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AN AUSPICIOUS DATE

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

• 6 min read

Apprenticeship to Love: Chapter 320, October 20

NOTE: The Apprenticeship to Love Virtual Workshops begin again on October 29 is FREE to Premium subscribers Sacred Intimacy Retreats

  • Today's questions: How do you know your way? What are you doing to sustain yourself on your way? And how are you bringing kindness and gentleness into the manner in which you proceed on your way?
  • My practice today: 5:30am yogic postures, silent meditation

TODAY'S MEDITATION

To be clear. But not to make this a virtue, and certainly not a virtue that seeks reward.

To have vision and direction. Not to gather followers and honours, but to know something of who I am becoming, and where I am going.

To be disciplined. Not, again because discipline is a virtue, but because without it I cannot maintain either vision or direction.

I am clear, and have vision and direction for my sake. I discpline myself, for my sake. Without these, I am lost. And most importantly, without these, I will not know what needs knowing in my life.

...

I have a deadline and I am squandering all of my hours and days because I will not submit to the discipline of myself. So, I will not see. I will not know. Instead, I stumble. And it is dark. And that is on me. At least now, in this moment, I am writing. This puts a knife through my indecision and cuts me a way into where and how I need to be. At least for a few moments.

...

How many ways are there for me to be blind and deaf and unfeeling to Her gentle (and even not-so-gentle) guidance?

I listened to a man, a young man full of himself and his purpose. He was trying to convince of the righteousness of his way. Trying to convince me that the words I'd shared about the feminine desire for kindness and a masculine strength rooted in serving kindness and gentlenss were the wrong words. Were weak. Flaccid.

A man I love once told me about his flaccid penis, how his wife enjoyed playing with it. Why, he asked her, why do you play this way now? Because, she told him, When you were younger and more virile your impulse to erection was also a trigger for your assertion. Sometimes I like to have you, without the assumptions that come with your virility.

We —masculine-identified men— we do not know how much we miss of life, and especially of the feminine gifts of life, when we follow only our impulse of assertion. To conquer. Penetrate. Subjugate. Even, to simply understand. To know.

There is deep and unfathomable wisdom in not-knowing. In softness. In a flaccid approach to life. Not as a way of being 24/7. But certainly long enough and consistently enough that She —the world, the woman who loves us, our children, friends, colleagues— begin to know they may be with us and not feel our urgency and impulse.

We are so much more.

...

I have spent the past month breathing into my flaccidity, not sexually, but energetically. Allowing myself to soften, be gentle. Breathe with presence, but not so powerfully as to overwhelm. To be the calm that holds.

This may not be something that a younger man can understand. Our very bodies —and the culture that trains us— pushes us to, in turn, push. Into and against.

...

Yesterday, October 19, is an auspicious date in my calendar. The day when, nine years ago, things changed. Though I didn't really know it at the time. A good reason for not-knowing. But also a good reason for being prepared. I wasn't prepared.

I had been on a path. A hard path. A path of sacrifice and undoing and mending and bringing together things that were important to me. And then I lost my way. Not necessarily a bad thing. But I didn't realize I'd lost my way. I was distracted, and enjoying the distractions. I thought. So many were charmed by my charms. So many pleasures. But it wasn't true. I was gliding over the surface.

Then she walked into my life.

I was not, as I said, prepared. So I didn't recognize what she offered me. I did not even know she'd offering me anything.

I would not know what she offered me until quite some time after she'd withdrawn the offer.

Even then, I was still too numb to her, to myself, to even know that something was offered, then withdrawn. Only much later did I become aware. As she says now, I'm not like that now. It's why I practice. So that I am ready. Prepared. In case that offer is made again. When it is, it will be different. These things don't look the same twice.

October 19 is then an auspicious date. A date of remembering how lost I was, how insensitive I was to life's gifts, how caught up in pushing my way through life I was. As I listened to this over-confident young man (as perhaps we all are as young men, aware only of our desire to have and be more and incapable of seeing that the way is right in front of us but we insist on pushing blindly in all directions except the one that is ours, until, somehow, we stop pushing and start receiving the guidance that is always there, if only we were paying attention) —as I listened to this young man I wondered about what gifts he was missing, convinced as he was that the only gifts worth having were those worth taking.

...

Yesterday, on that auspicious date, another gift: two messages reminding me of to cultivate myself, and especially my sensitivity and reverence for that which is insensible and beyond me. That which I can only know with the unreasonable knowing that comes with practice, and stillness. The knowing that keeps me returning to this path that I had once lost.

I don't take these messages lightly. Coincidences? Synchronicities? Angels and fairies and random thoughts and gods and goddesses and psychotropic flashes back... Portals into something rich just beyond me. Portals to be allowed to open in their own time and way.

I prepare myself. Every morning before the sun rises. In the blessed hours, the amrit vela, when the mind is more susceptible to this unreasonable knowing. It's a discipline. A way of gentle holding a vision, having direction. Giving myself clarity, at least for a few moments.

It was an auspicious day yesterday. I am grateful.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀…awaken your inner technology of ease, joy, knowing, and liberation. Spread joy to ease the paranoia, and demonstrate that love is a much brighter way (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀The Conscious Warrior is committed to developing strength of the mind, physical body, and nervous system through dedicated physical, yogic, and meditative practice. (John Wineland, Precept 6)

🌀 The old meaning of enchanted is something like this: "I have been conjured and called by you, and consequence and the stuff of life are at hand, and many a thing has come to light, and just now, having met you, the river of my longing for life knows the shore that gives it its course and reason." (Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age)

🌀It’s important what you’re doing. It affects all of us. (My wise friend)

🌀Thank you. (My beloved)

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

How do you know your way? What are you doing to sustain yourself on your way? And how are you bringing kindness and gentleness into the manner in which you proceed on your way?

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

My suggestions for your practice today, to breathe and feel the confusion of life —the tension, pressure, friction, and stress that makes everything possible— and then allowing this confusion to become more beautiful than you can possibly imagine.
Please read through first, then ...

  • Set two alarms, for times of the day when you have a five-10 minutes to become conscious of who and how you are in this day.
  • When the alarm sounds, wherever and however you are, take a few moments and ask yourself:
    • How do I know my way? What am I doing to sustain myself on my way? And how am I bringing kindness and gentleness into the manner in which I proceed on my way?
    • Then, follow the short practice here:
      • Stand, or sit, or lay yourself down, and bring your attention to your body.
      • Feel the ground beneath you. Allow the earth to hold you with gravity. Feel how dense and heavy you are. Feel also how lightly you sit or stand or lay on the earth. Feel yourself between the pull of earth's gravity and the subtle but persistent pull of the sun, the stars.
      • Slow your breathing so that it is long and deep into your belly. Slow the inhale to a count of four or six. Slow your exhale to a count of six or eight or ten. Repeat three to five cycles of breathing, going a little slower with each cycle. Continuing to notice yourself held by the earth, raised by the sun and stars and sky above. Feel the subtle tension and pressure and friction and stress that allows you to be and rest and move in this body.
  • When you’re done, take another minute or two, breathing gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly.
  • Notice if your body-mind feels somehow changed. And whether you notice a change or not, be content with yourself, exactly as you are in this moment.
  • Continue with your day until the next alarm sounds, and repeat.

COMING UP