I BOW TO HER SUFFERING, TEACHING ME TO LOVE

• Today's suggested practice: Day 7 of 7 minutes to hold space for Her.... (see below)
• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Amrit Sadhana Singh, Mera Man Loche https://is.gd/uqOxd8
• My morning practice: 45 minutes with short warm-up, Linking with the Infinite ♾ mantra and pranayama, followed by Solving Communication Problems kriya
• My vulnerability practice: To feel her pain yesterday, and to feel all of my fears of not being enough to hold all of this suffering, and to breathe... becoming the man she needs in this moment... by Her grace alone...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Think about it: Who made me the man I am, the man worthy of love? It begins with my mother, her suffering and sacrifice... Her years of constant love, whether I was aware, whether I was present, whether I was humble or arrogant, worthy or unworthy, always her love. This is how I begin to learn to love, by bowing to my mother and her sacrifice. Thank you. And please forgive me for my selfishness and lack of awareness.

Who made me the man I am, worthy of love? The women who have, without be aware of it, took me in and began another process of birthing and sacrifice. Suffering through my younger inexperience as a man worthy of their vulnerability and trust, a man raised without adequate guidance as the husbandman they needed, they need.

Who made me the man I am, beginning to be worthy of trust and the flow of infinite love and beauty? She whose tender heart risks opening again to me, whose vulnerability and suffering feels sometimes too much —the sacrifice she makes that I redeem with my practice and my growing capacity to hold this space. To hear her voice. To feel her heart. To know her ache so close as almost to be my own. To glimpse the sacrifice she has made for me, and for all of us who failed to be the husbandman she needs.

Who makes me the man I love, willing to bow to the infinite tests and infinite gifts and infinite suffering that gives birth to me as the husbandman worthy of all she brings? It begins with my mother, it rests with my beloved. I cannot know their sacrifice and suffering. But I can hold this space. I can honour their gifts, not just today, but every day, and with every breath. I am this husbandman, with every conscious breath holding her safe, trusting her heart and womb to bring forth a flow of unimaginable and astonishing beauty.

It is one of the blessings of this yoga of sexual polarities, that I come to this inkling of understanding of the infinite sacrifice the feminine makes, in order to give birth to men who are worthy. My beloved tells me that I am changed, and with her tender surrender into trust she shows me that I am worthy.

It is one of the blessings of this life that I am born the son of my mother. I bow to her pain, grateful that she shows me how to be the husbandman to this woman I love.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀The Conscious Warrior honours and protects the feminine, both in himself, in women and children, and in the world. (John Wineland, Precept 8)

🌀You're not like that now. (My beloved, my Oracle)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Day eight of this month's practice, seven minutes towards becoming the diamond you are as the child born of woman-magic, mother-magic...

Please read through first, then ...

• If you don't have the Mera Man Loche on iTunes https://is.gd/uqOxd8 you'll find it here on YouTube:

This is a song of longing and devotion and self-discovery. You will listen to this while you...

• If possible, lay yourself down comfortably. Let your body settle. Feel the heaviness of your body, the places where it sags into the floor or mattress as the experience of earth's gravity, Her powerful magnetic force simply holding you, as She holds the atmosphere you breathe, as She holds the earth you walk and run and dance on. As She holds the water that nourishes you, that swims in your body, that holds you as you swim in the oceans and lakes and rivers... Allow yourself to become soft, vulnerable to being held in this embrace of gravity...
• Breathing through your nose, notice your breath becoming gently slower and slower. Soften the top of your throat so that your breath is almost a snoring... filling and softening your belly as you inhale, gently pressing your navel against your spine as you exhale.
• After three cycles of long and deep breathing turn the music on.... listening past the words to the devotional tone, a tone devoted to the journey of your wisdom, your truth, your experience, your surrender to yourself...
• As you listen to this song of lament and devotion and self-awareness allow your mind to hold your own feelings of lament, devotion, becoming aware of the tenderness within you.... Imagine yourself in your mother's belly, held and protected as best as she and her body knew how to hold and nourish you. Imagine yourself in the trauma of birth, your fear, her fear and her pain.... breathe into this remembering or imagining.... Imagine her terror and her sacrifice as she brings you into this frightening world of light and cold and— and breathing! Take a deep breath, your deepest breath, arching your body as you imagine the memory of that first terrible breath of this life separate from the mother-body. Keep breathing. Feel yourself held by the earth's magnetic embrace as you imagine this memory of trauma settling into your breath, your own capacity to hold yourself safe, to breathe, on your own...
• Now, imagine how every intimacy you've experienced is itself a birthing of the man or woman you are. If you are a man, imagine every penetration, physical or energetic with the feminine, as Her allowing you into a sacred womb-space, with every separation from the womb-space another painful birthing into a fuller and deeper knowledge of yourself as a man. If you are feminine-identified as a woman or as a man, imagine every penetration as your reception of that which needs to be re-birthed through the magic of your womb-space. Always, no matter how inviting, an intrusion, a demand of your energy. A demand for your sacrifice...
• Breathe and receive, breathe and know pain and suffering and sacrifice. Imagine yourself in the womb-space. Imagine yourself offering the womb-space. Imagine the extended womb-space as we are held after the pain of separation, vulnerable, tested, testing, always tender beyond our capacities... Breathe into this tenderness and be grateful for how much you can feel, how you are held. Allow gratitude for your mothering.... for your profound capacity as a mother... for your profound capacity as a husbandman...
• As the song ends, bring yourself back to this moment, this Mother's Day. Relax any tension your breath and posture may be holding from the practice. Release the images of birth and suffering into the endless ebb and flow of the ocean of your feelings, not needing to be solved, simply needing to flow, to be felt. Take three breath cycles, without effort, to transition into opening your eyes. As you step into your day know that you are infinitely deep, infinitely strong, infinitely tender... infinitely humbled before the mother magic, the sacred womb that births beauty and love and light..

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com