Paula, Thanks for noticing this profound and often ignored connection between depth and my most-personal physical container, the body. Regardless of our age or circumstance, if we choose to go on a depth interior journey all we have to do is begin testing and stretching and challenging the the apparent limits placed on us by the body. If any of us doubt the ability of our bodies to deliver us into an immediate encounter with Ultimate Reality, all we have to do is hold our breath!!!

You might also appreciate the recent blog by Sue Aquila, a member of the Interior Mythos Journeys community and an extraordinary Iron Man Triathlete competitor and coach. You will find it on the Blog section dated 8/29/2011.

I am initiating this new thread on the topic of a book I am writing. I plan to spend about a third of my working hours in 2012 finishing a book I have been working on for several years. The Enigma of Consciousness is its title. It might be described as a philosophy of religion explaining why religion has always been a critical part of human society and what the role of religion can be in the future.

The topics of this book are very similar to the topics discussed on this site. And I believe it will be both fun and helpful to me to discuss these topics with any or all of you.

Here is how we do that: I have completed an advanced draft of Part One and put it up on the Realistic Living web site along with its current table on contents and the introduction. Each of the seven chapters of Part One is very brief, only a few pages, and the topic is The Enigma of Truth.

So how can you participate? Download any part of the book that interests you and make comments, suggestions, critiques, raise questions, whatever you want. All feedback will help me. And any general discussion in this thread will also help me as well as be interesting for it own sake.

Here is the URL to access this book: http://www.RealisticLiving.org/PDF/Enigma/

You will see a list of 9 files, click any one of them and a brief pdf document will download to your computer.

Just add your comments to this thread. Or if you would rather e-mail me, you can do so at: jgmarshall@cableone.net

I am not asking for detailed editing, but if you want to do that, please site chapter, page number, paragraph number, and line number for each correction.

Also, I am anticipating that our dialogue on these exciting topics will be a rewarding experience.


Grace and Peace (transformative happenings and boundless equanimity),

Gene Marshall

For Realistic Living resources, check out our web site: http://www.RealisticLiving.org
And view our blog: http://www.RealisticLiving.org/blog/

To read our PDF files you need a PDF reader.
You can download an adobe acrobat reader free by going to:
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
edited by Gene Marshall on 11/26/2011
edited by Don Cramer on 1/17/2012
edited by Don Cramer on 1/17/2012

Jim,

Thank you for this great question.

The question you raise is much bigger than we are going to touch here, so I will start by saving the “science” part for another time.

So the question is, “why athletics?”

Why might athletics be a critical current source for language and poetry to inform a Relevant Contemporary Mythos; a story that can resonate today?

Athletics is, on the surface, an absurd and unlikely place to look for language that may reveal the depth of human experience in our time. This has to be nuts! Mythic Language has always been the domain of this or that depth-seeking tradition; but “ESPN?” C’mon!

Underneath this question of “athletics” is really a deeper question. This deeper question is that of “the body;” and, what do I do with it?”

Nikos Kazantzakis provides a good introduction to the subject:

I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy, prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed. I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness into light. —Nikos Kazantzakis

The body is our first classroom when we come into this world. The body is our last classroom when we depart. It is within the body we learn every other lesson we encounter within the span of a lifetime. It is within the body’s framework that we experience every experience we ever experience.

Consciousness is biological; or, the dynamics of which consciousness of consciousness of consciousness occur are within the container of a body. I ignore this reality at my own peril. If you don’t think this is true, try getting a fever. I can observe what happens to the quality of my consciousness as my core temperature rises. Physical pain is another guide that is always ready to reveal the link between my body and the container of focus, attention, and consciousness. Popular culture likes to reflect on the mind-body connection. Yet, those exploring a deeper path understand that the missing component is the mind-body- freely chosen relationship element.

The last 20 years, from the early 1990’s until now, have been the first time in human history that we as a species have actually focused some of our highest science, research, and scholarship on the subject of physical exercise and its impact and relationship to the human brain. The material coming back from this endeavor is fascinating, radical, offensive, uplifting, and revolutionary. As tempting as it is, I will not pursue this topic here. However, the best summary on the subject I have encountered is the book Spark by John J. Ratey, M.D. of Harvard.

But let’s get back to “Athletics and Language.”

