EFFORTLESSNESS

I think this post has been percolating for more than twenty years. When I first read Seth I knew I was entering a realm where the questions I had as a child were about to be answered. The problem was, however, that I was an adult, and as such had already developed to a fine point the beliefs of my culture. There had always been a part of me that knew our reality was different than the reality we were being taught, but what I didn’t realize when I came upon Seth, was that I had already been hypnotized and was under the spell of the age into which I was born. I was so spellbound by cause and effect that it was as solid a truth as my own breath.

OK, so I create my own reality; all of it. How? That’s what I wanted to know. That is the question that the belief in cause and effect always asks. What was the process I needed to follow that would allow me to create what it was I wanted to create, and not create what I did not want to create. There had to be a process, I thought. If 1+2=3, then A+B should result in C. It was the logical way to approach such a question as “how.” An egg by itself is just an egg, but add cheese and ham and you’ve got yourself a ham and cheese omelet. You don’t add stones and twigs and end up with a ham and cheese omelet. The funny thing is, that on my way to discovering the “how”, I had completely reconstructed my beliefs about reality. It was as if a new creation myth had made a comfortable home in my head, thereby replacing a rudimentary log cabin with a mansion whose rooms shape-shift upon my bidding. It is a mansion that will not allow boredom, and it is all of my own creation. I have come to the point of no doubt.

Hummmph, you might say. I have no doubt that the sun heats the earth, but what does that have to do with anything, especially creating your own reality? When I am without doubt I am operating with full trust. In fact, when no doubt and trust are operative we don’t even think about the terms. I don’t check-in on my breathing. I trust in the process. If I cough I know that I will continue breathing in the next moment. I don’t check-in on my walking. I trust in the process and in my ability to do it. And then it occurred to me that 99% of my day is spent in complete trust that what I expect will appear. If I hold a cup of coffee to my lips, I know without a doubt that it will be coffee and not tea that my taste buds perceive. I have expectations regarding how a process should look. In other words, if I brew coffee in my coffee maker, it should be coffee that comes out. I create coffee in this manner. And yet, it is exactly these expectations that we hold regarding our processes that can destroy trust. Our trust is destroyed every time our processes go counter to our expectations. Processes that go counter to expectations engage our chattering ego-centric minds.

A process connotes something unfolding over time No big surprise there, seeing how we have a reality where time is an unavoidable component. It is time that allows us to perceive our environment and ourselves as solid. Most of the time we employ a process in moving from A to B and after repeated movements from A to B we develop belief-driven expectations of what that process should look like. When things go according to expectations we trust that our goals will be met. When they don’t we wonder why we didn’t create what it was we wanted to create. Time and process hold expectations; time, regarding when our goal will be met, and process regarding how it should unfold. If the when and the how do not meet with our expectations we lose trust and begin to struggle. We struggle against ‘what is’ because of our expectations about what ‘should be.’
.
One more aspect of the ‘how’ is what Elias refers to as acceptance. This is where we remove judgment from that which we have created. Let me now try to pull this all together by way of a personal example. After finishing the Marine Corps Marathon in October 2007, my buddies and I decided to run the Hudson-Mohawk Marathon in October 2008. My desire was to finish the marathon in under four hours, which is the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon for my over-60 age group. That was the moment I created a sub-4 hour marathon. It was inserted in time as a done deal. From that point forward all I had to do was to get out of my own way, so-to-speak, and let the process unfold with complete trust and acceptance of how the process might unfold.

Now, by expectation the process should look something like this. I start training by gradually building a high-mileage base. After about a month I begin doing some speed work and throw in a long run once every week or two. The long runs build so that eventually I am doing a 20-mile run as my longest pre-marathon run. Injuries can sabotage this entire plan, at least that is the thinking of most folks who train for marathons. Injuries destroy their trust in completing the marathon because the injury is not part of the process they envision that will get them to their goal. If the injury occurs late in their training then the time factor says they do not have enough time to recover before the marathon. If it occurs early in their training they may have enough time to recover, but it may destroy their trust in their time goal. All of this is based on the beliefs of the marathoner.

So, this is what has transpired for me so far. I spent the winter months building a base on a treadmill, but when I transitioned from the treadmill to running outside in March I blew out my right calf muscle. Keep in mind that I already created the sub-four hour marathon the moment I decided to do it. I accepted the blown calf. I didn’t like it, but I accepted it. At this point, of course, the process that began the moment I created my marathon took a turn against ‘typical’ expectations. I couldn’t run, so I trained for a couple of weeks on an elliptical trainer before heading outside again. My calf didn’t like running, but it did allow me to go very slowly. So, for me, running slow became part of my new process. No speed work and no long runs became a part of my marathon training. Keep in mind that I am still completely in trust mode because I have let go of my expectations regarding what a marathon training process should look like and have accepted what appeared.

My calf finally heals and I run a difficult 8-mile trail race in May. At about the 7th mile I feel my calf acting up and finish the race comfortably by slowing down. The next day, not only is my right calf screaming in pain, but now, so is my left heel. No setbacks here, I say, just part of the process I am creating to get me to that sub 4-hour marathon. I’m not bullshitting you. I was not frustrated because I had complete trust in my ability to create my desire and I had let go of my belief-laden process expectations. I knew fully that somehow this was the process I was creating, not to thwart my desire, but to manifest it.

Here it is mid-July. I’m sitting on the porch of a vacation rental home on Block Island typing this post after having just completed a 50-mile week of pain free training. I don’t know what the next several weeks will bring in terms of process, but whatever it is I will accept it just as I have accepted my injuries. Now, you may wonder why I created those injuries in the first place. Why not create a training program according to expectations? Wouldn’t that be easier? My answer is that thought does not create. My subjective awareness in conjunction with my objective awareness is what creates. It seems as if I am only aware of what I create at the moment of its creation. That being the case, I have to trust that what I am creating is part of the perfect process of getting me what I want.

I also know that I have tended to rush things. It has been a pattern of mine. So, if the process of training for a marathon says increase mileage no more than 10% per week, I would increase by 15%. If the standard wisdom was to do one speed workout per week I would do two. See the pattern here? The process that I have created thus
far in running my sub 4-hour marathon has brought it own gifts, the greatest of which was its teaching to slow down, to stop pushing and forcing energy. The pushing and the forcing actually opposes that which I desire to create. I have also learned to finally listen to my body’s communications to me. It wasn’t saying, “Bill you can’t run this sub 4-hour marathon.” It was say, “Bill, trust me. Listen to me, but do not judge what I am doing. I will do your bidding, but this is how it will come about, effortlessly.”

I’ll keep you posted.

Bill Marshall