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In heart-beat-skipping agony, the edge of the asphalt creeps closer and closer. I am about to end up with a thousand pounds of hot steel in my lap! Fear redlines as I go into emergency mode: adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream in a painful constriction of my kidneys.

Going into the curve, I had downshifted to drop my speed, the big Harley's engine backfiring as its rpm's came up to meet the demands of the deceleration. It is not enough though. The curve is sharper than it looks and I am going too fast!

Pushing hard on the handlebar, I lean the bike lower. It lurches dangerously as the foot peg grates against the pavement. Glancing down, I see that my boot is about to eat asphalt too. My skin crawls as I have a vision of a bad case of road-rash from dropping the bike and skidding out of control. The asphalt would grind through my leather riding gear in seconds, taking skin and muscle as I skidded along.

I need more lean, but the low-hung bike is already dragging bottom. Seeing no traffic in the other lane, I quickly straighten out the curve a little by momentarily pulling the bike upright, braking hard while I have it vertical, and then leaning it back down into the curve again. I watch in cold-molasses time as the bike and I race toward the edge of disaster demarcated by the pavement's boundary.

With only inches to spare -- and what surely is microseconds but seems like eternity -- a part of me watches in detached fascination as my drama unfolds. And then, the asphalt starts to grow: where there is only inches becomes a foot, then two, as I come out of the curve.

The Biker's Lifestyle

Up ahead, I momentarily catch sight of Ken on his beautiful, customized Softtail as he disappears around another curve. We are headed north on US 385 from Custer, South Dakota, where we are staying, toward Rapid City. Our destination for the day is the Dakota Badlands east of Rapid City. We are attending the fiftieth anniversary motorcycle (spelled Harley) rally in Sturgis along with 300,000-plus other Harley riders. 

The biker's lifestyle appealed to me. Its bohemian attitude was in stark contrast to my life at home. Although in my classes at the university I referred to myself as an "old hippie", my life had become tame, boring, and very unfulfilling the last several years. A growing awareness had started creeping in, an awakening in my psyche, that there was something, a big something, not right in my life.

For the last twenty years I had been in a race to nowhere. There had been four-and-a-half years of undergraduate school, followed by five years of graduate school, and then fifteen years of being a college professor. I had jumped through all the hoops of career and family.

At home were three children, a house with a mortgage, and bills, and all the trappings of modern society. At the university there had been tenure, promotion, and research. I loved my family dearly, but my life felt empty. I enjoyed science, but my career was hollow. Events of my life seemed to control me instead of my controlling them.

The Call of a Motorcycle with Attitude

Ken and I are riding into the majestic scenery of the Dakota countryside. As we ride, I think about how I got here, I mean on this Harley, on this road, in this beautifully wild country.

Approaching my fortieth birthday over two years before, the call of the motorcycle had reawakened. As a teenager in junior high school and again in my early twenties in graduate school, I had ridden bikes. I loved riding.  The desire to ride this time was not just about any motorcycle, however, but the motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson.

Harleys for me were the king of the bikes, the epitome of motorcycles. They were motorcycles with an Attitude. The big bikes had an almost mystical appeal to me that I did not understand. I loved their "muscle", their power. The sound of the twin cylinder engine beat a rhythm that resonated with something deep inside of me.

At some level I cannot yet define, I know there is more to the Harley's attraction than just the power or the engine's sound. The "bad boy" image of the Harley, I admit, appeals to me also. All of these -- the image, the power, the attitude, the adventure, and the riding itself -- somehow weave a tapestry that I cannot yet see.

As I ride, I am not yet even aware of the tapestry. Right now there is just this emptiness I am trying to fill. I am reaching for something, but I do not yet know what. I do know that the Harley and I are somehow connected in all of this. The Harley and this ride through the Dakota wildlands are somehow metaphors for my life's journey right now.

The Journey As It Stands

I am especially unhappy in my career as a college professor and research scientist. This feeling had started around my 29th birthday and has continued to grow ever since. My career has certainly not turned out as I had envisioned as a graduate student.

I have found that I see things differently from my academic colleagues. My efforts to fit in, walk their walk, and talk their talk, have only left me feeling more frustrated. I was disappointed with my research and with teaching. It is burnout, big time, I realize. Even my marriage does not feel right. This feeling, like so much that is going on in my life, is not quite on a conscious level.

In desperation I had taken a sabbatical to rejuvenate my career and interest two years earlier. Uprooting my family and spending a year at a major medical school doing research, I had returned from the sabbatical even more frustrated and tired.

By the time we returned, it was beginning to dawn upon me that research was simply not my forte -- at least not the kind of research I had been doing. Having so much invested in my career and having obtained the coveted award of tenure and associate professor, I could not, however, just walk away. Besides, I had no idea what else I wanted to do. 

From where I ride now, my options looked bleak. I had buckled down and pushed even harder, redirecting my research and putting in even longer hours. Two years down the road, I was even more exhausted. Stress and frustration had become my constant companions.

