AND WHO WOULD CHOOSE TO SLEEP?

• Today’s questions: How do you experience the oracle in your life? Are you listening? What do you do with the enigma and confusion of their information? Are you willing to risk it all to know your path?

• Today's suggested practice: Day 28 of this month's practice, to practice for yourself, your wants, the things you yearn for (see Kendra Cunov’s short “Notes Towards Self Practice” below)

• My practice: 3:30am; 75 minutes of yoga, pranayama, and meditation for the Heart Chakra.

• My vulnerability practice: To hear it all, and alllow myself to know, just to *know* my way through all of this…

Hans Peter Meyer

^{TODAY’S MEDITATION}

At some point in our lives most of us begin to wonder, as Peggy Lee famously wondered, “Is that all there is?” Or, more prosaically: Is this what I’m *meant* to be doing? As if there were some meaning to our lives that we are not getting, not yet fully awake to knowing.

The first stirrings of this are not, as we so often believe, in some mid-life crisis. No, it probably first stirs us in our early childhood when the information of existence is almost overwhelming, but, being so new to our seeming super-human capacities to experience and overcome, we delight in all the possibilities, knowing that it is all for us, that we are the centre of the world. That is, when we are held in the benevolent arms of some kind of “family,” however that might be defined.

The next time most of us experience this stirring of self-awareness against the world is on the cusp of adulthood, in our teens and early 20s. We do not, I believe, pay enough attention to this struggle in our children and youth. Abandoned to this quest (for it is, truly the one heroic adventure most of us will know), they succumb to conventionality, to rebelliousnes, to strange sectarianism (cults of all kinds, ideologies of pleasure, religious belief, fascism, etc).

But even when we are called to wonder at ourselves and our world in these early ages, it’s often not until the middle-ages, let’s say somewhere after the late 30s and before the truce of the late 50s, that things get real. Now, in this middle years, we’ve got a stake in life. We’ve invested ourselves in education, career, business, family, marriage, even dilletantism (yes, this avoiding the commitment of other paths is also a path, a commitment). We are firmly tied to a belief-system and a busy-system that’s shielding us from this darker wondering. Until this moment when things begin to look shaky. And then the pain of existence is real. And only now are you ready to know yourself. Because only now do you have the experience to go with whatever words or memes appeal to you. And now they have to pay.

And who would choose to sleep, rather than wake to life’s calling?

…

It took a life-changing accident for me to wake to these questions. I had to lose my career, my business, family and marriage, and hardest of all, my idea of who I was in the world. I had to lose all of that to begin to know myself and how to be a man in this world.

The good news is that, by the time I turned 40, I really was ready to wake up. To wake up and enjoy the way of light and love that opened for me.

The bad news —and let this be a warning to you, and especially to you men, because we are most susceptible to hubris— the bad news is that was not a one-time-fixes-all lesson. Waking suggests it’s possible to fall asleep. And the path of light and love I was walking slowly dimmed, slowly lulled me into taking things for granted. I fell asleep.

I’ve had to be wakened several times in my life. That time in my late 30s. And at least twice more before this present moment of being awake to myself, the world. Awake. Woke. Aware to myself, my world, its beauty and tenderness and love. That’s what I call it. Right now I am vigilant about staying woke. Daily practice. But the temptation to close my eyes and nod off…

…

All of this is for me to experience. I practice to allow it. To not judgeit, not any part of it. Just to be aware —yes, woke. To feel it. And be amazed: it’s all for me.

…

Apparently, galaxies have merged without “hurting” each other. They harmonize. I notice as the galaxy that is me and the galaxy that is she merge. I allow. I notice. I trust.

There is strange and beautiful magic here, if I am willing to allow, just notice, to trust.

And, noticing, there are so many things to feel. So many possible choices for reactions. For rejections. For, acceptance and pleasure.

Breathing, I let it all happen without raising an alarm. I am just noticing, and wondering.

