Seven Steps to Hurdle Heaven, Part Seven
Some people go to the church…. Track is the thing that’s my religion.
-Niklas Rippon
Level Seven: A Religious Experience
Ultimately, in spite of everything, the world is a beautiful place. This is the lesson you learn at level seven. This is the discovery you come upon. Here, all doubt, all anxiety, disappears. You know why you hurdle, you know what it means to be a hurdler, you understand where hurdling fits into the larger picture of your life, you understand where hurdling fits into the larger picture of the cosmos. You are in awe of how something as simple as running over barriers can make you feel connected to the entire universe. You become a child again, you return to the simple fun and curiosity that inspired you to run the hurdles back in your Level One days. Now, more than being your playground or your science lab, the track is your sanctuary. It is where you go to feel alive, to feel a deeper connection with yourself. Every workout, every rep becomes a prayer, a meditation, an expression of gratitude to life itself.
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At Level Seven, you understand, on a very profound level, what a gift it is to be able to hurdle at all. You’ve suffered through multiple injuries, spirit-crushing defeats, major disappointments, emotional heartbreak, but you’re still here. You’ve had people doubt you, you’ve had people tell you you should quit, you’ve wondered yourself if you belong here, you’ve thought about quitting many times, but you’re still here. Because this is where you go. When life is unbearable, when life makes no sense, this is where you go. To the track, where the hurdles are. Because here, you don’t feel like an outsider. Here, you don’t feel like a stranger. Here, you are at home.
***
The feeling, or awareness, that hurdling is a religious experience, is a hard-earned one. It’s so simple, it’s so quiet, that it’s pretty much impossible to explain to other people. Our world understands victory, it understands success, it understands the thrill that comes with reaching a goal, setting a personal best. But this religious experience – this feeling of belonging, this feeling of being at home, of being connected to all that exists – it can happen just by walking onto the track, just by warming up or doing some drills. It’s an awakening, not unlike Buddha’s moment under the tree.
In the song “Moment of Surrender” by U2, lead singer Bono describes such a moment with eloquent clarity: “In the moment of surrender / I folded to my knees / I did not notice the passersby / and they did not notice me.” You see, the moment of surrender is not a loud, obvious one. It’s not a moment when he’s on stage singing in front of thousands of admiring fans. It’s not a moment when he’s receiving an award in front of fellow musicians. Instead, “I was punching in the numbers at the ATM machine / I could see in the reflection / a face staring back at me.” An ordinary, everyday moment. No one even notices him.
Normally, the rewards for hard work are concrete. Making it to the podium, winning a medal, receiving praise, setting a personal best, making the finals, making it to regionals or nationals, etc. But at Level Seven, the reward is much more abstract, which is why it is so hard to articulate. At Level Seven, you realize that the point of all your hard work was not to achieve any goals, but to come to a place where you are at peace with yourself. By this point you may have already achieved many or all of your goals, only to find that doing so hasn’t brought the sense of fulfillment that you had thought it would. There’s still an emptiness lingering inside, a feeling that you haven’t gotten to the heart of why you run the hurdles.
I don’t claim to know what the U2 song is about, but for me it’s a song that speaks to what happens when you let go of control, of trying to be the best, of trying to prove yourself to others, of trying to validate yourself through external success. When you finally let go and just allow yourself to be, you realize – to put it in hurdler language – that just doing something you love to do is enough. Just being here, on this track, is enough. In fact, it’s more than enough. It’s everything. How do you know this? Because you’ve been through everything. You’ve faced the darkest darkness, and you have endured. As Bono puts it, “I’ve been in every black hole / at the altar of the dark star.” And you’ve come out of the darkness with your love for the thing itself intact.
Now, equipped with this awareness, you can actually enjoy your time on the track, you can actually savor every moment out here for the gift that it is.
***
Our minds like to make distinctions between things so that we can more easily define them. Religion is religion, politics is politics, science is science, sports is sports, the truth is the truth, a lie is a lie, black is black, white is white, good is good, evil is evil, etc.
