh and motion.

Peace,

Eric



Running With Perfection

There is a perfection in every run - or better said, there exist the potential of perfection waiting to be uncovered throughout each run. The path itself is perfect. The runner too. And yet often a discord lays between the two. We seek resonance. Our own perfection in harmonious accord of steps and earth and breath and air. One song. Running is the means of realization - a step meets the path in sudden ease and wonder, a breath is drawn to the full length of the soul - and we remember. We're in harmony. Perfection.

Peace,

Eric 

Original Innocence

And I remind
myself -

That long before original sin,
we stood in holy
innocence...and I smile at the
folly of it all.

And step within the waiting
garden.

~

Running is always a return - our steps to ground and breath to air - we mingle with the primordial essence of flesh and spirit. It's how we remind ourselves that we are not separate from earth or heaven. We find our Eden through distance - the garden meets our every step.

Peace,

Eric


Finding Joy

It's done for joy - so strange in such an action that lends itself so fully to suffering. Yet joy is found. Perhaps we have uncovered the inherent truth of the Buddha's wisdom of impermanence -enlightenment through the lens of distance. We hold each moment lightly. Joy is found in their passage. Running is our lesson in fluidity.

Peace,

Eric



Remembering Our Originality Of Purpose

Once we ran and once we danced - our bodies an ecstatic response to the Divine pressed against us. Motion was a prayer. It's not so different now - we are removed by degrees from nature yet the Source remains present and is found in clear moments of distinction. We find that our bodies have retained an awareness forgotten by the mind. Our bodies are made of earth, air and light - elements held by spirit in a loving bond. In essence we are the ground we run upon. We are nature. In this regard running is our return to original source - we are giving steps to earth and breath to air. We are drawing again from the Source. We are remembering. And so we run and so we dance - feeling once more the Divine pressed against us.

Peace,

Eric



Different Tracks

Often I come to the page with no set agenda other than committing words to paper. The only message found is in the tracks left as written words. There was a writer here. Sometimes I run solely for the sake of motion. Different tracks.

Peace,

Eric

An Intimate World

We live in a personal universe - an intimate world pressed against our every sense. Running is the choice on how we experience the gifts we have been given and in return the experience itself becomes the delight of what is offered. We are found on the fingertips of an infinite reach - a returned caress of steps and breath and joyful motion.

Peace,

Eric



Everything Matters

At first our world narrows to the scope of breath and steps - nothing matters but the run. Yet then a subtle shift occurs - two worlds merge as one. Where once the breath functioned solely for the body - we now breathe sky and release our spirit to the air. Our steps are given to the earth as prayer - a holiness shared in their brief connection. The world is large - everything matters in pure moments of the run.

Peace,

Eric

Listening

To sit and listen with the
river...
As a breeze whispers secrets
through the grass.
And birds sing nothing to the air but
the carried flight of their
expression.
The river moves in stillness.
While I sit in the quiet motion of
my thoughts -
Listening with the river.

~

Running too becomes an act of listening -secrets whispered from steps to path and back again. The world is eager to share its story. Our bodies also have a message hidden in breath and heartbeat and deep to the bones. Run, listen...

Peace,

Eric



Hollowed Reed

And I am
As a hollowed reed
Swayed by life's most passionate
Winds - emptiness mourned
As solitary sound.


And yet I am
As a hollowed reed
Played holy by the whispered
Breath of God - a singular instrument
Within a symphony of sound.

I am
A
Hollowed
Reed.

~

We are two runners within a singular expression - giving ourselves completely to the intent of every run and at once being played as motion by something far greater and infinite than our thoughts can hold. It's perfect really.

Peace,

Eric



Shamans

We are shamans...our consciousness altered by breath, steps and distance. Our hearts beat a resonance matched by earth and air. We seek true reality. We seek union. We run.

Peace,

Eric



The Art Of The Run

Artist and distance runners are faced with the same emptiness stretched ahead in a promise of becoming. Distance is the blank canvas for the expression of our breath, steps and thoughts - we arrange our stride artfully in the co-creation of our interior landscape and its reflection to the world. Every space is sacred - existing in purpose for some eventual arising and the allowance for all that eventually passes. Runners and artist see space as an extension of self yet to arise - it's the pure potentiality of existence. And so we run not to fill space but to exist within the framework of creation - we are artist in the medium of steps and distance.