…

Our second-to-last most recent conversation: She brings me herself, unprotected. It’s not what I expected. Nothing is as I’ve expected. Always something new. So often, something that presses sharply against my sense of what I want, against the limits I’ve set on what is acceptable or understandable. But this time, less sharply. I’m just aware of the pressing, and curious.

That’s what doing I’m here: opening, with curioiusity. Always, now, opening (& closing) to her strange gifts. Treasures that take some unwrapping, some silence. Some sitting. Some wondering — and then, some feeling of awe that so often threatens to rip me open. It’s rarely pretty. Though this time, a strange (because unfamiliar, not usual) calm. Noticing the pressing but not feeling the sharpness, just the pressure to open just a little bit more.

Later, in the most recent conversation, I re-staked the corners of my property, my limited sense of what goes on here.

She listened. Said, Thank you.

I’m not sure it was important, what I said. But, it was an old impulse to make the claim. To remind.

Was it necessary? Perhaps. But sometimes I wonder, What about just letting her flow, a river that my heart knows carries me to my destiny. I need only allow, steer as best I can. Breathe. Receive. And, enjoy the strange beauty of it all, her heart unfolding into my heart unfolding into her heart..

…

Wandering in the darkness that is the path I am making as I wander can be frightening. Has been frightening. Has made me search for certainties where there are none —except in this heart.

And my daily practice tunes my body to the fequency that harmonizes with whatever this life invites me to dance with. Again, the experience of dance. The coming together to merge for a moment of intoxication, but with the awareness that everything falls apart. And that’s OK. The important thing is to practice so that, called to harmonize, I am awake. Capable of this. The inviting, the receiving.

It’s a ritual that tunes me and opens me and helps me to be awake to myself and the world.

It’s a ritual that tunes me and allows me to hear her as she sings her Siren song, and as she speaks her obscure wisdom as my Oracle. Nothing is black and white or grey. It is all manner of colours and feelings and beyond me. And I am invited to remember myself as a very young child. Not at the mercy of a hostile world, but held in love and with the capacity to experience everything and not worry too much about the understanding of it.

But I have the luxury of decades of painful experiences, a lifetime of hoeing this garden. Today I am savouring the fruits, noticing how overwhelmingly beautiful it is, this garden that she —as my Siren and my Oracle— wakes me to.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Each moment has choices -- different ways to view the experience and various places to step. With each choice you receive thoughts, feelings, and emotions that dictate the sensations that you're experiencing, but this is not your experience, this is the illusion of observation.
…The outcome is your destiny -- this is guaranteed, but the path through the moments is caused by the choices you make.
…take full responsibility for the experience you’re having, and make the most of wherever you are, whenever you’re there. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀The Conscious Warrior takes 100% responsibility for the reality he has created — seeking what needs to be changed in him before blaming others. (John Wineland, Precept 5)

🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 28 of this month's practice:

Please read through first, then ...

Today, set a time —at least five minutes, perhaps 15— when you can be alone and in stillness.

• Stand or sit or lie, with a beautiful and straight spine, firm but relaxed, feeling your feet or your sit bones or hips heavy and connected to the earth;

• Close your eyes;

• Inhale deeply into your belly, letting it become soft and round;

• Exhale by gently and slowly, much more slowly than your inhale, pressing your navel to your spine,

• And listen to Kendra Cunov’s few minutes on practice:

https://youtu.be/I9iLzmbT6NM

When you’re done, stand or sit or lie for another minute and breathe gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself: How do you experience the oracle in your life? Are you listening? What do you do with the enigma and confusion of their information? Are you willing to risk it all to know your path?

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, open to the gifts it brings.

★ HOW TO REGISTER FOR the August 16 Apprenticeship to Love Virtual Workshop where we’ll talk about Barbie as an Oracle in our lives at this moment. Go to … https://is.gd/97d9hv (If you’re a Premium subs —you basically take me for a cup of coffee every month— please choose the “no-charge” ticket. If you’re not a Premium sub, eg. not yet taking me to coffee monthly, please choose the Regular ticket (or subscribe at https://is.gd/EldLPh)