Sign in Subscribe

THIS MOMENT OF EQUIVOCATION

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

• 7 min read

Apprenticeship to Love: Chapter 281, September 21

  • Today's questions: How do you allow yourself to feel all of this moment, and then allow yourself to fall through it, feeling it all, holding yourself, somehow knowing and trusting yourself to guide you through into what comes next?
  • My practice today: 4am: Yogic postures, mantra, meditation, and allowing myself to feel the delicate balance and falling that comes with being so near.

TODAY'S MEDITATION

In marriage and in tango, this thing called “balance” is prized.

But in tango we know this: balance is not where the action is. Nothing happens (nothing seems to happen) there. It is a moment, a pause in our dance. We break the momentum with our pause. We, perhaps, equivocate.

...

We are on the cusp of the equinox. This means something. At least metaphorically. And for many of us, we also feel this moment in our bones. I am called to wonder about balance. About equivocation. About this phrase, I am equal to this. I wonder also about the seeming state of grace we call "balance."

...

Take a breath. Hold it. Let that breath sink into your belly. Now, push it further into the bottom of what yogis call your Lower Triangle, that energetic foundation for who you are and how you experience the world, your life in it.

Let this breath rest there, in your pelvis, until you simply must —slowly!— release it, pulling your navel back towards your spine until "every drop of breath," as a teacher used to say, has been pushed out of your body.

And now! Now hold yourself empty. No breath. Nothing and nothingness. Until you might feel a tingling in your fingertips. Or a sensation that you might lose control of your bladder. Yes, empty until you are at this edge —and then breathe it in, this delicious breath that too often is taken for granted.

In every stage of this four-part breath you will experience both the calm of balance, and the delight of falling forward, through this balance, into the next stage. And every moment holds a gift for you, the one breathing, the one feeling the edges of your limits.

...

We are, today, on the cusp of the equinox. Astronomically, a moment of a few hours or days when the spiral we call the seasons "holds its breath." The length of the day equal to the length of the night. A moment when ending and beginning hold each other tight. A moment of stillness. A moment to feel all that has been, and all that will be. A moment of equivocation, pregnant with possibilities...

I am equal to this. One foot in the past, the other already crossing the threshold into what will be. My heart for only a moment hovering over the threshold. At the centre. The balance point. The tipping point. Feeling the fullness and the emptiness, all of it. Now.

But I am only equal to this moment of equivocation if I attend to the breathing of it. The experiencing of it.

It passes quickly. And I am grateful for that. My life —the art and beauty and grief and love and flow of it (all words about the same experience, just different forms of being alive to it)— my life is lived int he falling through balance and into the decision that breaks the equanimity, the equivocation, the equinox of my polarities.

I am the sun. The stars. The earth. Always in motion. Yet needing to attend to these still moments, perhaps hours and days, when all seems to hold its breath. Full or empty. The moments and durations when endings and beginnings seem the same.

...

In art, in tango, in love, and in marriage: the breathing of it and the attention to the pause of balance where nothing seems to happen, and the moment when we fall through the pause, the equilibrium we have worked so hard to achieve.

A good time to wonder about whether to move forward, or to move back. A good time to listen to our bodies and feel both our awareness of ourselves, and our desire for movement —and for the beauty that reveals itself as we, and if we're dancing tango or marriage, that part of our experience that is the feminine (follow), as She is guided, allowed to fall “through” that moment of balance, and into another as-yet-unknown moment of the dance. Whether it is a pause, to hold each other and feel awareness and being-held-in-awareness. Or the next falling through.

I am continually drawn to Stephen Jenkinson's story about the necessity of "breaking momentum." We are always improvising —in tango, in love, in life. And especially in our marriages. And breaking momentum, breaking routines and habits, stopping to feel the moment and allowing it become equal, these are necessary moments.

We may pause in the moment of balance. It is one of the beauties of tango, our attention to pausing. A stillness to hold each other and ourselves. To enjoy that moment when everything feels “right,” aligned. But when we cling to each other through the moment we are attempting to defy the laws of physics and astronomy. We are choosing to die there.

But that is not ours to choose, this death. We may want this seeming stability. The laws of gravity and polarity and of the sun moving in the firmament and our little planet moving around it and etcetera etcetera —everything is moving and we are moving with it and our efforts to stay in the moment we cherish is futile. As much as I would like to equivocate, the world and love and life continues to move. And I with it.

If I am an artist of this life I live, and I think I am beginning to know that, and if I am an apprentice to the sacred art of husbandry, then I begin to know also the moment to break the balance. To step through the equinox of polarity and forward into the unimaginable beauty (& sorrow!) of what the next falling in/out/through balance brings…

...

The autumn equinox. A magical moment. Light and dark, masculine and feminine, alpha and omega —all the polarities are balanced, and we pause. Breathe. Feel our own magic. Our own personal and small or large commitments to our art, our dance, and we gather the strength to now plunge deeper into the unknown of this life, this marriage, the other, ourselves.

…

Is it the equinox that makes me feel these feelings, think these thoughts?

I’m always wondering: How do I experience these celestial moments? What influence the seasons of the sun, the thirteen moons and their phases, the planets and the stars, the light and the dark? Beyond the superficial “coziness” that comes to me with the smells of autumn (often hinted at in mid-August airs), or the lightness in my step with the portent of spring as the evenings are —all of a sudden! it seems— brighter at the end of January, beyond this, How do I experience these cycles and events that are far beyond me?

It is the yoga of this life, to plumb my own depths and experiences. To experience an awareness that I know as joy. Or, as recent events are showing me, anxiety. Not a rapturous joy (or a bone-chilling anxiety). But maybe deeper. Quieter. More thorough?

It isn’t balance I seek, but the pleasure of feeling this life, really knowing it in my body.

But right now I’m feeling so far off balance as I wonder at how some of my writing stirs anger and fear and mistrust amongst readers...  Another experience. Another aspect of the feminine movement in my life, showing me something that only this imbalance can show me.

…

After reading Kendra Cunov on balance I wrote to my beloved:
Every few days or weeks, I find myself falling in love with you.
I’ve told you how good it feels to love you. To learn to open my heart against expectations, to just feel how big this heart can be. But I haven’t spoken of the ebb and flow, of vulnerability & sensitivity & confidence & insecurity. What is constant is my commitment, to loving you. Because I know that through this commitment I experience more & more of the man I love, more & more of the woman I love. And always, the falling…

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Blessed Equinox, When Darkness & Light meet each other in perfect balance.
When Darkness & Light turn towards each other an realize both need to be seen, honoured & respected. When the Light realized it can not exist without Darkness and vice versa. When they realize they are Whole, Beautiful, & Complete, when they have each other & dance with each other! (Fabiola Perez)

🌀 If you want to live your life in balance, you must fall in love with falling. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Interpretations of any experience serve the intellect — the actual experience of the experience serves the soul. This is the basis of the teachings of “I am” — one who experiences the experience of the soul. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀I want to be seen. I want to be accepted as I am. And loved for that. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

How do I allow myself to feel all of this moment, and then allow myself to fall through it, feeling it all, holding myself, somehow knowing and trusting myself to guide me through into what comes next?

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

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 ask yourself:
    • How do I allow myself to feel all of this moment, and then allow myself to fall through it, feeling it all, holding myself, somehow knowing and trusting myself to guide me through into what comes next?
    • 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