Peace,

Eric



For Love

For love - and that's why we run. Our path is long and often presents hardship and pain. Yet we don't suffer. We endure in the kindness of accepting ourselves through each moment offered. Running distance is our opportunity to love from the edge of our innate wholeness and the broken parts of life, will and body. We hurt - and still we run. It's this ability to love that allows us to surrender to the fluidity of faith. Faith is not a static concept fixed in future reference - it's the ever present unfolding of our willingness to love ourselves through every moment. We don't merely have faith - it's who we are and how we express ourselves through the steps we take. And so again to love and again to running - it's our faith displayed.

Peace,

Eric



It's The Tao

It's not our will against the world - we run in accordance with the way things are - knowing that each moment ceases in the birth of something new. This is the flow of life and the allowance for all things to be and for all things to pass. It's the Tao. Distance running is just life in single step fashion. We are fortunate in its simplicity. We take a step -and find joy in new beginnings.

Peace,

Eric



Company Of One

Running is the opportunity to meet our true selves in unlikely places. Through distance our ability to hold onto false layers of identity lessen and we find ourselves left in the empty stretch of pure potentiality. We are what we see. The world is now our reflection and more - we are the reflection of the world. Nothing goes unrecognized and we merge into a greater vision of ourselves. Where once we ran alone we are now found in the company of One and recognized by wind, and trees and path itself as an extension of all that is existence. We have met ourselves at last.

Peace,

Eric



Crossing The Threshold

Every step a threshold - and beyond...beyond...is the

distance that we

seek.

~

My concern is distance - the mindful travel across my own interior landscape, the depth reached into the subtle mysteries of the world. Everything else is beautiful details.

Peace,

Eric



Holy Contact

We are spirit contained for an instant of a lifetime - our bodies a vessel for the infinite made holy through contact. There are portions of the world that long to know our steps. That's the deeper call of running - a deliverance of our holiness and in return a reach into the worlds desire. All things are made holy through contact.

Peace,

Eric



Perfection Of Running And Seeking

It's simple really - we are what we seek. We take to the path not to become but to reveal the truth of our continuous becoming. That's the lure of distance - to be at peace exactly where we are yet know we'll reach for far horizons. We are at once stillness and motion, path and runner, seeker and the known. You see, the ground exist to be received by steps and our stride is the means for our giving. It's a perfect world. Running is both the realization and expression of it's perfection.

Peace,

Eric

Running And Listening With Stillness

Between steps too - there is stillness. Running provides the words in the endless dialogue we hold with distance. Stillness remains for the template laid by motion - the page to our story. We take for granted what we give and often fail to meet the gift of its reception. Our steps and breath are received by infinite stillness. It's the absorption of self back to ground of existence. We are renewed in stillness -reborn a runner between steps. It's what distance tells us within our dialogue - we need only listen after steps are given.

Peace,

Eric



Calm Abiding

Just wait.
The next breath
falls...

Always on its own.

~

I wish to run like this - mindful of breath and steps yet free in the allowance of their passage.

Peace,

Eric



Love Demonstarted - Running With Patience (#2)

Patience is love demonstrated through the concept of time. There is only one moment- stretched through all existence. Life is the illusion of pause within the infinite. And so we return to patience - the recognition of one moment and our capacity to love within it. We could run with this same patience - loving the single moment stretched in time and distance and the experiences that are offered.

Peace,

Eric



Run To Sing

There is a song for everything. Long ago we sang our world into being. Words came to our lips unbidden - we knew the songs for all of creation. We have all but forgotten how to sing. Songs still exist but now go unheard. Yet parts of us remember. There is a song for distance - and in some subtle fashion our steps know this as true. Running is an ancient song remembered. We run to sing once more.

Peace,

Eric



Give Yourself

In its
Sweep –
The wind strips everything to the
Bareness of the soul.

Give yourself to every
Breeze.


~

Run like this - as if given pure to earth and stride and nothing left but the joy of motion. We lose ourselves in what we truly love. And in our loss we find the world unfolds within.

Peace,

Eric