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In the beginning…

Caminante, no hay camino; Se hace el camino al andar.

The soles of my feet are bare and within these pages I will bare my soul  … I am going to endeavour to write this as if I have no readers; as my unfolding steps reveal my path, my writing will record it, a memoir as to where they lead me.

Three days ago I was running in the mountains alone for four hours when it arose within me that I would start to write again; I stopped two months ago; my blog ended its run abruptly – from one day to the next… On finding my days in England full of Christmas commitments, I let go of the daily discipline… And I haven’t written since.

But as I ran silently and alone in the Alpujarra mountains, the urge to write rose again… But this time, without any intention of sharing; no social media tweets, or linkedin or facebook announcements that I had once again written something down…

My idea at first was to go right back to the very beginning, when each night I wrote in longhand in a journal… I started this practise at just twelve years old and I wrote each day, until at twenty one, I reflected on the entries of my late teenage years and now just starting out on a new decade – I decided that the daily inscriptions were too full of sadness and darkness… Too full of the unresolved pain; too full of despair that I would every emerge from the confusion of my turmoil.

My writings communicated the fear that my only release from my tortured mind, would be to die; perhaps then I would find peace – but no sooner had I thought this thought, than I was immediately tormented further with the absolute knowing that the body dead was of no gain…

For I knew that the agony would remain unresolved, and there would still be the need to investigate and find a way to release myself from the tight stranglehold of the deep existential misery, that I was experiencing…

And so I stopped keeping my journal – the entries too ‘oscuro’ and sad to continue with…  I threw away the big pile of books, charting my thoughts and feelings, my daily routines over nine long adolescent years.

And as I ran in the mountains this week, I thought to simply go back to the very beginning, to write longhand again in a journal each night…

But then I moved from that thought to one of typing my stream of consciousness onto a document and gathering the pieces of work together in a virtual folder…

And then I had this idea…

To record my writing here on my Soles Journey; but to not make the process a public one. To trust that if anyone finds my entries and enjoys reading, they will simply be a reflection of my own souls journey…

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Run and become free…

Last night I dreamt lots of vivid dreams… I really enjoyed it, it felt a very interesting night time journey indeed.

I woke not remembering anything, other than that I had committed in my sleep to do more running, and therefore was henceforth not going to do anything much more than run.

My meditation on the move.

The thought of spending more time running is very agreeable… The more I run the more I become.

As Anadi and I ran along today, I mentioned that sometimes running feels rather hard, but that I recognise that setting running goals is very good for my path of spiritual clearing, and transcendence.

I also recognise that running barefoot is a process that is taking me further into myself… Or rather is helping me to let go of my self.

Anadi and I drove to Rincón de la Victoria to run today. It is the town where we stopped for lunch with Athena Jane on Wednesday. I was attracted back by the long beach and a vista that seemed to go on forever.

We ran 10 miles with ease and it felt to be a place I will return to… Soon I anticipate that my feet and my body will extend beyond the 10 and occasional 12 and 13 mile runs that I am doing frequently. I have only completed two 15 mile runs barefoot so far, but I can see the value of extending the distance now.

I can also feel how over many many years the clearing within me, is allowing me to simply run and become.

It is all I have ever really wanted to do, live a contemplative life, and run a lot!

Of course I have always ‘gone running’, but my bare feet seem to have ideas all of their own and have requested too that we run from the north to the south coast of Spain together next year…

Who knows what lies beyond that?

But I do see more and more that while I am journeying in physical form, enjoying the human journey; my spirit finds that the running road is a place of freedom, a place to let go…

A place where the madness and chaos of the matrix is stilled…

As the run progresses the body disappears and there arises the opportunity to recognise the samsara, the illusion that we exist in, and to know that we are so much more than anything we might ‘think’ we are…

The more I run, the more I become free… Ironically from any definition of myself; especially that of being a runner!

And yet I love to run, and so I will follow my dream… My night time dream of running as a way of life – and my waking dream of running to become free, and more me… Recognising that the transcendence that is occurring is opening me to an awareness that the me I defined myself by is vanishing…

We are all free already…

We are love, we are awareness; we are all born of consciousness and it isn’t through thinking ‘who are we..?’ that we discover we are so much more than we ‘thought’… It is simply through enquiring…

‘Who am I…’