THE UNIVERSE ON A BIKE

As I was racing along on my bike this morning, trying to cover a certain distance faster than I ever have, I suddenly realized that I was a “self-ish” rider, and that it was causing me to be a less capable rider than I might be. I realized that I was caught in the belief that a 65 year old separate individual was pushing the bike along, and that this individual had to do it all by himself and therefore should get all the credit. I was thinking that a “self” called Ham was single-handedly battling against the bike, the wind, and his own body in order to achieve some undefined prize. What I had been forgetting is that there is, in fact, no separate individual pushing the bike along, because there is no separate thing anywhere in the universe. As ecology should have taught me years ago, everything in the universe is connected. The universe, as its name implies, is not many, but just one. It’s a unified, never-ending force that always works harmoniously, and the so-called individual bike rider named Ham is merely one expression of that force. What’s wonderful about this truth is that it helps me see how powerful a bike ride can really be. If the rider is an expression of the vast universe, then the universe itself is actually doing the riding, the pedaling, the pushing, the exerting. The so-called separate, limited, self-centered rider named Ham is a myth. The sooner I get him out of the saddle and let the universe do the riding, the swifter and smoother the rides will be.

-- July 7, 2007