I am a Warrior...

I got it! The mosquito stopped buzzing and the circle is no longer on my belly... I really (finally) got it! Having no mind is not about having no mind, it is having all mind... All the times that I was supposed to feel the wind and to concentrate on my breathing and to have no mind... I got it... It is the awareness of everything so that it just IS, and then it just ISN'T... It's not running from your demons, but is it not facing them either. It is more like letting them wrap around you and move through you so that you can in turn move through them and then past them... I get the water and the air and the twig and the stick and the stone...

Course I had to get it at the gym at 1:30 in the morning... Grinning and crying like an idiot, my face beyond flushed from being on the elliptical for 90 minutes, my shirts soaked completely through... The guys in there must have thought I was nuts... (At least the guys that work out at that time of night don't look at anyone or anything... They really are there to work out... And I was sweating so much you probably could not tell about the tears... So I was likely just some chick who was pushing her workout as hard as they were...)

I went to the gym to run from my demons... I call it running like a hamster in a habitrail... And the more I ran the deeper into those demons I fell... All the stress I have been carrying around with me for the past couple of years as I ran form city to city has been following me... Building up, getting bigger and bigger, until I was wound so tight I could hardly move, I was like a deer caught in the headlights of the nightmare I had been living... The health scare I have been dealing with for the past two month has put a lot of things into perspective, but it too is a demon, the kind that gets up inside you and festers, eating away at you like the cancer that was staring me in the eyes, a huge weight upon my chest, so that I could not breathe. The unknowns and unexpected that caught me off guard this week filtered into my brain, spinning it up until I could not shut the voices and what-ifs out, twisting my stomach into knots... Just like I was, inside and out...

So I ran... I took out restraining orders and hid... And my demons followed me... I faced the possibility of death and changed my lifestyle. I came at things straight up and head on... But my demons crawled up inside me... So I let it all go and placed my faith and trust in discovering self and finding real love... But the demons persisted... They wrapped about me like a smokey fog...

And so I ran... I went to the gym and climbed onto the elliptical. I held onto the handles and closed my eyes. And I ran. I ran until it hurt, until I thought I could not run any more. And I still ran... I ran until the words and thoughts jumbled up in my brain with the confusion of the other noises that surrounded me. The clink of the weights, the whir of the machines, the pounding of my heart, the music playing on my MP3, the ringing of my ears... I kept running until I could not longer filter any of it. Until I no longer cared... Until nothing was important. And then suddenly it was like time stood still. It was as if it was everything and nothing, separate and yet together like a strange symphony...

And then I could breathe... All those times that I could not multi-task in training did not matter. I could move and breathe... In through nose, out though mouth... I could feel the pain in my legs, but as if they were someone else's legs... I could see each thing, every detail, and nothing had to be processed. It was all there, and yet, it was all gone. It was just me. All those things, they were just things, just buzzing in my ear... Keeping me awake, haunting me... I was so busy being the stick, floating in the rapids, or the stone, sinking to the bottom, or the twig, bending so impossibly far... When I would get tired in the past, I was the leaf, being blown here and there, but never the water, never the air...

Tonight... Tonight I was air... My demons were as water, moving this way and that, going around and over and under... But I was air... I was everything and nothing...

Having no mind is not about wiping one's brain of all thought. It is not about being a blank space... It is the focus, the clarity, the space in between the spaces... It is being air...

So I ran... And I felt free... And it was... INCREDIBLE... And everything in the world seemed to loose all importance. It just is. It only will be whatever it is... And it does not matter.

And then I got it... What it was that was going on in that endless moment on the habitrail in the gym... And everything came rushing right back... And that made me laugh... My trainer says that when you are in the moment there is more than enough time for everything, that it is afterwards that time catches up with you... He is right...

I do not know what is around the next corner. But I am ready. I got exactly what it was that I wanted. I am fierce. I am adaptable... I can face anything. I can have no mind... I can breathe... I can be air... I am a warrior.