50 Feet to Letting Go

Around Boulder, CO, there is a joke that garages aren’t for cars. We have so many toys – bikes, kayaks, camping gear, and more – that it all goes in the garage, and hence the car remains outside. As a seven year resident of Boulder, I happen to fall into that category where my car has never been in a garage, until recently. My garage would get filled with bikes and some storage, and become a workshop. If I had arranged everything well, I could fit my car in, but it would be tight, and it really wasn’t worth it.

About a year ago I moved into a house that had a huge garage with tons of extra space. Enough that I could store everything AND get my car in! I was thrilled about the idea that in the summer I wouldn’t wake up with a very hot car, and in the winter I wouldn’t have to scrape snow and ice off! That there was still plenty of room for bikes and tools and room to move around.

The garage though was not attached to the house. Between the garage and the house was about a dozen steps and a long walkway, so perhaps 50 feet from the garage to the front door. Upon leaving the garage, either I could walk out the side door where the garage door openers naturally are – or walk out the actual garage door, which was far more convenient. I choose the latter. What this meant was that I could use the garage door opener that was velcroed to the wall in the entry way. That all sounds so convenient and easy.

Yet for most of the first six months I lived in the house, I would very frequently FORGOT to close the garage door when I came into the house. Later on in the evening I’d have a thought – did I close the garage door, and then I’d walk outside to check. Sure enough, it was open. Now I wasn’t worried about stuff being stolen because I was quite far from town and the neighborhood was very safe. I was worried about bears and other critters getting into the garage, so it really was important to close the garage door.

I started reminding myself when I walked out the garage door to close it when I arrived at the front door. Occasionally this worked, meaning maybe a quarter of the time. So the reminders became stronger and stronger. My housemate would also forget so for a while we even had notes in the front to remind us to close the garage door! And finally after about eight months of doing this it became automatic to walk into the house and close the garage door. It actually became so automatic that I would forgot that I even did it, and then would later have a thought – did I close the garage door?

This whole process has been bewildering and bizarre. Between the garage door and the front door, about 50 feet, how could I forget something so simple so often? You know the Buddhist saying – chop wood to chop wood, carry water to carry water. I thought remembering could be that focused. But in that 50 feet I have to concentrate on steps, what I’m carrying, getting out keys for the front door, and ultimately amusement at seeing my dog smiling and wagging her tail as I approached the glass front door. It’s easy to see how I could forgot, but still!  

At the same time I felt great beauty and ease in that forgetting. Letting go of something so easily. It had importance and it didn’t. Like seeing a flower, taking in its beauty and then flowing to the next moment and the beauty there.

For me, it also brought up the question, why it is we can’t forget other things that easily. Like when I’m scared to bits by a lightning strike so close that it shakes the house, or the person who cut me off in the car earlier in the day, or the unjustified comment at work. I can hang on to those for hours, or days, … or longer, as we do. It’s fairly certain that those things have more meaning (meaning we give them) and with that an emotional context, and so the body and mind hang on.

The question is there though – could we learn to let go? Maybe not to forget, but to let go so it doesn’t became a lingering gremlin. Maybe it really is the count to 10 method, or the the idea of just breathe, or any number of similar concepts. It has been a great reminder for me, and maybe now for you.

Just 50 feet … a small distance measured in time or space – to bring our lives into a great ease …

Just 50 feet …

Knowledge Relationships

One of the most common ideas around being human is relationship and connection. We are social creatures – we want to have connections with others.

Taking that one step further and we talk about everything being connected – people, planets, energy, nature, animals, and so on. Physics will say it’s all energy and it all interacts with each other. I for one have no doubt of this idea.

What if we brought that analogy to information and knowledge. After all, in its rawest form, information and knowledge are just pure energy as well.

Now information as an idea is far beyond anything we might think of – it’s everywhere. There’s information in every atom, its layout of atomic and subatomic particles. There’s information is every cell in our body about how it’s composed and how it functions. At this level the amount of information is staggering.

Knowledge I’ll condense as taking particular kinds of bits of information and making some sense out of them. Something we learn – from experience, from experiments, from life, from each other, from life. When we do this we are establishing relationships and connections among information! That happens all the time. Eventually we group this stuff into categories and fields of study as we establish deeper and closer relationship and connections.

What I find so cool is when we can connect and relate what we believe are entirely different categories of knowledge. When Neurology meets biology, or biology meets psychology, or understanding virus spread whether it’s human or computer. I love finding new ways to relate data – kind of in the same way that I love it when two friends meet and connect!

