HOW DO I SERVE IN THIS COLDEST SEASON?

• Today's suggested practice: Day 9 of this month's practice with Sarah Anderson (see video, below)
• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Verdi, Messa di Requiem: III a domine  https://music.apple.com/ca/album/messa-di-requiem-iii-a-domine-jesu-christe/695455662?i=695456469
• Practice: 4am: 90 minutes of yogic practice, including Meditation for Purifying the Elements
• My vulnerability practice: To surrender to this belonging that is longing …
• Note: For men who are ready for Part I of the Path of the Sacred Masculine, register here to start on start on February 1 sacredbodies.ca/path1

Hans Peter Meyer

VIDEO

WTF is “Co-ed Sexual Polarities Practice?” (and why should you care?)https://youtube.com/shorts/3_iDfHwCru0?feature=share

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Imagine two polarities: the one yearns for endless sensation; the other receives endless satisfaction.

Imagine two polarities: the one, experienced as perpetual motion; the other, so still it is only experienced as presence.

Imagine two polarities: the one, deserving nothing and without yearning; the other, yearning only to serve.

Imagine: your own willingness to serve love in the seeming absence of love.

She asked for patience, for the stillness that would allow her to be the endless flow.

She yearned for commitment, the depth that would allow her to fly to the ends of the earth.

These I have, for her. And I am sorry, because I did not have them ready. Please forgive me.

Please know that, now, so long after you murmured (for it is always a subtle murmuring with you), I am grateful —to be chosen to hear your murmurings, to be trusted with your requests, to be tested with your yearnings. I am the gravity that enjoys your profound whimsy, your need to dance. To fly.

I am the gravity that you may push against to achieve the necessary solitude and silence.

In the yogic origin story Shiva and Shakti come together in ecstasy, and spend the rest of eternity seeking each other and this moment of ecstasy in an endless dance.

In one interpretation this becomes the reason for our seemingly endless human hunger for sexual joining.

In most interpretations, this sexual joining is about that all-too-brief, no matter how practiced you are at extending this moment it is always and inevitably all-too-brief, and narrowly defined bodily union.

More and more I am drawn to other interpretations. Where the dance of Shiva and Shakti may be necessarily and endless coming-together and coming-apart, but that the ecstasy is in this, and it is less and less concerned with the all-too-brief and the narrowly understood body. Instead, it is more to do with the energetic bodies that move through, and around, and beyond these bones and muscles and nerves I call this body in this life.

And, who knows the seasons of this dance?

That cat and I sit by the window. Together we look into the winter garden. Alive with birds.

Strange, I think, How barren it feels, to my insensitive sensitivities. And yet, to these fragile creatures —so thin and seemingly vulnerable— somehow living through these cold and wet days of this Pacific northwest season it is rich. Somehow they experience a cornucopia.

I have been a gardener of sorts since I can remember. First, as a child, with my sister, with our own small measure of the family garden. Growing radishes. The “training wheels” of a young gardener.

In this year of writing of my apprenticeship, so often sitting in or near the garden, I begin to understand it speaking to me. My sensitivities a little more sensitive, by way of this writing. And especially by way of my practice. Not yet so perceptive as the birds —the Northern Thrushes my favourites this season, stripping the Rowan of her red berries during the deepest cold of the season so far. Not so sensitive, yet with uncommon knowing aware that my attention to the garden and Her ways is one of the lessons of this apprenticeship.

Here I discover my gravity. Or, an aspect of it that makes sense when so much makes so little sense. Here the patience and the commitment my beloved asked of me is solid. The depth of stillness and trust she needs to fly and dance and be, fully, herself is more than words. It has a solidity, necessary for her to push against. A density she requires, not to flee, but to fly with the knowing that she will return to gravity’s eternal and welcome embrace.

And so the garden…. in this season.

She gathers Her beauty into Herself, that She may push against the density and mystery of this season so that She may leap —Spring, in fact!— into Her joyful dance, Her endless turn of whimsy.

I am here. I hold this space. I tend this garden.

I am the husbandman, deserving nothing. Serving love.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀The Conscious Warrior cultivates impeccability in his presence, his environment, his way of being, and his way in the world. (John Wineland, Precept Two)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 9 of this month's practice, take about four minutes today to sit and join Sarah Anderson in a beautiful “Sacred Womb” meditation (because all of us, however we identify, can benefit from some loving attention to our “feminine” creative/generative capacities)

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, sit (or stand) in stillness as you listen to your heart, your belly, your sex, your root and let this question stir within you…. Am I willing to serve, in the face of deserving nothing? And if I am, how then do I serve, in the facing of deserving nothing?
• Set your timer for 6 minutes or listen to or watch Sarah:

• As the timer signals or the  video ends allow your eyes to slowly open. Take three, relaxed breath cycles, no pressing, no effort, and feel yourself full, without thoughts, open. Safe to receive. Then, step into your day, letting the mantra echo as a nourishing vibration whenever you become still. You don't need to DO anything. Let the world come to you with its demands, its complaints, and yes, its endless tide of gifts and blessings.