THIS DARKNESS BEGETS LIGHT

• NEW: Yoga for Lovers, online and IRL for Valentine’s date nights. FMI see https://is.gd/l2GCCA

• Today’s question: Have you looked into the darkness of this moment and allowed it to become light?

• Today's suggested practice: Day 19 of this month's practice with Sarah Anderson (see video, below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Silence

• Practice: 4:30am: 60 minutes of yogic practice, including Meditation for Purifying the Elements

• My vulnerability practice: To enjoy this moment of happiness, and simultaneously feel the sadness of knowing it will end, that this grief sharpens the happiness, does not dull it.

Hans Peter Meyer

VIDEO

What is “sacred sexuality?”

TODAY'S MEDITATION

We have a “Co-ed Polarities of Intimacy” workshop scheduled for Tofino on February 24. I’ll be talking with my colleague Fabiola Perez about her February 18 “Sacred Sexuality and Couples” workshop on January 30 on Instagram. I’m reading a lot about how sex can change your world in social media. A dear friend is, once again, plunging into the beautiful swamp of their sexuality, just when I know they need this the least. Or, when I believe they need this the least.

I have this very sad feeling that we’re missing something. Or, I am sad, because I am aware of how much suffering we seem to need before we understand ourselves. And that sex —like Coca Cola— promising much, can’t deliver on all that’s promised. A bitter aftertaste makes every next visit to the pop stand so much less enjoyable.

…

My garden is an arrangement of borders. Limits to freedom. These freedoms in my garden I enumerate as: masses of flowers, foliage, textures, colours. Wilderness. All of this made much more so by the limits of stones, lawn, paths.

And just so, she needs me to hold her. Firmly. Gently, yes. But tightly, with all of my strength. That all of the wilderness within her is given shape, contained, guided, perhaps, sometimes, if I’m lucky, if she’s lucky, into something beyond her, something beyond my imagination.

Limited by this love, she is freed. Free to fly.

Limited by this love I experience the unfathomable depth and the freedom of my powerful presence. That which frees her to fly.

…

The contract of marriage applies this way: I commit to limiting myself; she commits to the flight this limit allows.

It is, I think, only moderating my appetite that I come to know taste, profoundly.

It is, I know, only in moderating my impulse to pleasure that I ken its sweet insights.

It is only —and this is certain— in moderating my impulses to ejaculate that I begin to know the gifts of sex.

Bound, I am released.

…

I am preparing a series of classes, Yoga for Lovers, to begin on Valentine’s Day. I have so much to share. And, having limited myself to 45-minute class, I know at least two things: One, there will be more than one class; two, every class will be an intense flowering, perhaps so intense as to create an explosion in the hearts of my students.

…

Whatever it is we want, we always think more is what we really want. We are wrong. And only experience can create that understanding. Theoretically, the wrongness is wrong.

For years I was this way with food. With drink. With dancing, good company, money. With sex. And now, coming to understand that whatever it is that I want, the less of it, the sweeter, the better. My appreciation, sharpened. I am becoming the connoisseur who needs only to smell the kitchen, the cork to be satisfied. Enough!

Slowed in my pursuit of life’s treasures, coming to a standstill at the groaning table of life’s delights, I see Her. I know Her. And I am. Enough.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀 Moderation, the essence of the teachings of Brahmacharya, has nothing to do with suppression, rather with clear recognition of the sacredness of our existence and thus also of our sexuality. (KYS, Breaking Habits, Day 13)

🌀Men, loving an embodied woman requires that you embrace, encourage, and hold all that she is. Because to love her is not to tame her but to encourage her to remain untamed. To allow her love to wake the parts of you that are afraid to feel, that are not strong enough to hold her fullness, and that need her to remain unthreatening and pleasing in order to feel secure in your masculinity. (Jeremie Lotemo @byermeas on Insta)

🌀And you, you see me. You hear me. You know me. (My beloved, my Oracle, my Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 19 of this month's practice, take about six 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…. Have you looked into the darkness of this moment and allowed it to become light? Again, this is the question posed to the sacred womb, the fecund darkness that lies beyond our knowing. Let that divine mystery of creation reveal Herself, no matter how masculine you are, no matter how little you may trust this feminine mystery…

• 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.