Running into freedom (creating little satoris)

I was listening to a talk by Ken Wilber, and he defined suffering as being the sum of avoidance and pain. You stop suffering when you cease to avoid what is, and you can unflinchingly be at ease with what is arising, be it painful or pleasant sensation. One of the things that meditation does then, is to bring resistance into awareness, and by facing the resistance, it finally gets dropped by the body.

I wondered how people could get a quick taste for this process of having a resistance come into awareness, and then being dropped by the body, and being able to experience the freedom and ease that comes with the dropping of resistance. My mind came back to running and training. I used to do some running; noting major, just half marathons, which was long enough for me. My favorite runs were training runs of about 12 kilometers, as they were not too short and not too long.

I always used to push myself a little on the  training runs, as when you train for a sport, you have to take your body to a limit, and then, pushing beyond the limit, you get breakdown and growth in the form of increased strength and ability. I used to notice a strange thing happening if I was pushing myself. I would enter mental states during the run, thinking thoughts like ‘I am going to fast,' or ‘I wont make it' or ‘this is hurting too much'. With the thoughts would come a feeling of resistance to what was happening, and so the run would become both a physical and a mental battle. The feeling of mental resistance would increase as I became increasingly convinced that the run was dangerous for my body and that I should slow down. My stories were very convincing, and sometimes I did slow down. However, other times I just kept on running, and then an interesting thing would happen. My mental story would be dropped, and it was though my body had been released. I still felt pain and tiredness, yet I could run with relaxed open ease, and enjoy the run. My mental resistance and my story of limitation had been dropped.  In Wilbers terms, I had dropped the avoidance to what was happening, and so my suffering had been cured. I would then have awareness in motion as I ran, and would feel relaxed and open.

When I entered those states of non-resistance in running, then that's when I enjoyed running the most. The trick was to push myself to my limit, and then, just when I thought I had reached my limit, to muster some more energy and to push on through. It's a very masculine approach; a final drive is needed when things are most difficult. Once that self-created barrier of resistance was penetrated, it was though vast energy reserves became available to the body, and then the run was a more feminine embrace of what was happening, a joyful relaxation into what was arising in action, moment by moment.

I have practiced meditation for many years, and essentially the process of giving up attachments (resistance) is the same as in running; a resistance to a real or imagined situation arises, and by staying with the situation and being aware of the resistance, the resistance gets dropped....so, if you want a little taste of satori...start running, swimming or cycling, and find the freedom as you push through your self-imposed barriers..