Spiritual Formation

First in the inventory, ‘attention to nothing’, Being. Can I pack enough silence for the journey? No-like water keep it fresh, scoop it daily by letting it overtake you.

Could be the day before some kind-a birth that will rock the know world–!

Yeah Noha (wishing happiness and prosperity-Navajo)

I mentioned earlier about taking store of things that will not be necessary for the journey. This is just me talking, but I have found ‘suffering’ to be of utmost importance at the initial stages of a journey. Once the asset of suffering has done its job, it needs jettisoning. This has nothing to do with pain that we will see as an unlikely friend where we are going-being a part of what we need to navigate.

Suffering I have found to be the greatest motivator to deep journeys. When I just can’t stand what I perceive as who I am and this ‘I’ is always where I go, then I need a new story. All your suffering will be found in your ego, the normal usage of ‘I’. It is here we keep our primordial error, misconception of who we are-ego. Albert Einstein called it the “optical illusion of consciousness”. It is here that we make all further misinterpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. The same man said basically, ‘we can’t expect to shift paradigm using the material from the old one’.

To journey inward it is imperative to be sick of suffering and ready for new tools, not of the mind-body that holds all you think your self to be.

Next I will look at how to observe ourselves getting ready for journey, so to know who we will be caring for on the trip.

It is important to keep things simple for the journey at hand. A few nice tools are necessary, if one has to many at your disposal, the mind stays to busy figuring out which to use. In fact at the beginning it will be important to trust body, gut, heart, kidney, anything but staying in your head, mind-organ. Your instincts will prove more accurate and comparable with sustained life than mind-life where we are going.

Tools as above can be used in small place or larger vista, one is only occupying and taking one step at a time, one moment per unit of time.

Many of us will be starting this journey later in life after we have had time to accumulate many physical, material, and psychological items. Soon we will look at this inventory, and see how we know what we will need to keep and what needs jettisoning for the journey.

Remember the main difference between ‘trip’ and ‘journey’ as we are using it in this series is the length of endeavor or duration. Mostly I will reference ‘inner travel’ with experience from ‘outer travel’-neither of which am I an expert, but neither will I speak of anything I have not personally experienced.

It’s hard to navigate, dark water is-even in the daylight, but its heavy laden with life. It never looks all that flashy on the outside, like something to avoid for the clear airbrushed version of your idea. It was in this kinda water early things happened, especially at the ‘edges’. So, if we venture to see where things started and what makes our hearts beat, go for the quite waters-the ‘still ones’.

It is here we will start the journey of the year after coming out of the desert in mid-year. I will lay trail for a rather prolonged trail run inward. No one has to go faster than they desire, it will be long and things will go bump in the night.

Happy trails.

I’m at the Point Loma Hostel in San Diego, California. I have finished this leg of my bicycle journey-Bastrop, Tx. To San Diego, Ca. I am happy about it all, all was not easy or fun-nor was it all suffering and torture.

This route has been done by quite a few folk by now, I couldn’t have had this “solo trip” without a lot of other folk.

Some of them as follows:

Mike McGee, D.V.M.- a Georgian veterinarian who biked around the entire U.S. circumference keeping a very through journal that was valuable and an inspiration.

Dan and Anne-the Alaskans that showed me excellent food could be prepared and shared in bike camps, rivaling some of the best of restaurants! Anne provides an unrelenting spirit of care and adoption to cyclists they have encountered their whole trip from Florida to California. Keeping tabs on their wherabouts and helping all remember having fun is paramount-this couple did that!

The “Serbian”(Puja?)-who brought gusto to the tier, and insight from his country along with a large heart for families of kids with cancer in Serbia. Introduced me to “wine-water”.

Nathan, Gregg-companions for a few days that would have been excruciating without them.

Patty [for letting me stay in the wildest R.V. Park I’ve ever seen-2 hrs sleep in a night of fear!], Pete[ for giving me a ride and filling me in on California politics], Frank [ for having the best bar and cafe in the California desert with the largest scorpion I’ve ever seen in my life( iPhone size!), Jesse[ for renewing my hope in the next generation-a biker with order!], truck drivers, 18 wheeler types and smaller, [who moved over, slowed to crawl on Cal 78, honked if needed, respected our place on the road …. 98 percent were looking out for our lives], the guy in car[ near Marfa he pulls over after I fought 25 MPH headwind all day and gave me water and granola bars-salvation!], the young Mexican boy who said I had a “sweet ride” [I felt pride for my Anama Cara, bike].

I am especially grateful for a personal crisis that open up a clearing where I could see more clearly what was important in life. I am thankful for a few folk who know me to a fault and love me in the dark and the light-these are the healers. A few will stick with you in these times-it only requires a few.

ANAM CARA-soul friend: the bike.

Summary of the bike trip from Texas to California:

I agree with Dr. Mike-“most people are good and helpful when your touring on a bicycle”. It seems most folk are bent toward helping when your down or in need.

Story: young biker runs out of water in the “dunes” area of hiway 78 in California. He is desperate and uses the universal distress signal for drinking water-holding a water bottle upside down and standing posed on the hi-way. Many people passed him, until a Mexican trucker stopped-rolling his window down tossing out bottles of cold water,Gatorade and a cold cantaloupe! Mercy comes.

Story: Jesse stands on a Texas road in need of help, many people pass his thumbs out self, till a Mexican driver stops and asks if he needs water and gives him and his buddy a ride to the next town. Mercy.

I think folk who have been thirsty before carry extra water, and are very prone to share with those who are thirsty. Mercy.

Aloneness: loneliness [not always together]

Many of us who enter the ride later in the season experienced a lot of aloneness and at times loneliness, the folk mentioned above broke that cycle in my ride. So many from so many countries, out to ride and experience the Southwest.

