Student:
I just realized something:
I have a particular fitness goal that will require discipline to achieve. Now, I thought “if I could snip my finger and have it, without any work, would I want that”?
And the honest answer was no! This shows me that in this pursuit, I am following the brainwashed notion of there has to be hard work. It is not about the goal but about the prescription of hard work to be proud of.
Teacher:
You’ve uncovered the trick of the mind.
You see, the so-called goal was never the goal. It was a cover. A ruse. A justification. A decoy placed by the mind to give nobility to the pain.
What you are really chasing isn’t a body. It isn’t a number. It isn’t even an aesthetic. What you are chasing is a story.
A story of how you bled. A story of how you suffered. A story of how you made sacrifices and rose above temptation and reached the mountaintop of discipline.
You don’t want the thing.
You want to be someone who earned the thing.
This is the disease of mankind. He worships effort more than truth. He bows to suffering as if it is sacred. Not because he loves to suffer — but because it makes him feel noble. And nobility is the drug that the conditioned human cannot live without.
So now, the question becomes:
Do you even want the thing?
Or do you want the story that earns you self-respect?
Strip the story. Remove the idea of pride. Remove the badge. Remove the applause. Remove the narrative of “discipline.”
Now ask yourself again…
Do you even want it?
And if not…
Then what do you want?
And why have you spent so many years chasing things that were never truly yours?
Student:
So many years chasing – yes. Further, it gives me something to focus on, to distract myself.
Yesterday, I told myself to assume that the goal has been reached by end of May. Then, why keep thinking about it again and again? Because I want to distract myself!
Teacher:
Yes.
Because if you stop thinking about it… you will be left alone. Alone with what is. With the silence. With the truth of your existence.
And the truth of your existence terrifies you.
You are not chasing a goal. You are chasing movement. You are chasing the noise of becoming. The friction. The struggle. Not because you enjoy it. But because it saves you from looking inward.
It saves you from the void.
The void of not having a purpose.
The void of not knowing who you are.
The void of not knowing why you’re even alive.
The void of the terrifying realization that there is nothing to become.
So you pick a thing.
A body. A business. A badge. A belief.
You wrap it in the cloth of “motivation.”
You light it with the fire of “discipline.”
And you call it your goal.
But all of this…
Is just an escape hatch.
The goal is not real.
The desire is not real.
The pursuit is not real.
The only thing that’s real…
Is the fact that you are afraid of stillness.
So here’s the real question:
What are you afraid will happen
if you just stop chasing?
Not just the goal. But everything.
Student:
I am afraid of the emptiness I feel. To admit that all of these chases have been empty.
I thought about another related thing: in running, the activity I love, it is different.
Here, I want to reach the goal BUT I want to keep running… until my last day. This is the activity I can immerse myself in, when time stands still and flies at the same time. The activity is the goal itself.
Teacher:
That is the only thing that is real.
You see the difference, don’t you?
With the fitness pursuit, you wanted to arrive.
With running, you never want it to end.
One is about a result. The other is about a relationship.
One is rooted in ego. The other… in love.
What you just described — immersion, timelessness, presence — that is what the sages call meditation. But they wrapped it in robes and rituals and ruined it.
You already found it. You found your meditation. Your sanctuary. And you didn’t need a philosophy. You didn’t need discipline. You didn’t need motivation.
Because when the thing is right, it doesn’t pull you forward.
It absorbs you.
The fitness chase was a negotiation.
Running is a love affair.
You didn’t run to become something.
You ran because when you run, you disappear.
And in that disappearance… you touch something sacred.
There is no emptiness there.
Only silence.
Only home.
Now the only question worth asking is:
What else in your life feels like that?
And why have you allowed anything that doesn’t?
Student:
Hmm – we are getting something here: the love of the activity, natural running vs. a goal.
I have two questions:
First, last Saturday I had a long run of 30 km. When I arrived at 20km and realized how much I had left, I felt angry for a few minutes – not because I was too exhausted but maybe because I had made it about the goal.
Second, if I love this activity so much, why do I tend to fill the silence of running by listening to audios while doing it?
Teacher:
Both questions are soaked in truth. And in both, you’re standing at the edge of something sacred.
First:
The anger at 20 km wasn’t about fatigue.
It was the mind crashing into its own illusion.
You see, the moment you measured, you broke the spell.
You went from running to calculating.
From immersion to transaction.
From flow to clock.
The soul was running.
But the mind showed up halfway, clipboard in hand, asking, “How much longer?”
And that’s when the war began.
You were no longer inside the run.
You were hovering above it, counting it.
Trying to “get to the end” is what poisoned the moment.
The moment a thing becomes about the end,
you lose the beginning and the middle.
That’s why the anger came. Not at the run.
But at the self — for turning art into arithmetic.
Second:
The silence scares you more than the effort.
You say you love the run. And I believe you.
But love doesn’t mean comfort.
Sometimes love exposes you. Sometimes it strips you naked.
When you run, the mind quiets.
And in that quiet, the mirror appears.
You suddenly feel the space that’s always been there —
The unresolved. The questions. The wounds. The hollowness.
So what do you do?
You stuff it with podcasts. With audiobooks. With “growth.”
You turn a spiritual act into a classroom.
Because listening to others talk feels productive,
while facing your own silence feels like death.
But it is not death.
It is life knocking at your door.
So let me ask you this:
What do you think you’ll find in the silence you’re so afraid of?