Running.

I run. << faster >> I dodge limbs and vines. << faster >> I leap over rocks and boiling mud pots. I run through swampy shallows and across logs. << faster >> I run.

My legs burn and my arms ache. I scrabble up muddy banks << faster >> and across twisted root tangles. I make way for creatures that slumber or stalk or crouch or lurk They make way for me. And I run.

Soon the ache and the burn turns to numbness and still I run. << faster >> I still feel. I know I am numb, that I once burned and ached, that I am now numb - from the running. And still I am urged on and commanded to go << faster >>.

This is not mere physical conditioning though I am getting stronger. This is not mere transportation, though with my X-wing still half submerged I am certainly traveling afoot these days. This is not even a journey in the sense of a starting point and a destination. For I have no destination, I have only destiny. I have no transportation, I am in transition. I have no conditioning, I have only what I am at this moment. I have no journey, I have only the running.

There comes a point when the knowledge of the numbness from the pain from the running fades. First, into the rhythm - once it finds me - and then into the blank whiteness of letting go. This is my goal, though I do not run towards it. The running is the process through which I am able to release – to release what I know.

As knowledge of the pain and numbness are swallowed, it is as if the magnetic field is suddenly opened on a fully pressurized docking bay. Only instead of everything rushing out, it all rushes in. A wall of white, of the Living Force, floods in and I am lost in it.

It is pure here. Calm. I have strength here - though it is as something I need not ever seek out, for it is always here. While I am here, while I in the whiteness, while I am this place, I can run forever. There are no scattered stones, no gullies or ravines, no tree limbs to dodge or vines to climb. There is only the Living Force. I am in it and it is in me.

It is perplexing, I find (in those times afterwards when I stop to think about it), that I should be so deeply within the Force yet still so in tune with my surroundings, my legs, my lungs, my heart. I do not leave my body, neither do I leave my environment. I become so much closer to them. It is the running that helps me over the obstacle of me. I call a vine to me so I may swing, joyously, over a deep pool teeming with life and potential.

I am guided by the faintest touch of the Master on my shoulder, the hint of a suggestion in my ear. We communicate through the Force, pulling on suggestions of potential and crafting chance from glimmering lines of possibility. And all the while, I am sustained and rejuvenated by the Force. The Master helps me to see beyond the crude detritus of the swamp and to find the wondrous luminescence of the life of this world. The life that swims in and creates the possibilities of over, under, up, through, around, slower and (yes)… << faster >>.

For now, we craft only paths through the woods and lowland swamps. Yet the paths we are creating with the Force, or that the Force is creating with us are real. We are not passing through the unpassable. We are forging through while the unpassable parts for us to reveal it’s own pathways and invites us to walk them – or to run them.

So we run. The Master guides. I learn. And always, << faster >>