AND I AM THE BRIGHT AND SHINING TREASURE I SEEK

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• Today's suggested practice: 7 minutes.... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Amrit Sadhana Singh, Mera Man Loche 

• My morning practice: 90 minutes with warm-up, Linking with the Infinite ♾ mantra and pranayama, followed by Solving Communication Problems kriya

• My vulnerability practice: Becoming still, allowing Her to dance, allowing myself to become the man I am, the man she knows me to be... 

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Again: it is the discipline of my practice that reveals me, transforming the tension, pressure, stress, and friction of life into the diamond of my truth.

A perfect storm: Yesterday's practice with the Authentic Relationships group brought me the Mera Man Loche shabd (sacred song) and the Solving Communication Problems kriya; today's Kundalini Yoga School guidance for this month's sadhana gave me the vision of myself as a diamond to be known.... and her silence, the compression chamber that brings all things together that I may know myself.

I paraphrase Stephen Jenkinson when I say that apprenticeship is a process of diminishing: On our way to the goal of applied wisdom of mastery, we lose perhaps all that originally inspired the journey of apprenticeship in the first place. So I began this apprenticeship to love, without knowing it was an apprenticeship, believing that —somehow!— I will master this most complicated and beautiful of arts, love, without suffering. Without grief. Without feeling myself wrenched apart.

Innocent. Naïve. So naïve. And in my naïveté able to create so much pain and suffering...

Believing that another was required to feel this thing, love. Believing that it should be so easy, so painless, so full of itself, full of the flush of pleasure and expansion that is the first experience of being held, esteemed, needed. That delicious feeling, of being needed, another's everything.

And yet, so far, this seeking love in the other has been suffering and regret. Until —and this feels oh-so-late in the process!— I learn to be the tenderness I seek. The light I seek. The "Darshan," the image of divinity, I yearn for. These stumbling experiments in love, for that is all they are: trying this, learning that, opening to this one, then that one... These experiments and failures and regrets and all the necessary "tension, pressure, friction, and stress" I need to begin to see myself as the treasure I seek. The diamond. The Darshan. The guru. Here, in my own heart. I am the man I love.

She, the divine and always-changing, always-moving feminine, She dances to inspire. I yearn for her, and am learning that it is my practice and my discipline that bring me closer. She dances and sings of beauty and grace and pleasure and all that I desire. She gives to me a vision of love and returns me to the man I am. And, loving the man I am, I become the lover to my beloved. Worthy to know love, in ways unimaginable... So much to desire. So much to relinquish.

I practice and come to trust my yearning, to trust this hard road of apprenticeship. My wanting, leading me to the holy path to my own bright, shining diamond of truth.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀...My mind longs for the vision of the Guru’s Darshan.It cries out like the thirsty songbird for the nectar of your name.My thirst is not quenched, and I can not find peace.Until I receive the Darshan the beloved saint....By good fortune, I met my saint Guruand I have found that the immortal creator is within the home my own selfand so I will always serve you and never be separated from you even for an instant....(Guru Arjun, Mera Man Loche)

🌀The pressure of the world around us is not going to diminish anytime soon, therefore we need to cultivate within ourselves a resilience to this pressure. Instead of letting this pressure squeeze the juice out of us, we let this pressure awaken us from within and start to direct it towards the crystallization of our inner essence to become like a shining diamond. Unbreakable and beautiful. Your commitment and discipline are your great allies in this process, as they create the spiritual heat that is required for this crystallization process to occur. (Tim and Marieke, Kundalini Yoga School, New Beginnings)

🌀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 am always impressed by you. (My beloved, my Oracle)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Seven minutes towards becoming the diamond...

Please read through first, then ...

• If you don't have the Mera Man Loche on iTunes https://is.gd/uqOxd8 you'll find it here on YouTube:

You will listen to this while you...

• Sit (or stand) with attention to your spine: Tuck your chin, gently lifting and opening your chest, letting your hips and pelvis settle, down into the earth, gently lifting your spine out of your pelvis, the crown of your head touching the heavens above. Close your eyes and imagine this line from below the base of your spine to the heavens above your crown. Feel your spine gently lengthening, pulled between the subtle gravitational pull of the earth, the stars above...

• Slowly and gently slow your breath, filling and softening your belly as you inhale, gently pressing your navel against your spine as you exhale. As your breath slows your spine becomes subtly more aligned...

• After three cycles of long and deep breathing turn the music on.... listening past the words to the devotional tone, a tone devoted to your wisdom, your truth, your experience, your surrender to yourself...

• Keep breathing, keep your posture aligned, keep noticing how your body feels the tone and pulse and tenor and the vibration of this song...

• As the song ends, relax any tension your breath and posture may be holding from the practice. Take three breath cycles, without effort, to transition as you open your eyes. As you step into your day allow your aligned posture and your slowed, considered breath to be your guide in all things. Know that this subtle and simple practice begins to polish the diamond that you are. Today, allow any tension, friction, pressure, or stress to be exactly what this diamond needs. Tomorrow you will practice the gentle polishing that transforms today's difficulties into light.

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com