Chopra Kick Continues

I'm still on my Deepak Chopra kick.  I am giving "The Book of Secrets" a rest.  I do enjoy the book and will go back to it but its a lot of intense thinking.  Sometimes its nice to just get sucked into a fiction book.  I can't believe it was a couple of years ago but it was, I read Chopra's "Jesus" book which is part of a series Chopra wrote.  There's also a "Muhammed" and "Buddha" book.  I really enjoyed "Jesus" but being Catholic I have some background information on Jesus.  A few weeks ago, I decided to grab the "Muhammed" book and learn about someone I had no background information on.  I am enjoying this book as well but since I don't have background information on Muhammed its hard to know what aspects are fiction and what is actually historical.

The aspect that I am going to focus on which seems so glaring after reading 2 of 3 in the series is that these people, Jesus and Muhammed, are special people who had to figure out their gifts.  I find this so interesting.  These very special people were definitely always special with "signs" occurring as they were children, they were sent by God or chosen by God depending on your faith, yet as adults they still had to figure out how to be open to God and reconcile it within their lives just like everybody else.

Shouldn't we all be doing that?  It gives me hope.  This is something I find hard to do yet I know is tremendously important.  But if it was hard for such special people like Muhammed and Jesus, of course it is going to be hard for regular ol' me.

In a very practical sense, I was pondering this aspect of work, life, nothing being easy, last week.  I had a 14 mile long run.  I was looking forward to my long run thinking how I'd "enjoy"it, thinking it wouldn't be too hard, since I know I can do 20 miles, etc.  Then right before its time to go I've got butterflies in my stomach, while on the run the first few miles I felt heavy and sure enough by mile 12 I was taking walking breaks and crazed because I had finished my water early.  Its just never easy even when you know you can do more.  There is just so much struggle to anything that is a challenge.   I know this is obvious to most.  If I take the time to train myself to do what ever I want, it WILL be hard but I can succeed and there will always be something greater as a result.  

Challenge #1 is a physical challenge, the marathon, which by most accounts is the easiest form of challenge.  What will the the next challenge be?