I CHOOSE TO SERVE LOVE

• Today's suggested practice: Holding yourself open to choose love ... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Rodrigo, Concierto de Aranjuez, Adagio (Miles Davis) 

• My morning practice: One hour with short warm up for chakras and lower triangle, followed by Kriya to Know the Other as Myself (mantra and mudra). I will practice my extended Linking to the Infinite (pranayama and mantra) later in the woods.

• My vulnerability practice: I feel my small, inconsequential being in the universe, and, opening my heart to my full vulnerability, become powerful...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Reading one of today's inspirations (below) I am reminded of how small I am. Reading another, I am reminded of how much distance lies between even those I am closest to. Instead of collapsing, I am grateful for this distance and the discomfort, yes, grateful even as I resist. They remind me that even in my inconsequence I am powerful.

The universe is big. What a small word for such vastness. There are no words that adequately describe how inconsequential I feel at this bigness. How do I breathe, feeling this small?

By way of answering I will paraphrase and borrow from David Deida. He offers three broad "stages" for being in the world, for experiencing this awareness of the seeming infinite. Our first stage is one of simply surviving, fearful grabbing for all the food, money, sex we can consume, believing that in hoarding and consuming I will protect myself from the immensity of life, the world, the universe.

In my second stage I move from a me-focus to a we-focus. I learn to negotiate. I learn to share. I learn that cooperation and collaboration bring me more security in the face of the overwhelm of being. I allow my heart to admit others' needs, as well as my own. As Deida says, how live on this planet would be much improved if more of us were able to live and breathe in this second stage.

In the third stage I am no longer concerned with needs beyond my need to serve love. I know the benevolent flow of the divine feminine in some deep way, and know that it is in serving love, serving Her, that what seemed overwhelming becomes instead an ocean of nourishment.

There are moments when I live in this third stage. Moments.

And many more moments when I am still concerned with me and my survival, or we and our sharing of the fruits of life, the burdens of life. These moments teach me, and I am grateful that I am —better daily, through practice, and especially meditative practice— able to know the teachings offered. As I said to my beloved four days ago, I am grateful for the distance between us; this distance gives me the necessary room to pause, reflect, learn, integrate, to step from first stage through second stage, and sometimes, to cross the threshold into serving love before serving myself.

In this life I choose to go deep. Of all the many things I can choose, I choose the pleasure and the mystery of these unimaginable and unreasonable depths.

Every moment I can ask myself: Am I choosing love? Or choosing myself? Or, as Deida asks, Am I opening? Or am I closing to this moment?

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀Our prayer is that you understand this universe is not billions, but quadrillions of years old and then love, honor and cherish your life in the grandness and freedom of this scale. (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Freedom)

🌀You're not like that now. (My beloved, my Oracle)

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

🌀...even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvellous 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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Fifteen minutes to know and hold yourself open to choose love.

Please read through first, then ...

• Set a timer for 15 minutes

• Sitting (or standing, if you can do that comfortably for 15 minutes) with a straight, firm but not stiff spine, tuck your chin and gently lift your heart. Breathing through your nose and deep into your belly, allowing it soften and become rounder with each breath. But breathing without effort, letting yourself relax, and especially letting the front of your body (groin, belly, heart, throat) relax. 

• Your eyes are almost closed, focused on the tip of your nose. You may feel some tension on the sides of your eyes. This is good. This tells you you are stimulating the pituitary gland, the master gland in your body system, resetting your nervous system. Allow your breath to become slower and deeper, again, without effort, just calming the body.

• As you breathe and as you soften the front of your body, notice any places where you feel tight. Your hips. Your shoulders and neck. Your belly. Your throat. Your wrists or knees. As I've said in previous practices, your body is the first and perhaps easiest Oracle for us to learn from. Like all Oracles, the information we're given is rarely as direct and easy-to-understand as our (lazy) minds would like. Be patient. Allow your body to speak.

• Now imagine someone with whom you are experiencing difficulties. Imagine a situation that feels difficult, that you want to change. As one of my teachers has said, any place that is difficult is a place that is calling for love. Feel this tension between your resistance to the situation or person, and this instruction to bring love to it. Breathe into this tension. Feel the distance between what is and what you want.

• Open your hands in your lap. Feel the power in your hands. You use these hands to move the world to your will, manipulating tools and opening jars and otherwise building your world and your life. You use these hands to hold your beloved, your friends, your child, your pet. Feel these hands as instruments of your love.

• Imagine the situation that is uncomfortable, imagine the distance between what you experience and what you want to experience as a ball of shape-shifting energy and allow this ball of shape-shifting energy to rest in your powerful hands. Hold this ball of energy. Begin to feel into it, not pressing it into any particular shape, just feeling its textures, and in the feeling of it allowing your energy, the energy that flows from the soft front of your body —your sex, your belly, your heart, your throat— allow this energy to press into this ball through your hands. Visualize this flow, from your own body through your hands and into this situation.

• Breathing gently, deeply, but without effort or intention, hold this expanding ball of energy, this changing ball of energy in your capable hands. Feel it move, without purpose or intention. Allow it to be held. Allow it to be breathed by you.

• When the timer signals, gently relax your attention on this energy, feeling it leave your gentle and powerful hands, knowing that something has changed without knowing how or what has changed. Allow it to drift away from your openness into its proper place apart from you yet still part of you. The distance between what you want and what you experience as something that now carries a little of your energy, your love.

• Slowly open your eyes. Sitting still, breathing without effort, take a few moments to bring your attention back into the room you're in. Gently lift your arms and shake them above your head, roll your shoulders. Roll your head in a very gentle circle around your shoulders. And... step into your day, knowing you've brought your energy of love into a situation that needs your service, without knowing how or what will happen. Trusting only that your love is what is needed.

★ Interested in more practices to help you choose to serve love? DM me or email me at [email protected] and I can make suggestions for coaches and teachers who can help with this practice. Note also that as an early reader of these dailies, as a small thank you on my side I'm offering the ICHOOSELOVE 50% discount code for my services to those of you who would like to work with me.