Running Towards Stillness is a book about a spiritual journey. It’s a book about family, about love, about work and about the sometimes difficult, but always beautiful struggle for freedom from suffering:  the hope for brief glimpses of enlightenment and the plunge back into everyday life that follows.

Running Towards Stillness began as a blog to promote my 2006 book Carry Tiger to Mountain: The Tao of Activism and Leadership (Arsenal), and for its first few months focused on exploring the themes in that book. But shortly after publishing Carry Tiger, my world changed dramatically. My relationship of 11 years ended in separation.  Almost everything that I believed to be true about my life was called into question. What had been a marketing tool for a book became an online portal for me to seek karmic retribution. Then, in June of 2007, a woman who would become my wife asked me a seemingly innocent question:  “What are the three things that you would really like to have more of in your life?” I think Jenn imaged me saying something prosaic, but instead it started what has become a multi-year exploration of what is truly important to me in my life.

Running Toward Stillness is a book about the search for bliss  — joy, fulfillment and connection – with my children, with the woman who would become my wife, and with my personal mission to help people make the world a better place.

The title is derived from my two main spiritual practices, the undertakings from which most of my limited understanding of life arise: meditation and motion, and the juncture between the two. Through these practices I have begun to gain insight into the intersection of daily life with the theories of quantum physics, and the ancient philosophy and spiritual practices of the Vedic sciences, Taoism and Buddhism.

Running Towards Stillness is an exploration of my ongoing process of conquering the illusions and stories that I have told myself about what my life was supposed to be like, and the undertaking of living more fully in the realm of reality. The book is a chronicle of my struggle with depression and anxiety and my confrontation with the uncertainty of daily life. And it’s a manual of sorts for those who struggle with finding their place in a changing, challenging world at the dawn of a new era of ecological and social conscience.

At its heart, Running Toward Stillness is part of my public airing of my personal laundry: the hope that by sharing with others the long and demanding path I’ve followed in my effort to experience joy, freedom from suffering, love and peace in my life with my children, my partner, and in my work, they might be inspired to discover their own trail on which to run; their own cushion on which to sit in silence.

Running Towards Stillness is a book of a blog. I’ve laboured to preserve some of the rough edges and grittiness that make an online journal interesting and genuine. My hope is that by presenting a short (180-200 word, 80 entry) book filled with honest insight, painted with (sometimes feeble attempts) at humour, this book will find its way to nightstands, backpacks and bathrooms across North America and beyond.

Running Toward Stillness is in draft form and is looking for a publisher.

Click on the “Running Toward Stillness” category to the right of this page for updates and to read many of the chapters of this proposed book, or visit my BLOG for more reading.