MY COMMITMENT TO HEARTBREAK BLOSSOMS THIS LOVE

• Today's suggested practice: Day 5 of this month's practice with Sarah Anderson (see video, below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Poulenc, Les Chemins de l’amour https://music.apple.com/ca/album/les-chemins-de-lamour-fp-106/1452674291?i=1452674696

• Practice: 3am: 90 minutes of yogic practice, including Meditation for Trust

• My vulnerability practice: Feeling the temptation and the terror of impatience and no-practice, and then submitting to the discipline of practice…

• Note: For men who are ready for Part II of the Path of the Sacred Masculine, register here to start on March 1 https://www.sacredbodies.ca/part2

Hans Peter Meyer

FEATURED PODCAST

“Men, women, sex, and the Sacred Womb,” a conversation with Sarah Anderson

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Nietzsche famously proclaimed, What does not kill me makes me stronger. I believe e have misunderstood what is offered here. Too often this is used to encourage us —and especially those of us who are masculine-identified men, and doubly so the most “manly” among us— to harden ourselves. But the world does not need our hardness.

What if the instructions made clear that the “strength” being offered by death’s testing is the capacity to be even more tender? Even more vulnerable? To begin to know how to stand with our hearts open, holding our own fear, tenderly, that we might better know the mystery & the magic that life offers us?

This is, for any one of us, the path of the sacred masculine, that part of ourselves that cherishes the treasures of heartbreak above all others. Whether we are man or woman or somehow otherwise identified, we hold within ourselves the capacity to hold, within ourselves, the great river of love and beauty that I know as the divine feminine, that great flow that nourishes every tributary of my life. And, no, I deserve nothing. Nothing but what I am willing to experience. Here. In this moment. In this body. It is my commitment to feeling it all that allows all to be felt.

And so I practice. That I may swim in Her mysteries. That I may walk in Her dark underworld. Afraid. Yes, afraid. Terrified. But not so afraid of being afraid that I don’t persist. Remembering this above all else in my trembling: Her presence, the experience of love.

…

Stephen Jenkinson is emphatic: Heartbreak is the necessary skill for these and for all times. Without heartbreak we are hardened, and ever more hardened, to life’s tests. Tests that are meant to break us open, not meant to be resisted.

…

So, again, I pledged myself. Not for some chimerical forever and ever, and not for some half-hearted five years or ten years until vows are revisited and the contract renewed. No, I commit to this moment, and this moment, and to all moments in this life. Not until my beloved fails to meet my neediness —which seems to be the hollowed out measure of commitment these days. Not until my neediness is no longer neediness —because this has nothing to do with my beloved, but only to do with my resistance to the always-presence of love. No, I pledged to this breath and to all of my breaths while I remain in this body. Is that forever? Perhaps. But so much more tangible than some ethereal and fantastical illusion. I pledge to breath with myself, for this heart that beats between us, these hearts that beat in solitude and in solitude trusting her only to be so real as long as she feels safe, held by my breath. And I will breathe this breath for the rest of my days. And this I pledge.

I believe that love can only grow in this mystery. I believe love can only move, as it needs to move, in the magical embrace of the breath, my breath, my heart beat, my commitment. And, of necessity, my commitment and surrender to the every-moment of heartbreak.

I am here. I am he, he who trusting his breath must be trusted.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀If one day I must forget,Since life obliterates everything,I wish for my heart to remember one thing,More vivid than the other love,To remember the pathWhere trembling and quite distracted,I one day felt on me your passionate hands. (Jean Anouilh, from Les Chemins de l’amour)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 5 of this month's practice, take about four minutes today to sit and join Sarah Anderson in a beautiful “Sacred Womb” meditation (because all of us, however we identify, can benefit from some loving attention to our “feminine” creative/generative capacities)

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, sit (or stand) in stillness as you listen to your heart, your belly, your sex, your root and let this question stir within you…. Where do you allow yourself to be committed, to breath, fully, into the magic and the mystery of this moment? And the next? And the next?   

• Set your timer for 6 minutes or listen to or watch Sarah:

• As the timer signals or the  video ends allow your eyes to slowly open. Take three, relaxed breath cycles, no pressing, no effort, and feel yourself full, without thoughts, open. Safe to receive. Then, step into your day, letting the mantra echo as a nourishing vibration whenever you become still. You don't need to DO anything. Let the world come to you with its demands, its complaints, and yes, its endless tide of gifts and blessings.