Go the Extra Mile

Go the Extra Mile

I am writing this post in “real time” as I take a hike, dictating to myself observations. I have made a few choices already on this short walk to demonstrate “doing what the machine does not wish to do.”

At the very start, the inertia in my lower centers or machine resists taking a walk today; so, I am walking. Please join me. In choosing a direction to walk, I resist the attraction to walk with my face toward the sunshine, which is my preference. As an experiment, I turn around and take ten steps walking backwards - a sneaky way to get the sun on my face and appease the instinctive center and calm the “beast.”

I am beginning to walk up a steep hill right now and my machine’s inclination is to slow down. Accordingly, I take notice of what the machine wants to do, and I begin walking at a faster pace. Just as my machine starts to become tired and breathe heavily an ‘I’ comes to remind me of an exercise to only do one thing at a time. It is remarkable - yet not surprising - how the machine brings that ‘I’ into that exact moment as I feel fatigue. The ‘I’ surfaced precisely when it benefitted the machine and could undermine my goal to walk faster and write this post at the same time. However, it is true that I am doing two things at once and for the purpose of this walk and this experiment, I will suspend that exercise.

I now notice that my moving center establishes a faster pace as I come up the hill and it wants to continue walking at that faster pace on the level sidewalk. So, I playfully slow down, and I am trying to look with awareness at the world around me. I come to a stoplight and press the walk button. Normally when the signal changes and it is safe to cross, I would walk across the street. Bringing patience to the moment and doing what the machine does not wish to do, I decide to wait for a second cycle before crossing just to be more present at the stoplight.

I have walked this same path many times before. Normally, I walk very efficiently on this route. According to my Teacher, “Efficiency kills Third Eye.” To help involve my emotional center and to resist the momentum and efficiency of my moving center I decide to turn left and walk around a church - which is a longer deviation - where a dear friend of mine is buried. This makes me feel a sense of gratitude for being alive, being able to walk, and for the gift of friendship.

As I continue again, I notice a childhood game and an old impulse of avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk, so I let my legs take their stride, allowing them to step on the cracks and notice my machine’s resistance. None of my choices on this walk are morally driven, nor are they a type of punishment for my natural inclinations. Doing what the machine does not wish to do can be a playful way to encourage presence and stimulate a deeper self-awareness, reaching toward Higher Centers - a way to actively participate more consciously in my own life.

This awareness and playfulness results in noticing the woman who just walked in front of me, whose sweatshirt gave me the title for this post. It says, “Go the Extra Mile.” My awareness and consciousness are worth going the extra mile to live more fully. Doing what the machine does not wish to do is going the extra mile of adding presence to as many moments as I can.

Now my glance wants to look at the cars on my left rather than the beautiful forest on my right, so I do what my machine would not normally do. For fun, I close my left eye to bring my awareness to the beauty on my right and to myself walking in it. I feel like a child at play. The beauty of the tall, bare mature trees in February and “the preponderance of sky appearing through its branches,” triggers a remembrance of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem called Autumn Tree. He goes on to describe the leafless branches, “Now its whole interior is an avenue of stars.”

I hear hammers pounding, lumber slapping down on the floor of a construction site, planes flying overhead, the trickle of a stream; my eye now catches sight of the green holly with red berries, the bright, blue sky gilded with sunshine, and I can smell nature’s organic February fragrance. Without going the extra mile, I think to myself all of this would be vague or completely missed in waking sleep or the second state of consciousness. A friend of mine recently suggested an exercise to touch a tree and say, “thank you.” I do so and feel the rough bark and give it thanks. Taking it a few steps further, I walk down to the stream and touch the wintry water and say, “thank you.”

Sometimes choosing objects to count helps self-remembering. I cross a road with zebra stripes. There are eight stripes. To interrupt the machine, which is starting to hurry, I sit down on a nearby bench and watch the dog walkers pass by. The breeze is a little stronger now, coming directly at my face and the sun is warming my back. The machine generates thoughts like, “I’m almost to the point where I can turn around and have the sun in my face.” Doing what the machine does not wish to do can simply mean resisting thinking about the future and past and trying to be present, to see what is truly here right now, hearing the chickadees, cars, barking dogs, planes, Blue Jays, the babbling creek, and not wishing to be anywhere else while perceiving myself as more than an extra in this movie scene.

My teacher advises us to try to choose the higher right. This means we choose ‘I’s or activities that will bring us closer to Higher Centers. This is what it means to do what the machine does not wish to do. The machine chooses sleep - the path of least resistance. The observer needs to enter, providing clever guidance to make wise choices. The vessel we live in is our cocoon and we are working inside of it to emerge as the butterfly. Not in future or past moments, but in this moment. Our Teacher says, “You are not the machine, but you are in a machine that you can use to produce presence.”

The stream is sparkling in my eyes, and I am reminded of William Shakespeare’s sonnet, where he describes the sun “Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.” I realize that the “heavenly alchemy” is visible because I am now turned toward the sun. The creek is flowing toward me, and the sun is shimmering on the ripples of water. When I turn back and look downstream, the “heavenly alchemy” of glistening light disappears.

“A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.” ─ Confucius

Walking the path back home is quite steep. This time I observe my hands on my hips as I become tired, so instead of walking faster I establish myself walking with my hands hanging comfortably at my side, bringing my awareness to my aim of remembering myself. I emerge out of the forest trail onto a residential street. There are only six zebra stripes at the crosswalk … and a little further, ten zebra stripes – the road is wider than the last. Finally, at the next crosswalk, I reach to press the walk button, and decide to press it with my left elbow. This time, I step across twelve zebra stripes as I return home.

The last resistance I observe is that I reach for my keys in my pocket three blocks before reaching my door and then again one block before. Going the extra mile widens our awareness and consciousness so I resist pulling out the keys until I am finally standing directly in front of my door. The key is to choose the higher right and go the extra mile to perpetually evoke Higher Centers.

My Forest Trail

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