MAKING A DIFFERENCE, DOING NOTHING

Apprenticeship to Love: Chapter 315, October 15

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• Today's questions: How am I resisting this flow, the way I am being shown?
• My practice today: 1am Alternate Nostril Breathing and silent sitting meditation

TODAY'S MEDITATION

This hasn't happened in a long, long time: lying in bed, unable to sleep.

...

Something is moving. I can feel it. I'm awake and alive and restless. Something is changing.

My first impulse is to try to figure it out. The what and the why and then the what to do. I'm getting better at noticing these first impulses and letting them be. Letting them sit. It's become more a part of how I am with the world and with life, to let things sit. Become what they are wanting to be, rather than forcing them to be what I want them to be. Even being restless late at night, I'm a little better at this. Better at letting this movement move, this change change.

...

So often I hear younger men on fire with their mission. Their purpose. Or, on fire because they feel the need to know this purpose in their bones but cannot yet quite grasp it. Not knowing, yet, that there is nothing to grasp.

It's a thing we do, most of us masculine-identified men. It's a thing I've done. Multiple times and in multiple ways in my life. Rarely to my benefit. Or to the benefit of those around me, and especially for those for whom I think I am doing this thing, the ones I love.

Now, it appears, I have the most and most significant impact by doing pretty much nothing.

...

A riff on David Deida's three stages of loving, for men.

First, as young men, we pursue. We think th chasing after the the conquering and the seducing and the marking of territory is something we want —even making it a need. We believe in our bones that more sex, money, land, things will relieve us of this burden of being alive, which we feel as a need for more. That we might be satisfied. Able to rest.

Then, trade trumps conquest as we discover the seeming magic of exchange. Of communication. Of the "win-win." We begin to see the other as someone as one who is more than a competitor, now as a collaborator or colleague. If we're clever with our words and our tongues and our desires life becomes a little easier. We begin to sense that there may be enough for a few of us, if not all of us. We form partnerships to secure our shared future.

Finally, we discover that surrender trumps even trade. We realize that the erasure of our neediness admits a kind of bliss, something unimaginable in early years and stages of being ourselves. Now we feel abundance and wealth, not in hoarding or trading, but in giving it all away. In serving. And especially in serving love. Letting ourselves experience the flow of love —of feminine energy— and allowing Her to have Her way with us. Now we ask not for more, but for how best to serve this flow and flowering in our lives and in the lives around us.

Deida suggests that each us must exhaust ourselves in each of these stages. We must discover, not in words or in teachings, but in the very emptiness of our bodies how hollow accumulation and exchange leave us. And how full we feel when we are completely emptied. Diminished, as Stephen Jenkinson might say. From the juiciness of our youth, the magic and mystery of the wine we become. Nothing left of youth's desperation. Now simply the awareness of serving, and receiving.

...

I am revisiting old lusts and desires. I am feeling a surge of energies I haven't felt in a long, long time. Something is happening. Memories. Chimera. Impatience.

What use am I? To whom? How do I serve?

These things, these lusts and desires, even these questions, they stand in my way. I also know that there is a necessity in feeling and knowing all of this. There is only through this moment. No avoiding. Lying awake. Torn by thoughts and feelings I thought I'd left far behind in the shipwreck of the past decade. What are they telling me today?

I get up from my bed. I sit. I breathe. I remember the gift of stillness as the storm continues to surge within. I wonder: How do I serve love now?

It's dark. The answers, if there are any, show no light. There is just the invitation to sit. To be still. To feel it all. To know that in sitting and being still I allow myself to open, at least a little, to what change may come, what strange new way to receive Her, to serve Her.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀When we keep showing up for what needs to be felt, when we dare to allow our hearts to crack and surrender, grace can pour through us. This is probably one of the most challenging tasks we receive as human beings on this planet but the medicine it contains is the healing we need.  (Marieke, Kundalini Yoga School, Heartbreak)

🌀 The old meaning of enchanted is something like this: "I have been conjured and called by you, and consequence and the stuff of life are at hand, and many a thing has come to light, and just now, having met you, the river of my longing for life knows the shore that gives it its course and reason." (Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age)

🌀 I wanted to move into a different understanding of time: the kind of time that moves in spirals or cycles, pulsing between rot and fertility, light and darkness. I had an inkling even then that the gardener is initiated into a different understanding of time, which might also have a bearing on how to preclude the apocalypse we seem bent on careering into. (Olivia Laing)

🌀Our prayer is that you realize that this is the time for your wisdom to take action; that you know you’re one of the ones put here to make the big difference; and that everything that’s stopped you in the past is unable to stop you now . . . relax your fear and show up for work . . . life hangs in the balance. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀The Conscious Warrior makes death an ally, using it to sharpen his present actions, future plans, and current state of being. (John Wineland , Precept 11)

🌀It’s important what you’re doing. It affects all of us. (My wise friend)

🌀Thank you. (My beloved)

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

How are you resisting the flow of your life, the way She —the divine feminine, as She shows up in the woman you love, your children, your sister or mother, your colleague, the men you lead, the way of the world— shows me?

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 resisting this flow, the way She shows me?
  • 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.