SUMMERTIME BLUES

Apprenticeship to Love, Chapter 207, July 17, 2024

• Today’s questions: How long can I hold confusion before I collapse —or, before it blossoms as love? How long? And, am I able to let myself rest, to return to feeling it all, allowing it all to blossom into love, beauty, this moment?
• Today's suggested practice: to sit with your own resistance to learning what you already know & receive as love... (see my "Short Practice,” below)
• My practice today: 3am, asanas, and Meditation for the Lower Triangle

TODAY'S MEDITATION

I tell my tango and marriage students: Balance is an "ideal state," not the state of reality.

What then is state of reality? It is the constant push and pull, the always-there tension, pressure, friction, and stress that both holds us and releases us.

We are always falling through balance. This is true in tango. It is true in marriage. It is true in yoga.

Balance is the moment of grace we seek; it is not a state we can hold, at least not for more than a few moments, and only at risk of knowing the beauty, sometimes terrible, of being alive.

...

I am afraid of falling. But here I am, always courting the edge, always about to lose myself.

The heartbreak of it, to want to be held and comforted, and then to find myself broken open, adrift, with only my own arms to hold me. This, as one of my teachers, is when I know myself alive.

...

I read this once. It has stuck with me. Reminds me why I practice, and why I am drawn to the edge of myself.

It is resistance to love that causes all the problems.

I am reminded of the Tantric "death practice" that Fabiola Perez introduced me to. And the poem she quoted, by Heidi Priebe, and how every marriage is an invitation to 1000 funerals. Change. Grief. Heartbreak. The ways love arrives and is felt in our committed relationships.

Another teacher: There is a way through every block.

The way through resistance —and especially resistance to heartbreak— is to keep my heart open. To fall even deeper into love. Helpless. Surrendering to the polarity of it. Giving myself completely to the risk of it —and trusting that this, and only this, this is the way through.

...

I do know that resistance breaks so much more than my heart.

...

Another Tantrica offered this after asking 40 women what it is they want from a man:

• I wish my man would be more assertive as a lover, and take the lead in our relationship.
• I want a man who I can trust to not take things personally.
• I want a man who isn't hesitant and doesn't collapse in the face of mistakes... a man I can surrender to...

These are good things for me to consider, as a man who loves a woman. Good things to consider, I think, for any man who loves a woman.

It is good to read these words from women wanting and loving men, and to be challenged to be more of myself as a man. But I know that there is a price to being what this teacher calls a "Tantric man."

And what does that even mean —to be a "Tantric man?"

Above all, it means the capacity to be patient and still and observe as the flower opens. No urgency. No pushing or pulling. No "leaning in." If anything, "leaning back." Allowing.

In Tantra, I was taught, initiation always comes from the woman.

That means: I am feeling all the tension and pressure and friction and stress of my own desiring, and breathing through it. I am letting love blossom in its time — allowing love to blossom in Her own time and way. And, to be a man at this "level" of realization means to always feels like life is too much —and then, to breathe, and receive and continue to open to life, to love.

What is a price for this level of realization of myself as a man? First, to be patient. Patient beyond every understanding I have of patience. And for me that has been and is a steep price. It is good that I have much practice.

Another aspect of the price is attention, awareness, reverence for however the blossoming occurs.

A third —and you may notice how these all fit together, build on each other— is the capacity to go to the edge of patience and desiring and awareness of the blossoming but also of the desiring for blossoming, and to not collapse.

To feel my nervous system. To feel the strain of it. All the tension and pressure and friction and stress of it, and, instead of collapse, to breathe, to step back, to rest, and rejoin when I rested.

If that price were not steep enough, there is also a tax on the price: knowing that everything that I long for I will grieve, and that it is my gift to life and those I love to be grateful for the brokenheartedness. For the "1000 Funerals," as the poet Heidi Priebe puts it, as I am reminded by another teacher and Tantrica. Only my willingness to learn the skill of heartbreak enables me to feel more than I think I can feel.

...

Right now, these days, I am at the edge of collapse. Falling. And afraid to fall. Confused. And, no doubt to anyone I try to talk to, confusing.

...

We practice to be prepared, that we may receive.

All the forms of yoga —postures, breathwork, chanting, meditation, service— are necessary for me to be prepared.

Rituals too. They help me feel the ground under my feet, to know my cardinal directions and the compass points that orient me.

I will fall. I will lose my way. But I do not need to collapse. I will breathe, and practice, and become the man I love, the man I am willing to offer to the world, and to love. I am a gift, to be given.

I am the only one who can catch me as I am falling. But I am not alone. We are all, if we are willing, ready to fall, together.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Love is a risk. One with a strong lower triangle will throw caution to the wind to fulfill their hearts desires. The heart may want something, but your mind and people around you are telling you that you are crazy. Many things in life when seen in black and white may not make sense. The heart is the color. The heart wants what the heart wants and it doesn’t always feel comfortable, yet if you are not living from here, where are you living? Whose life are you living? (Nihal Singh)

🌀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)

🌀I appreciate you. (My beloved, my Oracle and Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

Today's practice, 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 long can I hold confusion before I collapse —or, before it blossoms as love? How long? And, am I able to let myself rest, to return to feeling it all, allowing it all to blossom into love, beauty, this moment?
  • 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. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself, Do I feel right? Am I in alignment with the man or woman I am? Do I even have an inkling what that might feel like? Do I even have an inkling of what it feels like to be out of alignment with myself?
• 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.