BEING ALONE, TOGETHER

• Today's suggested practice: Ten minutes of feeling into the power of this space of "alone"... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Messiaen, Trois Chorales Pour Grand Orgue: Choral Nr. 1 https://music.apple.com/ca/album/trois-chorales-pour-grand-orgue-choral-nr-1-e-dur-moderato/1609078238?i=1609078240

• My morning practice: 90 minutes, warm-up for legs and lower triangle, followed by Kriya to Know the Other as Myself (mantra and mudra), Linking to the Infinite (pranayama and mantra)

• My vulnerability practice: Hold this silent, pregnant moment, and allow it to give birth....

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION

There is always more. More silence. More tenderness.

How still do I have to be to register your heart and its oh so tender need?

Alone, I yearn to be together. Together, I am tremulous with my vulnerability. Together, I stumble my way forward, remembering to breathe, to soften my heart, my belly, my throat to receive what She brings in this moment. What she brings.

Dancing. Again. Tango, the beautiful and terrifying opening to the other that we may, for our few minutes, our three-song tanda, make art from our broken and tremulous hearts.

It is very common to feel the follow's hesitancy as they come into my embrace. He or she or they, few of us are ready to surrender. This is my gift to the moment, to listen and feel into this tenderness, this protectiveness, and give this body the space it needs to know itself safe. To know its beautiful desires as they emerge in this brief few minutes of being safely held. An honour. A privilege.

There is nothing so powerful. I am holding this woman in my arms, feeling her fear and her excitement. I am allowing myself to become so slow and so deep and so trustworthy that she discovers her beauty. It is a beauty she perhaps never knew she held within her. To share this moment of vulnerability, her greatest gift. It's why I dance tango. It's how and why I teach tango.

I shared the Rilke passage (below) with my distant beloved. I told her, after feeling my own fear in the face of her frustration with the noise of my life, that I am grateful for the distance between us. Without it I would be in constant reaction. Instead, I sit with my discomfort. I allow myself to feel the necessary compassion — for her tender needs, and for my tender needs. All of us, as Ram Dass said, "walking each other home." That is the tango: we meet in our vulnerability; we hold each other; we make a moment of art; we feel a brief experience of being held, known, safe. Walking each other home.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. (Erich Fromm)

🌀The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust....

But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. ( Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)

🌀You're not like that now. (She Who Must Be Held, My Oracle)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Ten (or 30! or 60!) minutes of feeling into the space of "alone," feeling how beautiful & complete you are —by yourself, alone.

Please read through first, then ...

• Set a timer for 10 minutes (you can always reset it for longer, if you are moved that way)...

• Your eyes are 1/10 open, looking with soft focus at your upper lip.

• You are sitting tall with your feet and sit bones connected to the earth, your chin tucked and heart lifted, gently opening.

• Your spine is lifted from your pelvis, lifting you until your crown is penetrating the heavens above. You are breathing slowly, through your nose, through a soft open throat, down deep into your belly and beyond, and allowing the exhale to gently sweep up the front of your body, softening your heart and your belly and your throat. Everything is softening, as your spine remains firm, not rigid, literally holding the space for your body's softening.

• Bring your full awareness to this softening. Allow your feet to be soft. Your ankles and shins and calves. Your knees and thighs. Allow your pelvis and your glutes, your sex and your belly, allow this lower triangle to become soft and receptive. Allow your solar plexus to become soft and open, the front of your heart and the back of your heart, softening and opening. Allow your upper chest and your shoulders, the space between your shoulder blades, the back of your neck and the front of your throat, all of it softening as you breathe. Allow the front of your face to soften, your jaw and your cheeks, your eyes. Allow your brow to soften. Your temples. The back of your skull and the top of your skull. Feel the crown of your head opening, remembering the soft tenderness of your fontanel.

• In this moment you are physically vulnerable, soft and receptive. Your body is alone, beautifully alone and alive and tender. Feel this tender aloneness. There is no one holding you except your awareness. There is no one protecting you or giving you pleasure or demanding of you. You are alone in this peaceful and tender moment. Your awareness holds you open. Allow yourself to soften even more and become even more aware of how beautifully singular you are in this moment of tender, soft, safe opening. You are the tender shoot of spring pushing up through the mud, the muck that nourishes your roots. Trust your roots, if only for a few more minutes, trust your roots and your firm but relaxed spine to hold all the tenderness and beauty and feeling of you in this moment. Alone and beautiful...

• This being alone is only a moment. We are surrounded by the energies of others —other people, animals, trees, buildings, streets, etc etc etc. It is never-ending and infinite the energies that move around us. All of these are available to us. But for this moment enjoy your beautiful solitude as the tenderness that needs no protection or company. You are sufficient to yourself. You hold yourself in this. And, holding yourself safe, you are tender and vulnerable, able to receive nourishment. This moment of alone is just an imaginary space. You are, we are, I am —all of us are swimming in an ocean of energies. Swimming, dancing. Coming together to make art. Resting in our solitude to integrate and appreciate our arts.

• As the timer signals, slowly release attention on your solitary beauty. Release your limbs and your belly and your heart to feel how you are always with other energies, even if in this moment the only energy you feel is that of the cat pressing against you, or the flowers blooming on the windowsill. Let your attention extend into the space around you and honour whatever energies or images come to you. All of this is here for you, and so much more. It takes a few moments of being in a beautiful appreciation of our solitude to sharpen our appreciation of how held we all are, every solitary and alone one of us. Taking this experience of beautiful solitude and of infinite connection, step back into the flow of your day.