PATIENCE. AND THEN MORE, ALWAYS

• Today’s questions: Where in my body do I feel the ache of impatience? Where in my body do I feel the calm and the joy of patience?

• Today's suggested practice: Day 12 of this month's practice, to practice for yourself, your wants, the things you yearn for (see Kendra Cunov’s short “Notes Towards Self Practice” below)

• My practice: 5:30am; 60 minutes of yoga asanas, mantras, followed by Gayatri meditation

• My vulnerability practice: Feel it, yes, all the impatience and all the wanting and all the grasping. Feel it, and allow it to move, without doing anything. Feel that sweet ache…

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Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY’S MEDITATION

It never ends. Mastery is always and forever just beyond me. Recognizing this, I surrender to a kind of vulnerability that aches in my whole being. And so I practice.

The masculine energetic core, as described by Deida, drawing on ancient yogic sources, exists to rest. To hold everything in awareness, as pure consciousness. We all have this capacity.

The divine feminine energy —again, something we all experience in our bodies— is the flow of existence. It is never complete, always unfolding, becoming more and becoming something unimaginable, beyond understanding and limit. For that part of ourselves that longs for rest and completion, this feminine flow pulls us as something we long to resolve. To complete. To master. To be stilled, so that we can rest in consciousness only. Death, then, is a welcome state: no more demands; no loose ends; no unravelling into chaos.

A student recently told me, Our marriage is in a precarious place. I asked if perhaps all of our committed relationships were always in a precarious place? If they were always in some sort of imbalance, out of whack with our imaginings, our illusions?

What if we acknowledged that our committed and long-term relationships were a constant dance with death? And birth? As if the “thousands funerals” of Priebe were to be experienced not just as a grieving of the familiar, but also as a rejoicing for the new? As the endless dance of Shiva and Shakti? Unless this relationship is, perhaps, dead. Static. Fixed. Without movement.

We move between the poles, the beauty of our marriage (or any other long-term, committed relationship, even friendship) experienced as the play between them.

But, sometimes, listening to men (and some women too, it’s true) I think that what we want from our marriages is that they stop moving. That the polarities neutralize. That this holy play of energies becomes… —yes, dead.

So often this is what I hear from men: for it to stop, for there to be rest from the feminine flow.

And so often, she —this woman we say we love— she resists the death. She has no love for death in her feminine heart. She lashes out. She demands. She embodies the holy fury of a Kali or a Chinnamasta as she struggles against this death.

We too, as masculine-identified men, we also have access to our own feminine desire to be alive to life. And while part of us moves towards death in all things, to be “done” with the demands and tasks, the endlessness of it all, we also upset the balance of the death we’ve invited into our marriages. It looks like happiness. Or comfort. Or balance. This death. Yet we hunger for nourishment from feminine flow, but unable to revive that flow in our beloved we invite chaos by courting others. By leaking our powerful presence into the feminine flow of other women, of work, or art…

Compassion. I keep arriving back at this as a fundamental principle in life and in this dance of marriage.

Compassion for myself as I struggle to hold both my desire for an end to change (yes, this desire for death), and my desire for more, for deeper, for radiance, for pleasure, for beauty. For sex.

Compassion for my beloved who experiences her own struggles with this dance.

The famous saying by Ram Dass, that we are all walking each other home, to have the awareness of this as true in every moment of being together and being alone. To have also the compassion for how hard it is, for every one of us, to hold ourselves, never mind each other, on this so-often difficult walk home. It is a tango walk. Full of pauses and confusions, of momentum, and momentum broken. A difficult walk that I am learning to cultivate as an artful walk, always on the edge of dying.

Several days ago we sailed with wind and rough seas. An adventure!

Today there is no wind. We will sail, or rather, drift. We will swim and let the blue of the ocean swallow us with its refreshing swell.

We will talk. And be silent. And, allowing ourselves to drift in the silence and the words, we will be washed by the tide, by Her tides.

I deserve nothing. But everything I need is here for me. How am I resisting what She brings to me? How am I enjoying what She brings to me?

How am I helping myself to walk this path home, helping those near me to walk their way home?

And, where do I find the grace to hold all of this with firm shoulders and soft arms, with deep breaths, with compassion?

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀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)

🌀…stretch into your body glove, breathe as deeply and compassionately as you can, and arrive at this moment with your full presence; gather all the vitality you are able to gather and present the gift of your destiny… (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀In sex, I invite you to let go of attempting to get anywhere, or to make anything happen.

Especially an orgasm. And instead, ask yourself how deeply can I relax into the experience of myself, with my partner.?

YOU are the sex which is happening. There's nowhere you need to get to. It's only when you can drop the chasing, that you can begin to truly feel the effortlessly blessed [ecstacy] of you. (Chris Bale)

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 12 of this month's practice:

Please read through first, then ...

Today, set a time —at least five minutes, perhaps 15— when you can be alone and in stillness.

• Stand or sit or lie, with a beautiful and straight spine, firm but relaxed, feeling your feet or your sit bones or hips heavy and connected to the earth;

• Close your eyes;

• Inhale deeply into your belly, letting it become soft and round;

• Exhale by gently and slowly, much more slowly than your inhale, pressing your navel to your spine,

• And listen to Kendra Cunov’s few minutes on practice:

When you’re done, stand or sit or lie for another minute and breathe gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself, Where in my body do I feel the ache of impatience? Where in my body do I feel the calm and the joy of patience?

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, open to the gifts it brings.

★ My full conversation with Kendra Cunov about Men & Women & the “No-Man Diet” is now on the podcast at sacredbodies.ca/podcast