i think it is so awesome that there are a handful of us who are all attempting to write books about our work with the molecule. i love to read how much growth this wonderous sacrament is inspiring in our commuity and, by association, the world. feanor, vovin, et al....you are inspiring in your commitment. i am honored to be a part of this community. may our words help others and help the whole of humanity.
that being said, i just read a bit of my book. it is almost done and after working on a couple specific chapters i realized that i have never really shared much of my cycling life with you all. what with this being a DMT forum and all, i realize there isnt a lot of opportunity to do so. however, this book i am writing, among other things, chronicles how i had the most successful racing season of my career while simultaneously breaking through every day during that same year. i just made a couple revisions to a particular chapter that i think would be the one to share with you guys to let you know what even inspired this decision to write a book in the first place. it'll also give you a tiny window into the world that i call my life. i hope you enjoy and (as long as it's done with love) i am open to any constructive criticism in the name of making this book even better.
so...with that being said, here is chapter 11 of CYCLEDELIC: RACING TO AWAKEN
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE BIKE RACE…
Okay, the 2009 season is on full-swing now. I am on the biggest Elite Masters Cycling team in the country and I am The Sprinter. The pressure that comes with being the one to finish things off can be more than most would care to shoulder. Though I’m almost always able to pull out the big win, I am in no way impervious to this hefty weight of responsibility. Paradoxically, it has always managed to spur me on to greatness, but the straight truth is I never enjoyed the butterflies and nausea that served to precede my victory salutes. As a student of Buddhist thought, I struggle with making anything matter that much.
Enter Spice.By the middle of the year, the biggest races were staring me right in my eyes…all three of them. Several wins up to that point and a commanding lead in the California Best All-around Rider (BAAR) series had my teammates completely behind me. This, in turn, had expectations on me at an all-time high. Parallel to this pedaling success, my daily work with DMT was proving to be an even greater campaign. Entity contact had become a regular phenomena and almost daily I found myself holding a pearl of wisdom that brought my experience of life up to yet another strata of amazing.
The correlation between the two, though certainly there, was not enough to warrant mention (let alone the genesis of a book) until a certain day in the middle of July zapped everything into place like a circuit being soldered complete. This race- the biggest one-day race in California- would serve to break open an entire paradigm of interconnectedness for me. It would be the inspiration for this book and everything that has been born out of that process as well.
I guess you could say it was one hell of a race….
Over a hundred of California’s very best toe the line at the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix every year. To anyone who races in California, this race is a monument. For almost 50 years giant crowds have turned out to cheer cyclists through what is arguably the most well-rounded criterium course out there. Almost without exception the race will come down to a field gallop to the line where the sprinters will have their day. However, in order to make it to said gallop, all would-be winners of the race must first bomb at top speed down the back straight hill hitting speeds of well over 40 mph as they barrel directly into a pancake flat 180 degree turn. This g-force generating vortex of carnage then spits them out onto the finishing straight and the dash for glory.
If they can stay upright that is….To win this race, a cyclist needs to be in top condition to handle all of the surges, attacks, punishing ascents up the power-climb at the far end of the course, and constant ‘prime laps’, where prizes are announced for the winner of that particular lap. It’s game-on from the gun and because of this, anyone who wins this race can truly hold their head’s high that they unequivocally WON a bike race. There are no handouts at Manhattan Beach.
I had won this race the last two years in a row. Only a month prior to this edition, I had won the California state criterium championship and now I sat, the two-time defending champion of the most important race in my year’s racing schedule, clad in the Golden Bear jersey denoting that I was the best criterium racer in the state.
No pressure…
The gun goes off.
At first there is a loud symphony of clicks as 120 burly, lycra-clad men fuse their feet into their bikes and then there is only a whirring. Wind churned by piston legs and slashed by wheel spokes. It is a unique sound….a sound that opens something inside me. A portal to a childhood of love and bonding with my father as well as a to an adulthood awakened to the joyful celebration of life and community. For all the rivalries and fierce competition, I love the community of athletes I have spent so much of my life sharing this passion with. They are a family of sorts. They are, in the most profound sense, myself.
Within 15 minutes of the hour-long contest, I have pushed my self at least a dozen times to a point of utter surrender. When so many talented, strong individuals are going hell bent for leather one can rest assured that one will be forced to go harder than one wants to go at exactly the moments when one does NOT want to do such a thing. In the world of cycling, there is an old saying: “When you are absolutely at your limit and know in your heart that you can’t go any harder, attack.” In layman’s terms, “if you’re dying, that probably means that everyone else is dying with equal misery.” You are a microcosmos of the very race you find yourself within.
As within, so without…This exact concept came to light upon my mind after one particularly punishing surge. A handful of the strongest had made their move to separate themselves from the field. In cycling this is called “breaking away.” With a goodly gap and a difficult portion of the course coming quick, I ‘went across’ with the help of a teammate’s selfless support. Two minutes of scraping the plaque of self-doubt from the recesses of my psyche and the two of us had caught the escapees. The effort was herculean and a part of me knew that I had played my hand in that monumental action.