Strangers:

Leigh and Patty-among others-people who were not bikers who spoke and inquired, for no good reason, as to the nature of my bike adventure. Why ride your bike across country? Do you have a car? They were kind and open to the different.

Conclusion:

I left home without a real deep drive to do this trip, but the road provided the initiative to carry on the daily routines.

I was humbled by the weather enough to know I am mortal and do not have to do anyone’s journey but my own.

I missed certain people enough to know I can make it better in life with others-partner up.

It seems life is much like packing a touring bike. You may start off with lots of extra weight and supplies, but you will soon jettison all but the things dear and necessary to experience life. Fluff is over rated as a staple!

Grief is a natural part of living as a human, but men tend to cover much of it up . I know this is way over generalized, but bare with me. Long hours, days, weeks,and months spent outdoors gives one great opportunity to tend to some inner business-then some days are just survival till the water hole.

Thanks to all!

What You Have to Get Over

BY DICK ALLEN

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,

the blue one, especially.

Your first love rounding a corner,

that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,

you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance

before evening falls,

letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,

meaning “to proceed, to journey,

to travel from one place to another,”

as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,

the sun in the morning and the moon at night,

all those shadows of yourself you left behind

on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to

cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,

crawl over this ego or that eros,

then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning

“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen

or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,

you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness

where the sentinels stand

guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,

warned of the likes of you.

All I want is a piece of 18 inch asphalt outside the mainstream! Give me a tad.

Somewhere I place a bicycle caring what I need to finish this unprepared, but perfect trip. Just so the tires roll well.

You don’t have to wave or honk or even acknowledge me-unless you wonder, “why’s the old guy on a yellow loaded bike”?

Bushes are pleasant surprises! To do body business behind, to unfold the mat for day nap, eat some food-or semblance thereof.

These are the simple selfish wants of the day. The mind wants much more, but breath and the very next unwinding moment are its staple for stability during a time of “unending figure in loops”-they are all the same you know-the mind is so well built for that.

Now, is the time to leave Starbucks and pedal out a ways…never know what or who is out there, but I can bet-never been encounter before.

May all sentient beings be happy, healthy, and present.

NOTE: some urges put here are not proofed in the least, they come out un-calculated, and just are passing through. Any tidying up is whoredom.

After the continental divide crossing yesterday, I came over a few miles of uphill (again) to a wide space. This space was so big and full of desert colors I felt like a gnat on the landscape.

The day had been a mix of longing for home or some version of being held by the familiar and the awkwardness of being exposed to the “new”.

New= camping with 2 girls younger than my children-one from Germany, one from Israel, eating yogurt out of bike panniers 2 days old, drinking warm local IPA and liking it, being dismissed as an old homeless guy in stores because of my dress and smell, being lonely but not seeing it as something to fix, having time on bike alone to see all obsessiveness as self flagellation-as if thinking a different way would fix-minds do this when out from other folk.

Coming over the hill into big space-enough to take most of your breath away. Now, I suit up for a day of cycling in the desert with moments that come one at a time holding who knows what….

There is that “thing” there, the gradual semi-steep, almost 14 miles of slow leg spinning for 5 hours. Lots of bodies do it, but I wondered if my body was one of those or not. It had been so long since I had ask it to put out at altitude and near cardiac maximum output. I needed my head to do this, but mainly I need to breath in and out-letting anxiousness go.

My Alaskan and Serbian camp mates had encouraged me to look at this pass, the highest we would encounter on the Southern Tier, with curiosity. Can I do it? If so then do it, and come down the other side. If I couldn’t do it then turn and come down–find another route out of there. I was no longer boxed into a do or die situation, I had options. This was a valuable lesson of relaxing into the worst of my fears of this section-failure. Like Dan said for someone use to competing or having things turn out a certain way, it’s hard to “let it go” -relaxing into options, bail points, fail safes, just other ways of envisioning process.

What came after the pass was much worse physically than the pass. I spent nearly 12 hours on the bike that day-a long day. My counter parts, Alaskans and Serb cyclists,had been in camp a while when I got there. The Serbian paid me the biggest complement I could receive. He said, “to come in late and last is a sign of persistence and doggedness”. Dan would even say, “a tough ass bastard”( something to that effect in a good natured way). To me this was a healing time, time to encounter a pass and use something besides “detachment from the pain” and instead breath into it and look at every stroke-one slow stroke after another, like a worm gear going up the side of the mountain.

I’m still here in Silver City, New Mexico, visiting and gearing up for another segment of the ride west, but I’m not the same as before the pass. I’ve tried my repaired knee, my replaces toes, and my old lung capacity-they all said, “o.k., lets try this thing”.

This afternoon in Hillsboro, New Mexico with a dark beer at the only thing open in town-wine bar.

The ride into this town this morning was the hardest metal bike ride I have ever done! The wind was up to 30 plus gusting to whatever, it would blow you sideways for a ways.

I need water and rest. Last night was crazy windy and we were ill prepared for the magnitude of the winds and dust. It came in all the tents hole, the scorpions were seeking cover and the centipedes were crawling very fast!

I’m with some very interesting and experienced folk in camp tonight. The two Alaskans, Dan and Anne, then there is the Serbian cyclist who is raising money for a cause in Croatia. Many of the folk i have met have been in recent, my generation, wars. Many wars.

My legs are getting stronger, tomorrow in 20 miles the earth will rise over 4000 feet to 8200 feet, the air will thin, one pushing a bike will think about stopping, cursing the day he or she was born, say screw it and turn and go down hill, I will dream and think about a small gear ring up front (that waits for me in silver City), then -then-then right before one either vomits or does are the fore mentioned-you breath through your legs and ask-“where am I right now”? ? Then you realize your are where you have to be in your body that is pushing a load of food-water-supplies up and over the mountain.

I