Go right down into the very core of the pain you think you are feeling. Find out what's down there, have you ever done that?
We spend so much time running away from pain, detaching from it, that we never get intimate enough with it to understand what's it's made of. All we know about it is what we learnt early in life when our parents taught us to avoid it at all costs.
As athletes we say yes to pain. We say yes to suffering. We say yes to nature and the conditions under which she operates. The problem that exists is that we say yes and mean "hell no." We say yes, then spend as much time as possible in detachment, in denial, moving away from the source of the discomfort. We treat our sporting life and everything in it as a state of war. Off to war we go.
Many times I hear athletes say "I'm going into battle."
The problem is not the battle, it's where the battle takes place.
If the battle takes place in your head against yourself, then you have lost before you have started.
Sun Tzu in the Art of war said,
He who enters the battle field calm and centred in a state of acceptance will surely win against he who enters the field in a state of anxiety, war requires presence and acceptance.
Grant Giles
One needs an inner state of stillness in order to wield his or her sword effectively without fear of death, the only way to be free of death is to be still inwardly.
Sport like war is not an act of detachment. Its an act of acceptance. You sign up for it, you invite it, so when the swords start flying it's pointless to then want to detach from it. In war that inner resistance to what is happening will get you killed. In sport it defeats you before the course gets the chance to.
What to do?
Practise in training getting to the very core of your discomfort and find out what its made of and what it feels like. Fine what its energetic signature says about it, not what your head says about it and that voice of your parents that is still telling you to avoid it.
Explore it. Learn about it and in the process you will learn about yourself something far deeper about your inner working than you could ever.
The incredible thing about human consciousness is that when it is directed acutely at something, it gets inside it. One gets the sense that the consciousness is the key source.
The course is where it takes place, but consciousness is both the source and witness to what is happening within the race. Everything else happens externally.
When you try to disassociate from consciousness, you are disassociating from your own power to deal with pain and suffering. Make no mistake, to accept your suffering, you have to do it consciously. Its not a thought, its a state of being.
The Practise
To get inside the nature of discomfort and find out the ways in which you resist it, the ways in which you move away from it.
Take the practise of getting right to the core of the pain. Drill down through the centre of it with your conscious focus and you will find out that the pointed arrow of your consciousness is - a form of acceptance of the highest power.
All of a sudden the part of you that you think is in pain is somehow transformed because energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.
We don't realise we have this power, because we don't explore it.
Next time you jam your finger in the door, stop dancing and go straight to the core of it. Put your focus right into the centre and you will find that the pain moves. All of a sudden there is a movement and it's fascinating.
This is the pure acceptance that is brought to you by the power of your own state of consciousness. It's always been there. We forget this because we live under the tyranny of a mind that is nothing more than a jumbled bunch of mental projections, ideas and beliefs.
As you line up for this most epic of adventures called Kona, take this most potent weapon into the field of play. So instead of detaching from it, invite it. Accept it. Get inside it and it will get inside you and the outcome will cease to be. The process will become everything.
You and Ironman will become one, and Ironman will become fun.
Get into it.