This race that almost always comes down to a field sprint was set to a new agenda. For a breakaway to work, all 6 of us would have to put forth a committed effort and focus strong enough to stay away from 114 other hungry hunters. The six of us had exerted so much energy to break away that, should we get reeled back in by the pack, we would most certainly have no reserves to position ourselves for any hope in the finale. We were a band of thieves who had just stolen the Queen’s jewels. Somebody set off an alarm and now we had the entire Royal Army on our asses. I pulled out a manly terror/excitement/focus sandwich and took a healthy bite. We had 40 minutes to get to know our selves and one another until the two were no longer separate things.
Lap after lap we put out 100%. The field, never allowed us more than 20 seconds which in itself can chip away at the most stalwart warrior. Never getting fully out of sight of the hunting pack has a way of sapping one’s mettle and the six of us were not impervious. A handful of laps into our campaign and a few members of our tribe starting to ‘miss pulls’, meaning that they would not take their turns at the head of our pace-line where the wind’s resistance makes it over 30% harder to go the same speed as the guys directly behind you who are using your body to block the wind. In a breakaway, each rider takes a measured turn at the front to hold the speed while the others actively recover behind. When done properly, it is a beautiful dance where the balanced rotation of efforts produce a steady top-speed without draining any one particular rider’s energy. All for one and one for all.
To miss a pull in such a small breakaway group meant that the tiny remainder of co-conspirators would be called upon to use a much larger amount of their own reserves simply to maintain whatever advantage we had. It almost invariably heralds the eventual demise of the breakaway, as the whole is only as strong as the sum of all of it’s parts.
Needless to say a few choice words were doled out amongst those who were working and those who were not. Apparently they were the right words. Within one lap of high-speed psychology our group had come back together with renewed determination. It would stay this way to the end.
The final 5 laps broke everything open for me. Our advantage yo-yoed at around 20 seconds and the exhaustion was evident in our band of castaways. Grimaces and cramping muscles were like some sort of new fashion trend we had all agreed upon. The climb repeatedly left me seeing white and the effort required at the front to hold our speed had become a constant dialogue between myself and some aspect of myself who was a really good talker…
“Truly, what does this matter? It’s a bike race, dude. Seriously. You’re hurting yourself right now man….as in
injuring yourself. Pull out and let your body rest. This is not healthy..”
And with every plea for reason, a deeper voice….one I knew through lifetimes…would reply, “What am I if not everything? What is happening within me is exactly what is happening outside of me. There is no difference. I am what I see within. It will be as I
embody it to be.”
Three laps to go and the field has us down to 15 seconds. We are nothing but a piece of raw meat for the ravenous dogs on the chase. Many of the other top sprinters who had been ‘sitting in’ the field out of the wind the entire race, were now on the front with fresh legs absolutely pouring it on.
“Be the race. What I am determines what will be.”
Two laps to go and the gap is still 15 seconds. It no longer matters if anyone misses a pull. We are held together by a pure survival instinct. Any one of us with the energy and desire to go all out at this point will only inspire those who would be just as hungry. We are like magnets with some of us losing our charges. We are no longer bound by necessity but by desire. This is a time of revelations…of self awakening…a time when a legend could arise from the ashes of willing self-annihilation.
Somewhere in another space and time, a bell is ringing. It’s muted, far-away din would signal a final lap in a bicycle race in some other dimension. But here….here where all things are one….i see only a single rider victoriously raising his hands across a finish line. Perhaps the others of my breakaway entity would struggle with the remaining lap, where each pedal stroke required enough energy to birth a galaxy….but I, I AM the galaxy. I am all things and what will happen is exactly what I decide
to be.
All I can see is a rider crossing a finish line with his hands raised…
I am free now. I do not have a body. I do not feel pain. I do not know of anyone ‘behind’ me. There is no ‘behind’. I am simply moving forward into what I see. Into what I am. A couple of my breakaway companions make a jump to gap the rest into the final turn. I am these riders. I see their intentions before they have them. Their jumps are simply my mind playing games with itself. Showing me that I am the creator of all things. I will now be the rider with his hands raised…
I close my eyes as I come out of the 180 degree final turn. I see the rider clearly now. He is wearing a jersey with a Golden Bear on it. He is tall. His hands are raised with three fingers pointed to the heavens. Like a spider in the center of a web, he is connected to the very background he is set against. All things that are his life come through him, out of him, and surround him. His victory is the awakening of a champion he has created within himself. The world in which he has succeeded is as beautiful in it’s creation as the victor at the center of it.
In truth, there is no center.
It is all the center.
I stood atop the podium for the third year in a row on that cool day in July. The post-race interview, the medal ceremony, the congratulations of my peers all rang with a familiarity. They were the aftershocks of an awareness I had generated from within. The universe’s ‘meeting me halfway’. The power of what we are and the awakening to what was possible through that had opened a door within me. Like opening a door in space, the vacuum of the infinite instantly sucked me out of any previous modality of thinking. I would never think the same way again….it simply was not possible.
From this day forward, I would strive to simply be that which I envision. I had heard a phrase similar to this before but today I heard it through ears that existed in every atom of my being. My work with the spirit molecule had allowed this to happen. I had no doubts about that. What else was now possible need only present itself.
I was opened.
"Rise above the illusion of time and you will have tomorrow's
wisdom today."