THE HEART OF MY VULNERABILITY

JOIN ME TODAY ON ZOOM...

▶Today at 11am Pacific time: Fatherhood

▶Tonight at 6pm, Fatherhood

▶Tonight at 7pm, #MENSWORK open mic with me on the topic of Slowing Down...

• Today's suggested practice: 3 minutes.... (see below)
• My playlist while writing today's meditation: RY X (Ólafur Arnalds), Oceans
• My morning practice: 30 minutes: Short warm-up, followed by Sat kriya (Linking to the Infinite pranayama and mantra later today in the forest...)
• My vulnerability practice: Facing the emptiness of my practices without love. Aching with regret...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION

As a man, I am trained to master. To fix problems. To direct. To defend my family and my community. To overcome challenges. My training, whether to be a logger or a writer or a photographer or a yoga teacher or a father or a husband, even a lover, so much of it is about mastering technique. The how-to-manual of life. A good thing. Powerful. Efficient. Effective in so many ways. This is how I have achieved so much that matters to me. And yet....

And yet, when I slip into the arrogance or comfort of thinking that I can apply my mastery of technique to all of my life.... to the "problem" of being a masculine-identified man in love with a feminine-identified woman, of being a father, or a dancer, or an artist, or a writer... things get awkward. And then I am surprised.

"You are always surprised," she said.

She, the great unfolding and always-changing, always-blossoming, always-coming-undone energy of life that brings me the real riches of my life, She will not be fixed or tamed or solved by my technique.

First comes love. But what a risk that is! I want the protection of the how-to-manual. I want the step-by-step. The safety of the predictable. But nothing like that. First comes the poetry of her vulnerability. Her tenderness. My awareness of how soft and subtle are these children, this woman, how much they long to trust me and I must learn, somehow outside the safety of the how-to-manual beyond the guidance of my technique to hold with more care and more selflessness and more somehow-rooted presence than I can imagine. I must bring my heart to this art of carrying the burden of love.

Practice! Yes! Practice all the techniques and technologies of being the man I am. Absolutely, practice. And then, surrender to the surge of my own feminine heart as it yearns to know the whirling and whimsy of feeling and flow and boundlessness beyond "technique."

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀...Life's an adventure into the unfamiliar...if you want to grow, your priority cannot be to feel safe. (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Wholeness Sensations)

🌀As a prerequisite to any polarity practice, practice love first.

Full Body Love, so steeped to the bone, so brimming and full, that the only way to hold more is to let it flow into the body of another.

Polarity without love looks a lot like manipulation. If you want to master the energetics of the universe to get what you want, to be rich juicv successful powerful well-fucked, I'll send referrals.

But if vou want to unclench and expose and dig deep and taste truth through the alignment of your heart with the heart of Love…..

If you want to know trust and devotion through flesh into god into life into all into the core of who vou are...

If you want to shed romanticized ideals of how another will complete you, and instead offer our completeness to the completion of another...

Welcome. (Nina Lombardo)

🌀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)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

3 minutes to ...

Please read through first, then ...

• Sitting or standing, set your timer for three minutes.
• Close your eyes and ask yourself, How willing am I to live on the edge of my vulnerability? How willing am I to bring the power of my beautiful and oh-so-tender heart to everything I do?
• Breathe into these questions.... in no hurry to answer. Let the answer come to you through your day. For these three minutes just hold the questions tenderly in your body, noticing where they rest. Your shoulders? Your lower back? Your heart? Your breath? Just notice the questions and how they sit in your body.
• When the timer signals, slowly open your eyes. Stand still for three breath cycles, longer and deeper into your belly than you have been. Step back into your day, knowing that the answers will show up when they are ready to be revealed. There is no hurry...

ps. I am a big fan of Nina Lombardo's work in this area. If you are a feminine-identified woman I encourage you to look at what Nina Lombardo is offering.

pps. If you'd like to jump into your own "vulnerability practice," please use the FORREADERS code to get a 50% discount on the Vulnerability Practice 45-minute session at sacredbodies.ca

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com