FROM A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING

• Today's suggested practice: 3 minutes.... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Blind Faith, Presence of the Lord

• My morning practice: 60 minutes: Short warm-up, followed by Sat kriya (Linking to the Infinite pranayama and mantra later today in the forest...)

• My vulnerability practice: I do what I can, and then a little more, taking that risk to be more than I imagine myself to be...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION There is no meeting of needs. There is only serving needs. The need of love to blossom, freely.

This morning I offered to do something on behalf of my beloved.

For years I lived by a rule, that I would not do for others what I believed they *should* be able to do themselves. It was a way to protect myself from the mess I'd created with "co-dependent" behaviours. It was also a way of avoiding stepping into full responsibility for using the gifts and powers that were mine. Better to stay small than to take that risk.

As I do this work, as I commit to this path that I call my apprenticeship to love, I learn to embody the man I am. I begin to understand that my powerful presence as a masculine-identified man is what I am called to share with my world. No longer avoiding my depth. No longer blinding myself to the treasures She lays before me.

I cannot make you happy. I cannot solve your problems. I cannot know your path, what you need to experience to be true to who you are, as a man or a woman. What I can do is make myself happy. I can solve my own problems. Walk my path. And, I can share my gifts, generously, without fearing that my helping you compromises myself.

Today I understand that your pain is not my own, and that my happiness is the light you need.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀...You’re an outlaw, and every great prophet was considered an outlaw by those who were normal in their time. This is the fine line you must navigate -- to live outside the norm and be considered an outlaw while maintaining the ethics, values and morals of one who abides by the law. This is where "spiritual teachers” who are deeply ‘self-centric’ separate from those who are empathic. This is where sociopathic behavior diverges from socio-centric envelopment. Bob Dylan said it in his song ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’ -- “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” And Woody Guthrie said it in ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ -- "I love a good man outside the law, just as I hate a bad man inside the law." (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Include Natural Law)

🌀Polarity without love looks a lot like manipulation.

...if you want to unclench and expose and dig deep and taste truth through the alignment of your heart with the heart of Love…..

If you want to know trust and devotion through flesh into god into life into all into the core of who vou are...

If you want to shed romanticized ideals of how another will complete you, and instead offer our completeness to the completion of another...

Welcome. (Nina Lombardo)

🌀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)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE 3 minutes to breathe and know yourself...

Please read through first, then ...

• Sitting or standing, set your timer for three minutes.

• Close your eyes and breathe long and deep into your belly, down into your lower triangle —your belly, your genitals, your perineum— and exhaling up the front of your body allowing this front, from your genitals to your belly, your heart and your throat and the front of your face soften as you exhale. Just breathe, long and slow and deep into yourself.

• When the timer signals, slowly open your eyes. Standing or sitting still for three breath cycles, longer and deeper into your belly than you have been, looking straight ahead and feeling your body as it occupies this moment. Allow yourself to feel everything, if even for just for these three breaths. Now, with this breath-in-your-body presence, with this powerful body-mind step into your day. Your presence is all that is required. There is no hurry...

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com