My girlfriend and I drove to Santa Cruz, where we planned to exercise together. She would ride her bike while I ran 20 miles. But through a strange miscommunication, we got separated near the start and didn’t see each other all day. Curious.
I ran for four hours. Starting in Capitola, I headed north along the ocean for two hours, then turned around about a mile past the famous surf spot called Steamer Lane.
It was tough. I’ve done long runs the last four weekends, and the Santa Cruz pavement hammered my legs.
Just after the turnaround, I was trying to rise above the relentless concrete and the weary sense of time dragging on. For the first two hours, I had tried to stay in the harmony zone, and it was good preparation, because the focus I generated was now helping my efforts to go deeper inside.
I tried talking to God, but felt little inspiration. I needed to do more than mouth the words – something that would come from the heart. A momentary spurt of feeling guided me to sing silently, but my trashed body made it difficult to sing from the sweet place in my heart. Before long, I sensed that it would be better to stop singing and simply “tune my heart” bit by bit – sing a short phrase, a fragment, and find the parts of the songs that felt sweet, then run on the beach for a while and whistle, hum, and sing again, lightly strumming my heartstrings until I could find that sweet place.
And it worked. The last hour and a half of the run was wonderful. It was brutal to run on the pavement. My body was trashed, but I seemed to have found a new way of tuning in to spirit. And how blissful it was, even though my body was wasted and my mind was fried. I found that by following those hints, those small wisps of right, true feeling, I could get into that sweet place in my heart and stay there, the original, pure child of God, and feel His wonderful sweetness. I could decide everything from that point, whether I should run a little faster, look around, or get mad when I wandered down a cul-de-sac for two blocks on wasted legs.
I can’t imagine that running could be sweeter unless it were more of the same. I’ve had many and varied joys as a runner. I’ve enjoyed God through the instruments of body, feeling, will, and mind, but nothing came close. Looking back, I find it strange how often I’ve found inner communion amid surroundings that were sterile, even ugly: riding a lurching, noisy bus through downtown Honolulu, or slogging the paved streets of Santa Cruz.
Back at the truck, I was relieved to find that my girlfriend wasn’t upset, that she’d had a wonderful day and was just delighted that we’d found our way back together. We had dinner at Dharma’s, a wonderful natural foods restaurant in Capitola, and as we yakked and laughed I continued to feel a warmth of joy.
Learning to run in the harmony zone has opened doors to many wonderful experiences. Good things begin when I’m able to get into that sweet place in my heart. Sometimes God guides me to run fast; other times there’ll be an opening to a deep place in spirit, as at Santa Cruz. Often, there’s just a lovely sense of harmony. Always, when I’m running in that state, the people I pass treat me differently – they’re open and friendly – I think perhaps because I’m feeling an inner oneness with all. I’m glowing with happiness. Love wants to share itself, because that’s its nature, and I reckon people instinctively understand.
I wouldn’t dream of repeating that route in hopes of recapturing the experience. As I mentioned, I’ve enjoyed inner communion in ugly places, on buses, planes, trains, and walking around in big cities. I don’t know why that is; perhaps it’s because the ugliness drives me to try all the harder to find a beautiful place within.