I use the “5 P’s” as criteria for selecting acceptable poetry for a Relevant Contemporary Mythos; or appropriate depth mythic language in today’s setting. I practice the 5 P criteria in how I talk to myself.

1) Planetary – Is this language global and universal and can anybody, anywhere grasp it if they choose to?

2) Plausible – Is the word or language or poetry congruent with a 21st Century Quantum Scientific understanding; in such a way that I do not have to suspend my rational grasp of reality and revert to a 2-story scientific model and worldview that is at least 4000 years old in order to grasp the word or poetry being used?

3) Present Tense – Does this word help me to grasp the “here” and the “now” or does it invite me to a separation that is “non-local?”

4) Personal – Does this word or poetry connect me with the “I am” that I am in such a way that I can practice it? Can I own, embody, posture, presence, and practice the understanding? I have little interest in what someone “believes.” I have great interest in what someone chooses to practice.

5) Profound – Does this word or poetry assist me in my interior journey to connect with the One Awesome Unspeakable Reality at the center of existence and in which all things cohere and within which “I live and move and have my being?”

Athletics provides a laboratory for exercising all of the above. 1) Athletics is global; it has the attention, participation, and passion of the entire world and on the playing field of the planet there are no language barriers. Everyone everywhere has a body and every body has the possibility of intentional movement (athletics). 2) There is nothing more scientifically valid or measurable than that which the physical body performs. 3) Athletic activity only happens in the “here” and the “now.” 4) Most of us seem to identify significantly with our bodies. Many understand themselves only and exclusively within the context of a body; this is “personal.” 5) The “runner’s high” is now a well-known phenomenon. Athletics, for many, provides a portal for connecting with a realm of Oneness and Wholeness they do not experience in any other dimension of their lives.

George Sheehan, the Cardiologist who for many years wrote a column for Runner’s World magazine said:

What the runner’s face shows is not boredom but contemplation, which Thomas Aquinas described as a human’s highest activity save one—contemplation plus putting the fruits of that contemplation into action.
—George Sheehan, M.D.

Athletics today is providing a rich laboratory for solitary individuals and team configurations to generate and explore new language which is experientially valid and helpful in containing deep relationships one might wish to nurture and sustain.

Intentional “self-talk” and the use of “affirmations” have become standard fare for coaches and sports psychologists. When I was directing an Inner Athletics program for NCAA Division I athletes it became clear that, after a certain point, the only place to go for an edge to move performance to a higher level was “within.” Most of us experience the same thing when we run out of external realities to mix up or change around in some quest for “happiness” or to “fix” the issues in our external lives. Finally, we have to dive into our freedom and confront the possibility of choosing a new relationship to the “here” and the “now” and the “given.”

It is my observation that we each need our own tennis court, or swimming pool, or track, or a block in our neighborhood around which to walk…..but, we need an arena within which to embody and practice the postures we have chosen to the One Encounter that transforms all things. No high minded or abstract or uplifting concept, from my perspective, is finally valid unless it can be demonstrated on the track, on the court, or in the pool, or somewhere upon the playing field of real everyday life.

Over 40 years ago, when I was 14 years of age, my mind was abducted by a cult of wise teachers cloistered in an Institute in a Westside ghetto in Chicago. They taught me an alternative perspective on life and a totally different way of living and being in the world. From this alternative perspective and revolutionary style of life I have never recovered; I have never escaped – nor do I intend to now.

These wise teachers taught me the four components of a Journey of Depth:

1) An Encounter with Ultimate Reality – which confronts me with my absolute Limits, and paradoxically, my Limitlessness.

2) A Myth or story is forged about that Encounter in order to hold the interior relationship I choose to embody and rehearse toward the Reality behind the Encounter.

3) The Style I choose to present to the world as a result of this Encounter. In this regard I have two fundamental options: a) an authentic posture acknowledging and embracing the Reality behind by the Encounter or b) an inauthentic posture denying, escaping, avoiding, dismissing, or rebelling against the truth and Presence of the Encounter.

4) The Service I choose to affirm my expenditure in the time and space and the human community of which I am a part.

Athletics and the Classroom of the Body allow us to radically and personally ground all of the above dynamics creating a fertile environment within which to grow contemporary poetry and new existential and experience-based language.