So Here I Am

So here I am on this Harley, heading toward the Dakota Badlands, a research scientist and university professor trained in the skills of molecular and evolutionary biology, feeling a great hole in my life. I am a creature of my scientific universe, the universe of my five senses, and I am finding that universe very limiting. Science teaches that if I cannot taste, touch, see, hear, feel, or measure it, it is not real. Yet, there is something not quite congruent about this perception of the universe. I sense this at some deep, awakening level.

My wife, Carol, and I had returned from the sabbatical determined to move to the country. Leaving most of our household goods packed in boxes upon our return, we went looking for a small farm. By the end of the summer, we had moved onto a ten-acre mini-farm, ten miles out in the country. This move to the farm, along with my riding rebirth, began my journey away from the university and toward a different path.

The Harley initially was an escape. On it, I felt a sense of control, a sense of power, a sense of freedom. Here was an aspect of my life that I could control. Its powerful engine with its deep rumbling rhythm struck a resonating cord within me. Being in control of such force was empowering to me. On the Harley, I was free to choose my path.

Other forces were at work in my life at the time as well. A year after starting to ride again, I had taken up karate and also had a growing interest in Zen Buddhism. A few years earlier, I had written a draft of a book that compared the worldview of Buddhism with the worldview of evolutionary biology. Writing this book had reawakened my interest in Zen from my undergraduate days at the University of Texas.

The karate and Zen also felt to me like things that I "needed" to do; they were somehow important to what was going on within me. Somehow there was a connection between the Harley, the karate, and the Zen, but again, I was not sure what the connection was. I was exploring, searching for something, but I was not at all sure what. I was on a journey but I did not know to where.

Reclaiming My Personal Power

Over the next decade I would slowly come to realize that through all of this, the Harley, the karate, the Zen, and a career change, I was reaching to reclaim my personal power -- to take control of my life. Like the Harley itself, I saw power as external. Power was a force: it was the ability to move things and get things done. Power was something to be obtained outside of myself. It was money, it was a doctorate, it was prestige, it was a different career, etc. 

I did not understand power, real power. That understanding would come from a totally unexpected direction. It would come from a world that science could not measure. A world I could not measure or see in ordinary reality. It was a power beyond my five senses. That power was about to pound on my door. It was about to kick down the closed door of my mind. This was real power and it waited just up the road. Like the prairie wind, it would whisper its name, calling to me to come join it. A grit-grinding sandstorm, this understanding would tear down my old reality, leaving it like white, bleached, sand-dune bones. 

But there is yet a deeper revolution/evolution taking place -- a rebellion from the center and heart of my soul -- an unfolding of Spirit. This insurrection is my True Self, the one made by the Creator, trying to escape its prison. The pain of my True Self is so deep and so powerful, that its anguish touches every fiber of my universe. 

The True Self, The True Me

I would come to understand that I had tried to kill it, this True Me, ever since I had been a small child. I had locked this True Self in a stony, dark prison of four walls, no windows, solid granite for a floor, and an inch-thick steel door for a roof. Despite this impenetrable fortress, my soul's muffled cries of agony are beginning to escape and reach my conscious, everyday self. It will be over a decade before I understand this True Self and the prison I had locked it in.

This understanding, and the freeing of my spirit from its prison, will come in the desert mountains of New Mexico eleven years from now. This "freeing" will come during a Vision Quest, a sacred Native American ceremony. On that desert plain, I will free and reclaim my Soul and True Self. On that desert plain, in those mountains, I will at last come to understand that there was no lock on that steel door.

The riding of the Harley was my first awakening that there was no lock. With the riding, I had pushed on the heavy metal top and it had opened -- only an inch or so, but it had opened. From that inch opening, my True Self had cautiously peered out and my vision of the world began to shift and change. I understand none of this now as I ride.

A strong wind is blowing from the West and it is gathering force.

This article was excerpted from the book WindWalker.
Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.

Article Source

WindWalker. Journey into Science, Self, and Spirit
by Darrell G. Yardley, Ph.D.

An inspiration for those seeking a path with a heart, seeking to take control of their lives and take back their personal power, or undergoing transition and change.

A Vision Quest on a Harley: an inspirational, true-life journey of personal empowerment into the worlds of Zen and Native American spirituality. Ride with the author and his Harley on this incredible personal and spiritual journey into True Self. This is a journey that combines the living of ancient teachings from East and West with modern science. 

For more info and/or to order this book, click here. 

About The Author

Darrell G. Yardley, PhD, is a national teacher, author, mental health counselor and life coach. Currently offering services in tele-counseling, tele-life coaching, and webinars.

In addition to his book WindWalker: Journey into Science, Self, and Spirit, he has published over 75 articles, manuals, and papers in biology, sociology, spirituality, and counseling. His second book, Guru on the Mountain: Chiggers, Lizards and Desert Heat: My Vision Quest to Discover the Source of Spirit, focuses on cultivating inner-peace and personal growth, and the science that underlies these.  Website: http://darrellyardley.com/