Bridging the Two Worlds: What Happened While Riding Bike 31

Last Saturday morning, I woke up feeling out of sorts. The world was too much with me, to paraphrase William Wordsworth.

I knew I needed time to pause, unplug and recharge — to reconnect with my center, which of course is one of the key elements to how we can all thrive. So I sat down and tried to meditate before going to the gym. However, I felt as though I were in a laundromat, spinning around in the dryer. As much as I tried to center, I couldn’t seem to get to my sweet spot — the place I call my portable paradise that connects me with my calm and my joy. I don’t like going out into the world feeling that way. So I went back to bed and started to pray.

I asked for help from the one who knows me best, my inner knower, and I put one hand on my belly and one on my heart and very gently I started to say to myself: “Peace, be still. God bless me. I love me. Peace, be still. God bless me. I love me. Peace, be still. God bless me. I love me.” I repeated it over and over again in a heartfelt way.

Things started to quiet down inside of me. About 10 minutes later, I had dropped deeper into myself and felt a wave of peace come upon me. The dryer came to a standstill! I put on my gym clothes and headed to my favorite spin class, called Cycletherapy, which my dear friend, Craig Hunter, pours his heart, body and soul into.

The class takes you through the seven chakras (energy centers of the body) while you spin, connecting you to your centers and the elements of fire, water, air and earth. Absolute bliss! Spinning has always been a connection for me to my joy and my creative spirit. In fact, I wrote most of my first book while spinning.

While I spin, the linear world stops and a creative mindset comes alive and awareness starts to show up. And there, while spinning on bike 31, while my body was going through the intensity of the cycling, I had an awareness. I saw the duality of what we all deal with in our lives and I started to write this blog in my head!

We live in two worlds — the world of spirit, the invisible world, and the world of matter, the visible word. We all try to find a way to bridge the two worlds so they can somehow converge, until we feel no separation between them. We all try to navigate this journey and find myriad ways to do it. If, however, we have a clear intention to do something every day, to increase this awareness of the invisible world and make it more connected to us, we will find that everything that involves our physical existence can begin to soften and become more clear. It’s as if we sharpen the lens and we start to see with new eyes. Our perception changes, the veil lifts and we see and understand beyond the tangible world.

I believe that behind all that we do, we all crave this connection. If we don’t have it, we are bound to leave ourselves empty, with a sense of discontent, because the world of spirit is really the wind beneath our wings. Sometimes, however, touching into that reality seems more challenging than climbing Mount Kilimanjaro barefoot in the snow, because we put so much stuff between us and our spirit. We have created conditions that are very blinding. We have come to totally identify with the worldly part of ourselves and have lost sight of our true spiritual nature.

There is no class in the school system that teaches us how to navigate this journey. No class called “Who You Truly Are 101,” that prepares us to go live in the world with the awareness of who we are. Instead, there are countless distractions that often leave us empty, and when we go inside to reconnect, we run into a barricaded wall.

The easiest and quickest way to return to who we truly are is to come, present in our hearts, and ask to remember our true nature. That, in essence, is the awareness I had while spinning on bike 31.

That Saturday morning, while sweating and tapping into my spirit, I connected back to my own inner rhythm. I dropped my agenda for what I wanted to do that day. I allowed myself to have an Agapi day, and to enjoy the day instead of getting to the next thing and the next.

The world seems so sweet to me when that happens. I feel my childlike quality that knows its breathing rhythm come to the surface, and I can exhale and smile. Everything that happened during the day after that had a natural flow of connected moments.

It is amazing what happens when we unite with our spirit and ride that wave. It feels like surfing with the wind at our back. And to sum it up, all it took, my friends, was my willingness to say, “The world is too much upon me and I can’t get back to me. I need help.” In 10 minutes, the latch of the gate lifted and I got back in.

One of the songs that Craig was playing during the spinning class was “When I Ruled the World” by Coldplay. And I thought, “If I ruled the world, I would make that the No. 1 rule of the world: that everyone practice something daily that brings his or her spirit into the world and connects us back to who we are — so we can make it more visible, allowing each person to find what that is for himself or herself. Then thriving becomes a natural way of being, unique with each person’s stamp.” That is what I would do.

But I don’t rule the world, although I do rule my own world, so I can do my part and write a blog and share what I do to build my bridge between the two worlds.

Would you share with us what you do to bridge the worlds? What magic tools do you have in your pocket that you can share with us?

For more by Agapi Stassinopoulos, click here.

Visit Agapi’s website Unbindingtheheart.com.

AgapiBridging the Two Worlds: What Happened While Riding Bike 31