Running Down The Hill, I See I Am Free
This morning I rose early to post my blog and answer emails; I worked in the bathroom because Anadi ws still sleeping and so was the hotel... It was warm in there and surprisingly comfortable on the floor with my back against the lovely hot towel rail! I worked through my 'list' and then I was ready to run...
Outside was an exquisite frosty morning, sparkling bright and light; ‘my’ beautiful Buxted Park. I wanted to run again in the grounds I love so much; to visit again the path between the lakes where deer would sometimes appear; run between the magnificent trees that remained - the ones that survived the hurricane of 1987.
When I arrived here in 1988 there was still working parties meeting to clear the park, and assist in the recovery of a land that had been changed overnight; a wind had blown across our island, a wind so strong that many of the trees, even with their roots so deep in the ground had not been able to withstand its power.
We do not have many clothes for winter wear, but we found we had sufficient… Anadi ran in his shorts with a windproof jacket; I wore rain bottoms and a jacket, socks on my hands for gloves and a woolly hat for my ears!
We set off, up the drive, through the churchyard and down the long hill that I used to run repetitions up so many times.
‘What is it like being back here’? Anadi asked me… ‘I like it’ I said, ‘I have good memories of the time I lived here; running now in this park, it is like I have never left…’ The twenty nine year old ‘me’ is still circling these footpaths, running on this land… my future unfolding in the step; it is like the years in between have yet to happen and they are only a dream of a possible future…
I recounted to Anadi how this long hill from the church was a place of realisation for me. An understanding that all the aches and pains in my body, the chronic fatigue that I was still working through the vestiges of then (in my late twenties and early thirties) was just stress.
I saw that I could step out of it that minute if I wanted to; I understood that we can shed the ‘baggage’, our pain from the past. I saw that we are pure consciousness, and there is a way to express this through our body, our mind.
I saw this in a flash then…
It was a summer evening, the sun was setting but it was still light enough to run, a beautiful evening.
I was running fast up the long hill and jogging down; as the session unfolded all pain and restriction, lethargy that i had become used to, briefly left me and I was flying on land….
I saw that I could be free, that I was free and that I held the answers within me to unlock myself from the self imposed restrictions…
And now, another lifetime on from that time; I am running down the hill and I see that I am free.
I knew it in that moment twenty five years ago, and in returning to circle the park, I see that I am living what I only saw for a moment on that summers evening all those years ago.
Tonight as we had dinner, a couple dining next to us pointed out a deer on the lawn with her three babies; Anadi and I stood gazing at them munching on the grass. The scene tranquil and still…
This morning as I sat working looking out of the same window in the Crystal bar, you might have been mistaken for thinking that I was enjoying coffee with a friend… Tim and I shared much laughter with Gemma the young woman who served us, after Tim had created ‘The Buxted White’ – this is a double espresso with lots of hot milk on the side - we drank them with the relish of a newly discovered delight…
Later I could be found working in the Coat of Arms room having what might have otherwise been mistaken for a birthday tea…!
All day long Anadi worked programming and I sat with my clients…
We are once again we are in a new land, a new time zone, a new bed, a new climate...
Within all the change of our external circumstances we find we know more deeply who we are.