But that which goes on in our minds is not a reflection of reality. The reality is, things that seem different, or opposed to each other, blend with each other and complement each other all the time. If you are seeking the sacred, you must look to the profane, if you are seeking the magical, you must look to the mundane, if you are seeking the extraordinary, you must look to the ordinary, if you are seeking the light, you must enter the darkness, if you are seeking the Truth, you must face the lies. Life is one big beautiful paradox.
At Level Seven, the assumption that life can be so easily divided vanishes completely. You can see how your lowest moments as a hurdler were the most essential moments in your development and maturation as a hurdler, and as a human being. You come to understand that the track is a sacred place, a sacred space, that hurdling connects you to not just to other hurdlers, athletes, and artists, but to people in all walks of life, and to all of nature.
A religious experience is one in which you are fully present, it is one that takes you away from this world. And for the hurdler who has dedicated him or herself to the hurdles, the track is fertile ground for a religious experience to take place. Saxophonist Sonny Rollins said in an interview last year, “When I play my saxophone I get into a zone. That’s where Truth exists…. That’s the most beautiful place in the world. You’re not hurting anybody, you’re learning, you’re trying to communicate with whatever higher power you believe in. You see, that’s where we should be going.”
The zone Rollins is talking about isn’t quite specifically the zone one gets into when everything is clicking, when, for the hurdler, the body is on autopilot without the intrusion of conscious thought. Actually, that is what Rollins is talking about, but without the need for the feeling to be accompanied by external success. The feeling itself is the reward, the validation. You feel so alive, so invigorated, so electric, yet so inwardly calm, that there are no external rewards that could be more gratifying.
It’s no coincidence that I use a lot of musical references when talking about the Level Seven hurdler, because this is where hurdling becomes a musical experience. In this sense, the terms “religious experience” and “musical experience” are synonymous. Hurdling is a musical experience, it is, as I have stated before in other articles, a dance. And when you are dancing, you are in a state of ecstasy, a state of joy. Think about it, when you see people dancing, and they’re really into it, letting their bodies loose, they are gone. They are not in this world.
In thinking of how to further explain this point, two movie scenes come to mind, one from Deliverance, the other from Shawshank Redemption. The one from Deliverance is the classic dueling banjos scene (even though one of the guys is playing a guitar). At first it starts out kind of awkward, but gradually the two musicians develop a rapport with each other, and instead of dueling, they’re collaborating. The song builds in intensity, until one listener can no longer contain himself and just starts dancing. Another guy starts whistling along, and another starts clapping in rhythm to the beat. It’s like, when the music takes hold of you, your body responds in a natural, primal manner. Self-consciousness disappears, and you just surrender to the joy. Here’s the scene below:
In the Shawshank scene below, which takes place in a prison, main character Andy Dusfresne plays opera music on a record player while the guard watching him is in the bathroom. Andy locks the door so the guard can’t get out, then puts the music on blast so everyone in the entire prison can hear it through the speakers. All these big, strong, hardened criminals stop what they’re doing and just stare at the speakers with expressions of reverence and awe. It’s a scene that exquisitely portrays the powerful effect that music has upon the human soul, of how it takes us to a place that has nothing to do with our immediate physical surroundings. For the Level Seven hurdler, that’s what hurdling does. In no small way, to be a hurdler is to be a musician. Yes you are dancing, but you are also the one making the music. You are the dancer and the dance. And really, it cannot be any other way.
***
To summarize the Seven Steps to Hurdle Heaven Series, let me state that all seven levels interact with each other. As you move up, you don’t “transcend” or “rise above” or “move on from” lower levels, but build upon them.
The Level One fear of falling never completely goes away, and you always have to be ready to face it.
The Level Two identity of being a hurdler never goes away and remains a source of inspiration.
The need to be a Level Three warrior never becomes a sign of immaturity, but must remain intact if one to race to one’s potential.
The Level Four love for the thing itself helps you retain the joy necessary to avoid inhibiting your own potential by being held back by fears and doubts.
By being a Level Five voice and artist, you become a source of inspiration for those who follow behind you.
The Level Six visionary can continually find new ways to innovate in the spirit of adventure and spontaneity.
The Level Seven dancer is the one who enables us to see what this is all about – all this hurdling, all this training, all this coaching, all this living that we do. At Level Seven, it all makes sense.
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