I caught a taxi to Run and Become…!
Sri Chinmoy’s words have always inspired and resonated with me…‘Run to succeed in the outer world…Become to progress in the inner world’ – The running store ‘run and become’ was opened by Ongkar Tony Smith in 1982 – he had been a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy, and caught the ‘running bug’ from him….
Running as a meditation on the move has always been my orientation, right from the very beginning.
I read Jonathan Livingston seagull when I was sixteen years old… Jonathan gull’s stretch for excellence, from an orientation of letting go and witnessing his spirit express through the body, resonated with me immediately…
‘Your whole body (from wingtip to wingtip) is nothing more than thought itself in a form you can see, break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body too’
The other sentence that really struck me, was when Jonathon was teaching Fletch gull to fly better – and Fletch said ;
‘Are you saying I can fly’ and Jonathon replied
‘I am saying you are free’
Intrinsically, I knew then that we are all free and that the chains we drag around are self imposed, maybe we don’t know this and the lifetimes of karma have wrapped them round and around us
But the truth is we do all have the key to our freedom.
It is within us all.
But only we can uncover and discover this, through rigorous attention to clearing away everything that is not us
The programmes, the patterns, the adaptations, the beliefs, the dogmas, the scripts….
I was unaware that my realisation of the insights in these pages were not an orientation that everyone would embrace… My name was Julia Armstrong then, and having just started at Godalming sixth form college I was in the ‘A’ set because of my surname – this set was (naturally – the start of the alphabet!)) asked to do the first assembly – no one put their hand up – and so after a lengthy pause, I did!
Mr Collins our form tutor was very much relieved – he didn’t give me much of a brief, other than to say I could read out something I liked…
And so I read from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, to the 800 sixth formers who stood in front of me for their first assembly of the year…
Maybe it was heralding what was to come…
Me standing up and speaking, leading others to discover that was within them and what they already knew, if they looked within…
And so right from the beginning I wanted to run free, to express my spirit through the running step, and this running path became the perfect place for me to experience this, as well as see when I tied myself tightly in the chains of ‘should do, could do, ought to do better…!’
The attachment to time over distance became at times a painful chimera…
Whereas seeing how fast I could run for the joy of finding out was a delight…
The two got muddled and confused at times
But eventually I returned to where I first began, running as fast as I can, setting goals because it’s fun – seeing what is possible, whilst staying in the step…
Last Sunday Anadi and I travelled to Baker Street on the tube and joined Tracksmith – an independent clothing brand -for their long run; rather aptly name ‘The church of the long run’…
I wore my new Saucony endorphin that I bought a few days before in ‘Run and Become’…!
It was a great experience and I amused and surprised the group I was running with telling them that in the early days I ran without a watch, because I didn’t own one!
Before I left, I used to check the time on the clock in the dining room – and then race in at the end to see how long I’d been out for…
I’m still not that interested in data – although I recognise its value and enjoyment to many…But in essence, even within racing to run the best I can on a given day, I like my running to be
‘A meditation on the move’
An acceptance of what is….
