I ride my bicycle in hills to strengthen my legs and to get away from the urban environment. We are fortunate in the San Francisco East Bay Area to have regional parks full of redwood, evergreen, sequoia, and many other trees. If you go far enough, you can access farm land. It is truly a wonderful place to live.
The hills are no joke. Professional riders train on these hills. On each of my training routes (25 – 35 miles), at least two thirds (2/3) of the ride involve hills. Each day that I ride, I experience what I feel to be the same level of hardship and muscular stress (a nice word for bearable non-injury pain). I feel that I am not improving. But when I look at my times at various points, I see that I have taken two minutes off, then three minutes, then five minutes. For example, when I first began a particular route, it took me an hour and five minutes to get to the top of the first set of hills. Today, it took me 57 minutes. So I am getting better.
To be honest, I’m doing harder hills. When I first resumed riding after breaking my foot, I rode what are called rollers. These aren’t really hills. They are small ups and downs on a road. You can get up them in seconds and then you have a nice downhill before you ride up again. Now, I ride steadily up for the above-mentioned 57 minutes. I don’t think about the rollers that I haven’t been riding. I think about how challenging (still!) my current hills are. When will I be able to zoom up them like the people who pass me?
This made me start thinking about my spiritual development. Often, I think that God is not listening to me and is certainly not speaking to me and giving me guidance. My bank account is empty. I can’t get a job to save my life. I’m meditating, praying, reading my spiritual texts, listening to my inspirational music, and doing whatever else I can to strengthen my connection to the Divine Presence. What do I have to show for all of this? My quick response is “Nada. Nothing!”
Is it possible that, like my bicycling, I am growing? My awareness is expanding? My reception to my connection to God is getting better? The connection is always there. It is never lost and doesn’t need strengthening. It is my consciousness, my awareness, my receptivity that needs enhancement.
When I was making a good income, my understanding of Spirit was primarily intellectual. I know that now, looking back. My needs and many of my desires were met from the salary that I received every two weeks. My joy came from money, friends, family, and circumstances. If I had a lack in any of those, I became unhappy, angry, or anxious.
In the last five years, I have experienced serious loss in every single one of those areas. My health has been challenged. At one point I was immobile. I couldn’t walk, bicycle, swim, shower, or sleep comfortably. I have been completely dependent upon charity, as I have had no income for the last six months.
But there are increasingly more moments when I feel immense joy within me and unbounded gratitude. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by little things that I become emotional. One morning I woke up and saw the moon in the midst of a blue sky above absolutely beautiful fluffy clouds. When I was working, I didn’t even look out of my window. I got up in a daze, hopped in the shower, got dressed, made my coffee to drink on the way to work, and took my place in the rush hour commute to my job.
Before I had the unanticipated and unwelcome time to focus on my inner self (as an alternative to jumping off of a bridge or ingesting a handful of pills), I went to work every day full of dissatisfaction, resentment, and anger. I wasn’t treated the way that I wanted, there were no growth opportunities, and the work in no way resonated with my authentic self. I didn’t even know who that self was. I just knew that I was unfulfilled.
Now, I have no money. My home is in pre-foreclosure. Yet I would say that, for the most part, I have less fear and less anxiety than I did when I had a six-figure salary. God knows I miss it dearly and all that I bought with it. And I’m not saying that I don’t have days when I do not want to get out of bed when I think of all of the overdue bills that aren’t getting paid.
Like bicycling, my challenges are becoming more steep; but, I’m getting through them more quickly and with less pain. Before, if I couldn’t pay my bills on time, I would go into a deep depression. Wouldn’t get out of my pajamas for a month. Now, house in foreclosure, cell phone shut off, less than a dollar in my purse, I go for a bike ride or for a walk and look at the sky and the birds and thank God that I can see, that I have my health, that I made it to another day!
I have grown! I have improved! My spiritual muscles have strengthened! I am hearing the ever present Divine Guidance in my thoughts and in the words of friends and family who care about me. I hear Spirit in the bird songs that greet me every day. I feel the energy of my God-Self running through, within, and around me.
As I zoom down hills on my bike, sometimes at 43 miles an hour, I give thanks that I am protected! I am alive! I have evolved and gotten better and faster because of my challenges and because I have met them with a persistent commitment to knowing and becoming aware of who I AM, the eternal Source of all that is. I am becoming more receptive to the Unchanging Joy within that is not dependent upon person or situation.
I’m not yet where I want to be, but I’m surely not where I was. And I know for sure that I am moving forward even when I can’t see or feel it.
Robin Hart is an attorney and writer. See more of her posts at www.ancientseeker.com. She is also the author of “Warning! Proceed With Caution Into the Practice of Law”, available on Kindle and Nook.