<em>Photo: Grateful thanks to Ian Macharia on Unsplash.</em>
Joe Henderson, founding editor of Runner’s World, told me how he met some of the world’s best runners from Kenya during the week before the New York Marathon. Joe was able to go for an easy run with the Kenyans, though he was in his fifties and much less talented than the Africans.
He reported that the Kenyans hadn’t the slightest urge to go “just a little” too fast during their easy run, and how he was able to keep up easily and have a nice conversation.
<em>Click image to browse Joe’s books on Amazon.</em>
The next day, although they left the hotel together, the Kenyans accelerated to a pace much faster than Joe’s abilities – all of them, that is, except for one runner who, feeling that his body wasn’t ready to go hard, matter-of-factly strolled back to the hotel.
The story reminded me of something I learned from Swami Kriyananda. Two things, actually – that we must deal with ourselves exactly as we are, and that we should never meditate, pray, or serve from a sense of grinding duty, but that we should do only what we are able to do with cheerful willingness. Swamiji once told a group of new Kriyabans: “You shouldn’t try to live the way I do – it wouldn’t even be appropriate for you to try.”
One thing that sets the world-leading Africans apart is that they aren’t hypnotized by numbers. If an American runner feels that his body is a little “off,” he will more likely continue the run regardless, driven by a need to “make the numbers,” and hypnotized by his training plan, and thus waste energy on a meaningless run that he could have invested for greater benefit on another day.
Paramhansa Yogananda once scolded a disciple, Mrinalini Mata, when she was a young nun, “You didn’t meditate this morning.” Mrinalini protested. “But Master, I meditated a whole hour!” The Guru was unimpressed. “You should have meditated a half-hour.” We derive the greatest benefit from what we can do in a spirit of cheerful self-offering.
Mike Kosgei, who coached the Kenyan national team for 13 years, explained the difference: “Africans start running, mostly slowly, and then they accelerate. For them, it is a kind of a game. If you want to be successful, you have to enjoy your training. When you take it too seriously, it damages your thinking and puts you down. But if you go and say, okay, it is a game, man, let’s do it, it’s fun – then you will not use up a lot of mental strength.”
Cheerful, even-minded willingness and joyful self-offering go hand in hand with the greatest success, starting where we are. And that’s the point, isn’t it? It can be painful as the dickens to understand who we really are, and accept ourselves that way, so we can get down to business and start doing the spiritual work that will expand our awareness and give us increasing inner freedom and happiness. I think that was the hardest part of Swami Kriyananda’s training for many of us to endure — those moments when, in his presence, we felt our most shamefully hidden tender flaws and deficiencies mercilessly exposed to our awareness. At those times, we felt as if we were suddenly lifted from the earth’s surface, tumbling directionless, no longer able to see, much less grasp, our customary mental anchors, and orient ourselves in our familiar inner space.
<em>Kenyan runner Mercy Cherono</em>
Swamiji never disciplined us beyond our ability to benefit and learn. Gradually, painfully, I realized that his seemingly ruthless discipline was actually an expression of the greatest love, because it always resulted (if we didn’t rebel) in taking us to that part of ourselves where we were happiest and could grow. In his last years he described that “place” in the simplest possible terms, recommending that we aspire to a consciousness of “humble service” and “childlike devotion.”
I think the lesson is clear for artists. As a writer and photographer, I can’t count the times when I started a project and found myself thrashing about, lost and flailing, going nowhere. I knew the work had worth, sometimes greatly so. But I was disoriented in time and space, without direction. It was only after grounding myself with deliberate discipline to become first firmly focused on doing just one thing, the right thing for this moment, that I began to get my bearings. At the start, the right thing was to open myself inwardly to a greater reality that could accomplish wonderful things through me, if I would only let it, and invite it. It required that I become humble, receptive, and childlike before that inspiration. The reward was a meaningful discipline, and a wonderful sense of inspired creative flow in service to something, or someone, outside the narrow boundaries of my ego-attachments, my lazy desires, and my diffuse indifference.
Mind you, I was never sculpting magnificent white marble cathedral statuary. I was going about my business as a utility photographer, taking pictures at volunteer work days, or earlier in my career at track meets, swim meets, road races, gymnastics competitions and the like. Or, as a writer, I would have a vague idea for an article, a head full of ideas that might help others, but not in their present inchoate, floating and undirected condition. It was only after I gave myself to the disciplined process of getting myself out of the way that I was able to feel confident. The article or the photos didn’t emerge fully formed; it only required that I start writing the first words that came to mind, with a firm commitment to write “listeningly.”
Here’s a short account from a book of my experiences, Swami Kriyananda Stories:
I remember a gathering at Swamiji’s where I walked in the door and immediately felt completely out of sorts, my ego suddenly torn from its usual moorings. I’m put in mind of a Paul Simon song.
There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I’m falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means.
– Paul Simon, “Graceland”
I was desperate to be accepted, to be acknowledged, to be found worthy and praised and encouraged and have my poor little trembling ego stroked and comforted. And, instead, in Swamiji’s ego-less presence, I found the rivets of my psychic framework being ripped out, my cloak of self-identity torn to shreds as I fell tumbling in turmoil without firm ground to stand on.
After the gathering, I stumbled out into the night. Trudging over the hill to the Village I reeled in confusion. Who was I? Where were my feet? Where was the earth? I went to the small temple above the market and stayed up all night, meditating and praying for answers.
Finally, as the dawn began to lighten the sky, I saw myself in a kind of waking vision. There was Rambhakta, walking self-importantly into Swamiji’s house, expecting everyone to like him, craving Swami’s approval. He looked like a complete clown, swaggering under the weight of his bloated ego!
I suddenly saw the hilariousness of it all, and I began to laugh aloud from the depths of my being. It was so funny!
The “answer,” I realized, lay in childlike devotion and humble service.
The tests didn’t abate, of course. My ego didn’t suddenly melt away amid clouds of cosmic laughter. Time after time, my self-focus returned, holding me in its sere and unhappy claws.
I continued to find it extremely hard to be in Swami’s presence. Around him, there was something in the air that was wholly incompatible with self-regard. It was an atmospheric mixture that offered no sustenance to our ego-identifications.
After yet another ego-flattening event at Swamiji’s, I walked home in the evening gloom, feeling the excruciating pain of having my identity reduced to ashes and blown away by cosmic winds. I could only pray with childlike simplicity, “But I only want to serve! That’s all I want to do. I just want to serve!”
Instantly my confusion vanished. I had found the answer.
I could tell a thousand stories. Maybe I will, but only if there’s a sense that it might help.