Seventeen years ago, I rode a motorcycle for the first time. I wasn’t looking for speed; I was trying to escape the pain from an experience of betrayal. The sound of the engine drowned out what I didn’t want to feel; my iron companion gave me a sense of freedom I was craving within, desperately grasping for it externally. It became a way to outrun what I couldn’t face inside, and a constant chase of perceived freedom, which dissolved moments after I turned off the ignition.
At the time, I thought adrenaline was a form of liberation. But it was only movement without awareness, the ego trying to silence the ache of separation from freedom veiled by the mind’s perception of imprisonment.
Years later, something shifted. I realized the bike was not an escape — it was a mirror. Every apex on the track, every straight line was showing me my own mind: how I resisted, how I clung, how I feared falling. When I finally stopped riding to get away and began riding to be here, the whole experience changed.
Don’t get me wrong, danger is real — the curve, the slip, the edge. It took a couple of falls to understand danger. Fear, however, is not real. Fear is the projection of what might happen or a remembrance of what happened before, a story created by the mind.
“Fear arises from duality.” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.2) When there is a sense of “me” and “the track” there is fear. When there is only presence, there is just movement — without tension, without distance.
Now, the motorcycle is no longer a tool to escape — it’s a teacher.
Riding not to feel alive, but because “I already am”.
Every lean at the apex is awareness moving through form.
Thought disappears – it is not about control anymore — it is about trust.