Taking it further, every person also has a relationship with wisdom and knowledge as well. It’s similar to having a relationship with a person, but instead of a physical form, it’s an energetic form. Our relationship with wisdom and knowledge constantly changes, it informs us and we inform it.

What if we treated our relationship with wisdom and knowledge like we treated our relationships with other people? I wonder what would happen?

The Lady with the Dragon Eyes

We sat together, facing each other, she and I. We looked into each other’s eyes, something beyond staring and more than gazing. To be part of a deep revealing and connection. She slipped into my soul to be witness to the story of the spirit that lives, for now, in this human body. Communing and relating with an internal environment hardly contained by physical form. Feeling the sovereigns unmarked by time. Savoring the puzzle pieces still not fitted into form and place yet. Discerning a whole picture devoid of layers of consciousness.

While she looked, I noticed too. A feeling that time and space stopped or didn’t even exist or intermixed. Light became twisted and fuzzy, fading, focusing, returning. What was I really in this moment? Countless lifetimes from so many realities danced through my perception. Each revealed for an eternity of an instant to be fully experienced and then departed. A story weaved together, exploring edges for so long. Each building and building and building – to this life.

Those eyes, her eyes – I know those eyes. They are the eyes of dragons. The dragons I challenged in battles and wars. Some would best me, and some I would slay. Each clash would reveal the burning, bright eyes of a brilliant soul sharing deep reverence and admiration for the other. And … the dragons who were my dearest companions , brothers and sisters of the heart. The ones I rode on the backs of across so many starry nights and brilliant days; the ones I rode with into so many contests. Those eyes breathing Namaste.

The discoveries – a being crawling right from the rich dirt of this Earth, leading with a knowing, offering new sheaths of energetic ensembles. A child still with more to say and express. Water spirits of desire and power heard, but not felt. Beliefs to be released. Fullness and richness to be offered. A heart filled soul traveling the untrodden, but true path.

To the lady with the dragon eyes, I offer the breath of Namaste once again and a little Rumi.

Look at your eyes, how small they are, and yet they see mountains and stars and the infinite sky. In this circle of love the universe is one.
- Rumi

The Roar of the Crowd

On September 10, 1972, Frank Shorter won the gold medal at the London Olympic games. That win was seen my millions on live tv here in the US and helped to start to running boom that continues to this day. A few days ago was the 40^th anniversary of that win and in the past week I’ve heard many great stories about Frank.

The one I want to share is about his finish of the Olympic marathon. A few minutes before Frank would run into the stadium, one of the workers came running out of the tunnel waving his arms pretending to be the winner. When Frank entered the stadium he didn’t see the imposter, but he heard the boos that were now coming from the crowd at the imposter. Frank was asked how he felt about having his thunder stolen in one of his greatest victories. His response was that he raced for himself, he didn’t care about the roar of the crowd.

Here’s a quote from Jeff Brown with a similar tone though this one is definitely more about a personal journey:

“Most of the greatest achievements on the planet are unknown to others- privately held overcomings, silent attempts at belief, re-opening an armoured heart. ... "”

I am one of those for whom both Frank’s comments and Jeff’s quote resonant. I am who thrives in an inner domain where athletics or work are quite personal and also quite satisfying. For me, this is also true in the realm of personal growth. Frank, Jeff, and I are all men so perhaps this is a more masculine feeling in general.

In talking with a women friend recently we were talking about this very topic. Specifically we were talking about the fact that I rarely share the adventures I head off on. For example, when I raced Race Across America, I didn’t even tell my boss at work until about a month before the race – and this is a race I’d spent 8 years dreaming about and 15 months preparing for. The woman I was talking with and I are good friends and even with her I sometimes don’t share the big adventures.

But she said several very wise things. First was about sharing and connecting – that if we are to be connected as friends we have to share even the crazy stuff and the personal stuff. The more that is shared, the closer we become, and this is even truer when it’s so meaningful. Connection is the stuff and life, but we can only truly connect if we share who we are with another.

The other thing she said was about giving and receiving, gifting and being gifted. Sharing an adventure or personal story is a gift given to a friend. By sharing you are honoring the other person and the bond between the two of you. In turn you have honored yourself and given back to yourself. It’s a complete win and deepening into life and connection.

While many of us may not care about the roar of the crowd, whether its athletics or arts or a personal struggle, we shouldn’t be the ones to decide if the crowd gets to roar or not. We can share who we are and we can do it humbly and honestly and with grace. The crowd or our friends can have their experience and make their own choice about whether they roar, or not. The great thing for the one on the adventure is discovering who it is that roars for you, who your fans really are. Those are the people you want around anyway, but if we never give people the chance to roar, we’ll never know what there is to life.