DEFENDING THIS HOLY SPACE BETWEEN US

• Today's suggested practice: Holding space for your own holiness ... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Di Sarli (Orqestra Romantica), Duerme, mi Amor 

• My morning practice: 90 minutes with warm up for legs 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 nature, in the woods.

• My vulnerability practice: Trust her confusion, her vulnerability, her testing, her trust that I will hold this holy space between us. Trust myself...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION

Masculine defensiveness. It's a thing. My body and my culture moves me to mobilize all resources at any moment of threat. This is how I habitually respond to another thing, feminine testing. This is my habit, when I haven't learned to hold space for my own heart.

So She tests. Because She wants to blossom, to nourish me with everything. But it's not safe for Her to blossom unless She is safe.

And so She tests.

I will dance today, in a milonga, a tango social dance. One of the things I will do, without thinking, is defend the space for my follow to move freely into blossoming. Tango, like life, is a travelling dance with moments of not travelling. There is no rhythm or pattern to this moving, then pausing. Like life, every step is improvised. As I lead in tango, and as I lead in life, I am constantly learning, course-correcting, and creating art. My art, as a man, as a lead: to create, hold, and defend the space for the feminine to flourish. This flowering only happens in safety.

When She, the always-changing feminine energy that is within me and all around me, when She tests and I am not practised, not confident in my capacity to hold this space, I become defensive. I close, and She closes.

In my relationships, I have chosen to open to her choosing me. Following the follow, as is sometimes said in tango. Yet I cannot really follow the follow, cannot both feel into her vulnerability and hold space for it to deepen me if I am defensive, not fully committed to holding this space sacred, holy. I am neither standing on my left foot, nor on my right foot, and she knows my equivocation and knows that she must protect herself, because I am not defending her vulnerability. She wilts. Shrinks. Or, perhaps knowing me better than I know myself, she tests again. Another chance to prove myself.

She tests. I close into defensiveness, or I open into holding and defending this holy space of Her flourishing, Her flow, Her never-ending gift-giving.

With practice, and through the never-ending course correction of testing and failure and proving myself I learn to defend this space.

I defend my own need for slow and quiet space to feel it all, to allow it all to move through me and around me. I defend my need to let it all sink in and to integrate.

I defend my need to become the deep and powerful and beautiful presence, strong enough and deep enough to create and hold this source for her to surrender, completely, into her radiance, her flow, her infinite impossibility. I defend this source, for her, for me, around her, within me.

I practice to be this holy defender, without collapsing into habitual defensiveness. I lead by following the follow into Her unfolding, trusting that Her testing proves me as the beautiful and powerful defender of this holy space that I am, that She knows me to be.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀 ... "strength, integrity, and openness. Her desire is for his deepest truth and love. As he grows, so will her testing.The most erotic moment for a woman is feeling that you are Shiva, the divine masculine: unperturbable, totally loving, fully present, and all-pervading." - Deida...

…The more conscious we all are of "testing" the easier it gets to rise to the occasion with playful, erotic depth. If you're annoyed or overwhelmed by it, it's possibly time to recalibrate to your true nature. If you are unsure how to do that, step 1 go into nature. Practice regulating your nervous system... (Melissa Bloxham on "feminine testing" on Instagram. A recommended read for men —and women— who struggle with these ideas of safety, testing, blossoming)

🌀The Conscious Warrior honours and protects the feminine, both in himself, in women and children, and in the world. (John Wineland, Precept 8)

🌀...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)

🌀You're not like that now. (My Oracle, She Who Tests Me)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Fifteen minutes of holding space for your own holiness...

Please read through first, then ...

• Begin by setting a timer for 15 minutes

• Your eyes are open and you are standing, breathing into your belly, feeling yourself held firmly through your feet to the floor by gravity, feeling yourself lifted up into the heavens out of your pelvis, your chin tucked, heart lifted. You are breathing gently feeling everything. You are softening the front of your body, breathing into this softening groin, belly, heart, throat. Breathe and stand for a minute. Feel how uncomfortable it is to open yourself.

• Now, stepping slowly, so slowly forward begin to walk. You sep so slowly forward you almost fall as your right foot lifts and commits to landing, as your left foot lifts and commits to standing. Feel this risk in the commitment when you are grounded only in the one foot, the other acting on faith that you will sustain your balance, your integrity, as you almost fall forward. Every step so slow that you feel your integrity (balance, posture, heart) tested.

• Your chin is level. Your eyes are soft, looking into the distance. You have no idea where you are going, just trusting the moving forward that is so slow you are on the edge of falling with every step. Feel your heart opening to this unknowing yet still moving, trusting that you will not fall, that you will always find your balance. Every step, your heart open to this unknown and unfolding. Every step almost falling. Feel your heart held by your trust, your will, your purpose to defend your opening heart through this always-falling, always-testing of being in the flow of your life.

• As the timer signals, slowly come to standing. Close your eyes and feel all of your body, but especially your soft open front —your groin, your belly, your belly, your throat. Feel this soft opening and hold it in your awareness. Feel also your trust in your own integrity, manifest as your capacity to always find your balance, to knowing that even when you fall, for we all fall, you are able to stand again, and step forward again, in this never-ending test of being alive. This subtle confidence in yourself is all that Her testing asks you know, all that She asks you to embody so that the blossoming of your minutes, hours, days, and life can continue.