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POLARITY & THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD, PART 1

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

• 6 min read

Apprenticeship to Love, Chapter 265, August 30, 2024

  • My practice today: 2:30am, asanas; meditation and mantra for the heart

TODAY'S MEDITATION

I am marrying several couples in the coming year. What they have in common: they are already in the thick of it. Sharing a home. Raising children. It is familiar: moving quickly, and then feeling a need for ritual or ceremony to slow things down, to —somehow— awaken the divine in something that is already bound to the earth of everyday routines and expectations.

I know this place. I once promised myself that I would not risk losing the unimaginable sacred for the sake of convenience or —and this is much more powerful for me, still— the lust for real and imagined gifts. But, like so many of those who ask me for help in their rituals and ceremonies to reacquaint themselves with the sacred in themselves and their unions, I crossed thresholds, so many, unconsciously. Without reverence or regard. Not really. And that is what needs doing, in my life, now. And that requires sacrifice.

...

I have been too hasty. I regret that. Now I am more inclined (and more limited) to moving with the haste of the forest. That is, almost stopped. But moving still.

...

We are drawn together by polarity. The paradox is that proximity, which we think we desire, neutralizes the polarity, and the strangeness that is required of intimacy is lost.

I was listening to a woman complaining about her husband. She has the strong will and direction and desire to solve and conquer. He, not so much. He moves slowly. Oh so slowly. It maddens her. She sees the opportunity and reaches to seize it; he holds her back, cautious about taking what life seems to offer so freely.

She reminds me of myself. He, of the one I love. As I listen, and offer my thoughts, I draw from the well of regret that has been filled by my unwillingness to become slow enough to feel her wisdom.

He will not change, I tell this woman. Or, he will not change in any way that satisfies you. His seeming resistance to life is his gift to you. He "breaks your momentum," to borrow again from SJ. Slowed, your own gifts of will and decision can better serve your marriage. In ways that you cannot imagine. Cannot imagine in part because you are moving too quickly to feel the subtle beauty and power of all that is, to you, unimaginable.

...

I have rituals. These help me to slow down. To feel the ground under my feet and the beating of my heart. To feel into what is unimaginable to me, but always with me.

There was a moment, not so long ago, when writing and yoga and meditation and walking my dog in the woods was all that kept me from dissolving in my regrets. In that moment I was called to write, Something is being born.

I had an intuition that my pain was the pain of birth. Something was coming into my life, and it was more than the pain of grief alone. Though that too. Because something had to die —a sacrifice was needed and I was not resisting, though I did not welcome it. I was fortunate. I had a man who saw and felt things so much more deeply than me. He walked beside me, often, in this suffering I needed to know. I can see it now as the necessary birthing-pain that required the dying of the man I was. I had no sense of what might remain, or what I might become. I was so afraid. And so grateful for his presence.

...

I believe that only if we slow down do we get to experience the subtle thing we sometimes call the sacred or holy in our lives. We may become more reverential in our way with life, with ourselves, and each other.

The experience of polarity is one of those sacred moments. My attention to tending this holy space, one of the tasks as a "reverend," but also as one who be husband to the woman I love.

Something happens in the experience of polarity. If you, like me, are a masculine-identified man and feel yourself attracted to a feminine-identified woman, you encounter the power and seeming magic of what I call the sacred womb. Something happens. But what, beyond the obvious swelling and stimulating of organs, which too often distracts me from what is more deeply true in this polarity?

Something is being born. And like any gestation, it behooves me to attend to it. I wasn't so good at this with the gestation of my children. A little better with my grandchildren, perhaps. Much better, I think, with the arrival of my stepchildren. Certainly much more conscious of what I was doing. I moved slowly there, relatively speaking. The intimacies with mother and children was deepened by my reverence for the needs of their hearts, already broken and taxed by men who'd come, and gone, in their lives. I would not be one of these. I would stay.

Of the things of which I am proud, that is one of the greatest: that, with these children, I am still a powerful and unwavering presence.

Of the things over which I feel most confusion, the loss of that marriage is perhaps one of the strongest. Life must be lived forward, and understanding only comes with hindsight. Yet here even hindsight fails to offer much in the way of understanding, despite Kierkegaard's assurance. What I know, with certainty, is that I experienced something sacred. I experienced an extended moment where much beauty and love blossomed. I know this too, with certainty: in my haste to move on from my disappointment after all blossoming had passed, I blundered into haste. When I was subsequently chosen to lead in love it was as if all that I'd learned about husbandry and the magic of moving slowly and with reverence was forgotten.

So I turn to my rituals. My morning practice of asanas and meditation and writing. My daily practices of walking the forest with dogs, sometimes sitting and feeling into the still and silent wisdom of the trees.

I am called. Drawn. The more quiet and more still I become, the more what is true for me comes to me. There is no effort to reach out. Only a much greater effort, to become still. Silent. To receive.

...

I sat by the river the other evening. An eagle flew overhead. An owl called in the forest behind me. The dogs walked in the water, then sat beside me. Listening. Watching. Aware.

In so many ways I am a fortunate man. Become still, my fortune accumulates, gathers in my lap. I feel close to tears. Vulnerable to the moment. Something is being born. I cannot imagine.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Wherever you are and whatever you do, be in love. (Rumi)

🌀 Our prayer is that you’re intuitively open to the solutions that are always present; that you gain an insight into the sustainable future and begin to create this future now, and do so with compassion for all sides in this equation . . . no one’s at fault here. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀 …because love is so close, so intimate, we tend to overlook it, like that fish in the ocean looking for the ocean… (Kundalini Yoga School, Knowing Heart, day 10)

🌀The Conscious Warrior takes 100% responsibility for the reality he has created — seeking what needs to be changed in him before blaming others. (John Wineland, Precept 5)

🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, she who must be seen and held and known by my powerful and unwavering presence)

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

What do you feel when you say to a loved one, I love you?

What do you feel when you look into the eyes in the mirror and say to yourself, I love you?

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

My practice today: 5am, asanas; pranayama and meditation later in the forest
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:
    • What do I feel when I say to a loved one, I love you? What do I feel when I look into my eyes in the mirror and say to myself, I love you?
    • 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