THIS DISTANCE ALLOWS ME TO BECOME MYSELF

• Today's suggested practice: Feel (and enjoy!) the distance between wanting and having... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Grieg, Homesickness

• My morning practice: One hour class with chakra warm-up, Kriya to Know the Other as Myself (mantra and mudra), and Linking to the Infinite (pranayama and mantra). (This morning's class is now posted to the podcast at sacredbodiespodcast.ca)

• My vulnerability practice: I feel her wilderness, a place of dread, a place of promise...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION In tango, in the way I teach tango, I emphasize the heart connection between the lead and follow, the masculine and the feminine. The art of this dance of polarities, in tango and in life, is born of the tension, pressure, friction —and distance! —between our hearts.

The Rilke quotation on marriage and the distance that, perhaps, we can learn to love as necessary to our deepening and our appreciation of each other, this has been on my mind for days now. Weeks even.

In the relationships that most nourish me there is an impossible distance. In simplest terms, it is the distance between the poles. The more distance, the greater the polarity, the greater the desire to become one. But there is no real merger. There may be a dulling of polarity. A slipping into comfortable neutrality.

But I seek the magic and the art of the heart connection that is fraught with impossible distance.

A witch reminded me that in this slow, muddy season, there is more than waiting. There is also the beginning of something beautiful, and even as I attend to the mud and my need to practice the skill of patient husbandry I need to also practice the art of enjoying these beginnings. These new shoots pushing up into the light.

Every step is both a gesture against the mud and its limits, and an expression of love for the potential that is being born. Every step my heart is tested, and tested it becomes stronger —not just because I will it be stronger, but because I begin to feel the newness that is being born. And this fresh newness nourishes me. Reminds me of my sacred duty, to hold this holy distance between our hearts, between the muck of what was and the radiance of what is to come, as a precious wilderness, both terrifying and inspiring.

She, my beloved, the divine and always changing feminine, neither will be what I want —not for more than a moment. Enjoy this moment. And, enjoy how her never-ending demand for silent and distant attention teaches me to be deeper than I believe myself to be. Be this stillness. Hold this holy space. Guide her with my unreasonable knowing. Be fed by her silent, distant, and wild needs.

Enjoy it all! This time, this space, this dancing together across the impossible distance —enjoy it!

Become the stillness that holds the beloved, appreciates and attends to her wild beauty.

Today I hold this holy space, for her, and for myself.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS🌀Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living. (Albert Einstein)

🌀... even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous 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)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Read, then do the following...

• Set a timer for three minutes. Standing with your feet more than shoulder width apart sink into your knees to a comfortable distance (this will become less comfortable). Hold your heart (if you are masculine identified, place your right hand over your left; if you are feminine identified, holding your left hand over your right). Breath, without effort, but slowly and deeply into your belly.

• Bring your attention to your want —the attention of a lover or beloved; the end of conflict with a spouse, a friend, a child, a colleague; the warmth of Summer; the end of pain. Begin to feel the acute anguish of not having this want fulfilled. Notice where in your body you feel this pain. Perhaps your thighs and knees which are supporting you? Perhaps a tension in your belly? Or an ache in your heart or between your shoulders (the back of your heart)?

• Breathe into this pain. Allow yourself to feel it, holding it only with your breath. This is the distance every desire needs to travel, from wanting to having.

• Allow your breath, and only your breath, to become the consolation you desire —and allow yourself to enjoy this power of your breath and your attention to know your deep pain, and to hold you safe even as you feel this distance between wanting and having.

• When the timer signals, gently, very gently bring yourself to standing and bring your attention to the end of discomfort. Feel your knees, your thighs, wherever you've been feeling pain. Enjoy the end of the posture and the end of the exercise, knowing that discomfort will always return, will always pass, and always reminding you of the distance between wanting and having, an impossible yet delicious distance.

As you step back into your day, take at least moments to bend your knees to remind yourself of your pain, and of your breath and its consolation, and how you are enough for any distance.