“I enjoy the race most, all its good qualities and everything when I am completely down. That amazes me every time. I had zero energy, I was walking all day and then everything came to me. All the sympathy from the other runners. How I love this race. All the memories from the past. Wow so inspiring. It is not inspiring to be down but somehow you are more inward.” Stutisheel
This morning I found myself slipping spontaneously into the same light easy pace and rhythm that Stutisheel was running. We have run many miles here together over the past 9 years and also had many conversations. As each runner has their own distinct form and style of running each also has their own unique way of trying to interpret just what it is that brings them here and makes them do this most remarkable thing.
Even if I were to take each and every explanation I have heard about the Self Transcendence race over the years sifted and sorted through all the enlightened and thoughtful insights and images I doubt any of it would really convey what it is actually like to be here. What it is to run effortlessly along on a sun bright day with a man from the Ukraine who is nipping at the heels of 2000 miles and with a smile and a nod is still 3 carefree weeks away from another 1100 more miles.
The running in these drowsy early dawn hours feels effortless and I literally have to tear myself away lest I be captured up in his cheerful relentless orbit and never ever leave. It is in these sublime and deeply moving personal moments that I feel the soul deep impact of what the Self Transcendence race is.
When its world and it message resonates within me with crystal clarity. That I have made, if only briefly, a leap from my rather ordinary mundane life into the one the runners inhabit totally.
Sample the ambrosial experience that sustains and illumines them here at every moment. Deliberately push aside all thoughts and notions and simply observe the profound capacity of the race to uplift, to inspire, and to transform anyone who enters its always wide open door of universal acceptance.
And yet these sweet moments are as fleeting as the twinkle and glow of a firefly here on a hot July night. I will cover barely a mile while Stutisheel goes on and on. The rest of the day I bask in the glowing memory of sharing a few laps with him.
Replay the words and thoughts and feelings that continued to swirl around inside. To recall what it was like to be immersed in a luminous sea of unlimited divine possibilities. Eventually the call and snare of the harsh material world would once again draw me back up onto its o so familiar pebbled shore. Yet a hope within still burns bright that maybe tomorrow I can step away from the hard defined reality that binds us, and once more freely journey just a little farther and deeper into the life of the beyond.
The Beyond
Is in my heart’s cry
For my nature’s transformation
And
For the constant Satisfaction
Of my Beloved Supreme.
Sri Chinmoy, Silence-Seed And Sound-Fruit, Agni Press, 1975.
Pradeep shows one of his magic potions.
Later today Pushkar will complete 2000 miles
Sarvagata is working through some hip trouble but still completed 72 miles yesterday
Karnayati picks a counting shift
Start Day 31
Grahak seems to have found the formula to keep up a streak of good days. Yesterday he ran 75 but today could be the hottest and most difficult day thus far.
His daily average is now 71.673 miles a day. He is less than 1000 miles from the goal.
“I feel good. The first half of the race except for a few days I was very stable, and I was quite satisfied with the first half. But then 10 days ago came a hip problem. The right hip. It took me 10 days to work on it. So now I believe it is gone. So I will run again.” Yesterday he completed 60 miles. “Yesterday was the first normal day after the hip problem.”
“I was running with Atmavir recently and he said, here are all the runners making a lot of progress over the years. Many runners are coming back. We see that people, not only runners. Everybody is manifesting their own best parts. Their own good and divine qualities. That is just perfect.”
While we are running this morning we pass by the Enthusiasm Awakeners and they give Stutisheel and enthusiastic applause as he passes. A lap earlier he and Grahak and performed a little skit. He says that he doesn’t understand exactly what the joke was but his role was clear, to play a doggie. “I was a doggie. Grahak said something, and they laughed.”
This year he has abandoned working on his regular blog and feels this has not only simplified his life in many ways but also has made his running more enjoyable.
He has many sweet memories of the race over the years and he says a recent addition to the race of a projection screen that plays photos of past races on the fence at night has really inspired him. “They are showing us Sri Chinmoy being at the race, and many times I see myself. I see the difference. That was that time and this is this time.”
“The outer appearance may change, but the inner presence of the race is even stronger. Sure I remember many times how Sri Chinmoy used to smile, and suddenly you were uplifted. From that positive push you became higher than your pain and your suffering, and all that physical limitation can offer you. I see in this positive approach. To be positive, to be stronger than your fatigue and your down times. This is the way to do the race, and I just like it. To be joyful and smiling even when you are dying.”
Click to play interview
Click to play Russian message
One of the flower maidens Pratibha and Baladev and the sun
 |
 |
“The tendency is to go down. They are adjusting to the new reality of being on the run.” Pedro is one of the morning helpers and has been a constant presence since the very first day. The other day he took everybody’s weight as it was the end of the 4th week of the race. By checking through his book he is able to determine just how much weight each runner has lost. Sarvagata appears to have lost the most, He is 4kg lighter than when he started.
“The race really changes their moods. But we can see that the top runners are very focused guys. All of them are they need to be. They have a goal and they go for it.”
“It makes me more focused also, because of all the tasks that need to be done, and more in the moment. This is what I am noticing. So being focused and living in the moment are really connected. So if you are thinking about the future the task does not get done so well, and if you are thinking of the past you are not in the moment.”
“If you use Sri Aurobindo’s definition that all life is yoga. It is transformation. I was talking to Rupantar yesterday. This whole block is transformation, and these guys are the most subjected to the transformation. And those working and helping, and counting are also having their own transformation.”
Click to play interview
Nemi Recites the Poem of the Day
 |
 |
 |
 Enthusiasm Awakeners….Click to Play….parvati 2 |
There are hundreds and thousands of sweet, meaningful and significant words and phrases in our dictionary, but ‘the Beyond’ surpasses them all. We have to live in the Beyond. If someone wants to live without food, he is a fool. If someone wants to live without air, he is a greater fool. If someone wants to live without the life of the Beyond, he is the greatest fool.
Sri Chinmoy, A Hundred Years From Now, Agni Press, 1974.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
thank you for wonderful entry!
Guru’s words on the life of the beyond are just perfect – that is what we are experiencing here. There is a zen saying – when you till the square inch, you till the whole field. These heroes are no doubt tilling a very large and fruitful field. Much gratitude to all
Kaushalya