The body is a great place to precipitate an immediate and existential encounter with Limit. If you are not certain if this is true, hold your breath. Start Now!....... Don’t breathe………keep holding your breath. Very soon you will begin to encounter a Limiting Reality. You will be convinced of its truth; of its presence and its reality. You can also accomplish this by walking or rolling your wheel chair around the block. Then do it again; but faster. Then do it again; but faster. Then do it again; but faster. At some point you will become breath-less and begin to sweat. If we are still viable as a physical body, regardless of our size, color, shape, age, culture, location on the planet, or anything else, we can experience these athletic encounters. The Classroom of the Body is universal.

In sport, I learn to seek out the language that allows me to perpetually live in the “Teeth of Reality;” where I seek out the place of maximum tension and then learn the interior story, life practices, and posture that allow me to sustain being there achieving peak performance.

Intentional interior life journeys are commonplace among athletes in all sports and at all levels of play. Show me a high-performing athlete in any sport today and I will show you someone who is nurturing an intentional interior life; even if athletics is the only area of their life in which such intention plays a role.

It is the area of “Style” in athletics that has already generated a bonanza of great new mythic language and poetry and this process is still in its infancy. The question of choosing an authentic relationship to life and embodying such a relationship in a demonstrated style is something traditional depth-seeking traditions of the West have pointed to with the Supporting Myth poetry or Code Words beginning in an “H” and an “S.” After World War II, a young Hungarian, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, watched the dismantling of his family’s former aristocratic world and the destruction of many lives. He decided to immigrate to the United States to study the subject of “happiness.” As he pursued his research and academic path, he soon discovered that the fundamental pursuit that drives most human endeavor is not a quest for “happiness” so much as it is a connection in “Flow.” This “flow state” delivers one into an experience of connectedness where one’s body, mind, the environment, and the activity in which one is involved, all become one. The participant in such a flow state loses track of time and enters a state of timelessness, or, in athletic language, “tachypsychia.” One becomes so engrossed in the process in which one is engaged that a sense of “self” is lost. It is this “flow state” that is transformative. Most human beings, when confronted with such a conceptual framework, can tell you exactly where such a flow state is most likely to occur in their lives; in the garden, eating a good meal, socializing with friends, at the bowling alley, sitting on a mountaintop, making love, or wherever; but, they know.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi became a world-famous Professor at the University of Chicago and coordinated cross-cultural research projects on the conditions and the experience of “Flow” in collaboration with universities all over the planet. A wealth of research and material is now available on the subject and is packaged in universally acceptable academic research and language. Flow, published in 1990 by Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, is a classic primer on the subject. Flow in Sports was published in 1999 and brings much of the theory into very practical athletic application. This is a huge reservoir of great material and I will not pursue it here, except to say, the potential contribution to new poetry and clarifying jargon for a Relevant Contemporary Mythos is immense. A recent link which provides a short overview of Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s work can be accessed at: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/flow/.

At this stage of my journey, I am convinced there are only two states in life: “Flow” and “self.” When I am caught in “self,” I can be certain I am not in “Flow.”

Finally, when engaging the body in athletics, at some point the reality of a world of other players becomes apparent and “the game” or mission appears. As with most everything else in life, a game is engaged solitarily or on a team or, more likely, in both configurations at once; and thus is the question raised: “How do I play with others?” Or as Dr. Sheehan observes:

How am I? The race is the answer, the only answer. The runner is truly a person dissatisfied with the status quo. Her object is to reach goals that are continually being reset. And she is only aware of where she is and who she is when she is challenged. Like one driven, she is everlastingly beset by doubt and just as everlastingly asking to be tested. —George Sheehan, M.D.

All of the great depth-seeking traditions have made the engagement of the body central to the depth relational practices they have promoted. Such practices include fasting, asceticism, Yoga, the wake, and countless others. All of these practices make use of the finite body vessel as a gateway to connection with that which is Ultimately Real and Infinite. To encounter a diversity of reflections on this subject, visit the Story Circle Curriculum section of www.storywarrior.net and view the VOICES under “Body Vessel.” A couple of statements from the VOICES are worth rehearsing to close this reflection:

There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual [relational] intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body.
—The Buddha
from the Satipatthana Sutta


I traveled the whole world looking for adventure, and found it in my own body. —George Sheehan, M.D.
edited by Michael D. May on 4/17/2011

Paula, Please consider posting the Blog message here so that we can review it (the Journal messages are personal and password protected). Thanks, Michael