Lance Allred the official website of the Lance Allred who is not the professional Poker player

No Man’s Land-

I probably had my worst game of the season tonight.
Just as I was finally beginning to get my rhythm and shooting with confidence, the all-star break came last weekend and we had 10 days off between our next game. The first day back of practice I sprained my ankle.

I have played on far worse, so I figured it was no biggie and I went and played tonight, and was just God-awful. Awful. I missed my first few shots to the left, as I favored my ankle when I jumped and leaned left, thus explaining why I missed it. But then after that, I started thinking, and then I started aiming, rather than just shooting the ball. The flow had left me.

I came home and all the old negative patterns of thought and post-game analysis in my head returned, for the first time in a long time. I started to care again, but for the wrong reasons.

I still care in that I still care about winning. I don’t play basketball to get my ass kicked in front of thousands of people. No, I still play to win. That much I know.

But tonight I started to care, like the Lance of old, and beat myself up, especially over the 2 airballs I shot tonight, and thought, how much did I embarrass myself in front of all of those people, those fans of the home crowd tonight? And furthermore, how bad did I look to scouts if they were watching... And then I stopped myself. It was the first time, in a long time, that I allowed myself to play that game in my mind. I know myself well enough to know that my ego had returned tonight, in full force.
It is still ok to car for my own pleasure and wanting to play well, because I enjoy playing; this is a good kind of caring. But caring what others say or think, or caring for their validation, is purely egoic, my ego, wanting to feel superior, to feel coddled. And when my ego becomes the basketball player, and not me, I forget why I even play in the first place, why I even started to play when I was young- because I enjoyed it.

But when the ego is the one on the court, I am playing for validation, recognition, flattery, and while those may all help me find success from time to time, at the end of the day, it all ends with some sort of suffering, some sort of lack, because all of those things are meaningless in the end, all of those things fade away. The one thing that will never fade, is my sense of self.

I don’t say much anymore, not nearly as much as I used to, because the watcher in me is so alert for the ego, that I feel almost uncomfortable to say anything, watching for bits of the ego creeping into my thoughts, needing to feel separate and unique.

“Why do I need to say this?” I ask myself all the time now. “What will it get me? Am I only saying it to feel special, unique? To gain respect or admiration from another? If so, then that is lacking in humility, and purely of egoic nature.”

And so, I seem to be lost somewhere in a no-man’s land. Still living in a world of basketball, but no longer enamored with all the glitz and glamour of the western world, and those fleeting material possessions, which always fade away, always. I have been to the top, and I saw it, and it has no appeal to me anymore, for it is a world of pain, of egoic consumption, with more, more, more and then some more needed, the ego believes and then it will truly be happy..... but once you get what you want, that elusive destination or possession that you believed would make you happy, it quickly fades. And once again you are swallowed up in the illusion of another possession needed to fill the void within ourselves, believing that will make you happy.

IF you study atoms, it can be argued that everything is an illusion. The atoms in our bodies, are made up of 99.99% space, such is the ratio of the nucleus of the atom to the electrons that circumvent it. The .01% percent is then only felt on a material level in which human body can process. Everything else, is space, filled in by the human mind with its 5 senses. When you see the world this way, you kind of see yourself in a cosmic joke, but not a sad one. And when everyting around us, is thus an illusion, then the only thing that truly exists, is the consciousness in our minds, the Being, that each of us Is.

I was living in the past for a few hours tonight, and I was unhappy. It is only in the present moment, this moment that I have right now, as I type, that I can find happiness. For Now, this moment, is all that I have. The future does not exist, until it exists, and when it does, it will be Now. But until, it does not exist, so why should I hope to find happiness in a place that does not exist? The only place that does exist is now, and therefore the only place I can find happiness, is Now.

I can accept the truth that I am frustrated, and I can be at peace with that. I don’t have to fight it, or be ashamed of it. And when I accept that truth, the feeling actually begins to have space around it, in my mind, like a little thought bubble in comics, separate from the rest of my mind, and no longer running the show, but on the side there. I can acknowledge that the frustration is still there without letting it consume me.

Life seems to be propelling me in a new direction, details of which I am not yet able to share, as they are all still in the works, and not quite concrete, and I can accept that. I can be in a place of least resistance, without myself being passive. For when we fight our reality and argue why, why!?, that is where the most pain comes from. That is where my greatest source of pain has consumed me- fighting what is. It is a fine balance to be in a place of least resistance, without being passive or fatalistic.

Until these other avenues of my life begin to unfold more clearly, I will continue to dwell somewhere in a no man’s land, half awake, still enjoying the game, but no longer interested in the world of basketball itself, for she is dying, eating away at her core from within. A shift is coming, not just in basketball, but all around us.

If you do not understand what I say, then you don’t. There is nothing I can do or say that will help you see it, until you are ready to see it in your own due time. And it is not my job to wake others up, nor is it anyone else's. My job, is to to wake myself up. The same goes for everyone else.

But while I am here in this land of gray, I will still play to play, and play to win, for I love the game that much, and I can love her unconditionally, knowing that she does not have much to offer me anymore, other than the relationships I make, for those are real, and those are lasting, and those are the only things that we take with us. But she still does have something to offer me, but it is only on the court, in the moment, in the Now, when that ball whips through the net. For in that moment, in the Now, I Am. Nothing more, nothing less. I just Am.

I Am, is the light and the way. - Jesus of Nazareth.