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SLOWLY. UNWAVERING

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

• 4 min read
SLOWLY. UNWAVERING

Apprenticeship to Love: Chapter 296, October 6

  • Today's questions: How are you honouring the gift of this moment?
  • My practice today: 6am: Yogic postures, mantra, Lower Triangle meditation

TODAY'S MEDITATION

I am feeling familiar pains. Familiar distractions. Growing pains? Perhaps.

What will happen if I choose to trust that this is the case, that these are not obstacles on this crooked path, but the necessary growing pains? What then?

...

My body speaks to me. My hips and lower back, my belly and my sex, they are all speaking. Hence, my return to the Lower Triangle practice. I need this foundation for what comes to me.

...

Five years ago I went to two in-person trainings with John Wineland. There I learned the beginnings of this art of husbandry, to become rooted. Unwavering. Not unfeeling, but instead to feel everything but not be swayed from my deep capacity to receive.

I imagined myself a tree. And am reminded, every day that I walk in the forest, to be moved by Her winds, and to remain rooted in Her ground. And in this way to be the polarity of awareness.

Important teachings. Never-ending learning. Always tested. Always.

...

I am learning how to stand and wait, again.

I am learning how to sit and wait, again.

I am reminded, again, that this is my greatest art. The art that has brought me anything and everything is in this life. My art.

Every man has his own way with patience, with moving slow enough to feel it all, to receive it all.

This is my time to learn my art of patience. My art of moving slowly. Of not wavering, even as I move, slowly. This the time when I deepen the art of my husbandry.

...

This week a teacher said to me: Everything you do grows from your intention. Your connection grows from your intention. Your effective direction grows from your connection.

She knows my intention better than I do. She —not only the woman I love, and not only all the other women and the children and the men who are sensitive enough to know, not only these but these absolutely— the great She that flows through everything, the great She that animates and nourishes me —She knows my intention.

So much better than I do. Writing this, I slow myself. Let this settle. Breathe it in.

I become a little more still than I was a moment ago. I sit. I allow this body to know, to feel, my intention.

Then, with as much stability as I can muster —and with practice I have become a master at mustering depth and stability— and unwavering in that intention, I breathe and open myself to receive. And She flows.

...

How does She flow? In this moment, like this: the woman I love brings me a gift of intimacy in the form of confusion, regret, depression.

How do I honour and receive her gift?

And: How do I honour the gift of my own tumult of desire and fear and curiosity and wonder in the face of her gift? Because this too is one of the gifts She brings to me.

So many gifts! So much richness. So much confusion.

I sit. I allow Her to flow through and around. I allow myself to be nourished.

All of this is here for me to receive, to wonder at, to be awed by, to enjoy.

Hence this Lower Triangle practice. My body speaks to me. I have the beginnings of an answer, in this practice. In my own wonder and breathing in of this moment.

And my beloved, she prepares to fly away.

I am here. I am he who can be trusted, who must be trusted —hence her gifts. I am here and I sit and I breathe, and I allow her leaving to be part of that flow that only nourishes me. Makes me more of the husband I am.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Connection before direction. (John Talbot)

🌀When you’re fully aware as each moment arrives, you’ll recognize when it returns….
…build momentum from all of your missed opportunities and fulfill your dreams . . . expect the best . . . it’s always there . . . or soon will be. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀The Conscious Warrior practices the cultivation of wonder and awe. (John Wineland, Precept 7)

🌀There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness. (Han Suyin)

🌀I am not quiet. (My beloved)

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

How am I honouring the gift of this moment?

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 am I honouring the gift of 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.
  • 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