EMPTY, WITHOUT NEEDS

• Today's suggested practice: Day 16 of this month's practice... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: the song of my garden: Charlie Mingus, Goodbye Porkpie Hat

• My morning practise: 60 minutes of physical, yogic, and meditative practice, including Infinite Trust pranayama and meditation

• My vulnerability practice: Feeling this emptiness, and allowing myself to stand, knowing Her tide is always ebbing, always flowing...

—Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY'S MEDITATION There is an insatiable appetite for needs in so many discussions about love, about the failure of love. Why? Because need is never satisfied. Need expands with attention. This is not a popular opinion. What I know: the less I concern myself with my needs being met by another, the more I am concerned with the flow of beauty —and yes, love!— into my life.

....

Today I am afraid. Not for lack of needs, but because I am feeling the overwhelming experience of tenderness that comes, in part, from releasing myself from the drama of my needs. Instead, I stand open, exposed. Vulnerable. Without the demand of needs to clothe my essential nakedness, my emptiness as a man.

If there is anything I strive for today it is this painful emptiness. Why? Because I know that it is only when I am empty that I am most able to receive. Rather than achieving or grasping what I desire, I empty myself and in this vulnerability know my polarity. I become the vacuum, the safe, empty space for Her tide to flood with riches beyond any need I may think I know.

I know this. It is the lesson of my life. It is perhaps THE lesson of my life, this “accidental life,” as I have called it: to be tender is the necessary condition for receiving the flow of Her benevolent tides. And, being afraid? In its way, a necessary part of this experience of becoming the man I love.

Being afraid humbles me. Feeling this fear in my emptiness keeps my arrogance at bay. Being afraid teaches me to have compassion for myself, and for others who suffer to know themselves.

I know that, being afraid, I breathe, and breathing into this tender openness, I create the space, the safe space for Her to blossom, for my beloved to open herself to me in her tenderness, her fear, her ready surrender.

This being afraid, I trust this. Afraid, yet standing with emptiness open to the unknown but inevitable arrival of her flood tide, holding this beautiful moment of fear and tenderness allows this flow of love and devotion to give me more than I know, more than I imagine. My breath, inhaling and exhaling

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS🌀When you anchor your attention in the vast, timeless emptiness from which it is sourced, She (the deep pulse of feminine life-love energy) is invited to reveal and express Herself most fully. (Nina Lombardo, @wayofdevotion)

🌀What do I gain when I stop trying to control things?

• I win back my life

• my bewilderment

• my sense of excitement about not knowing what is going to happen next…

… as a human being, I truly don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, not even in the next five minutes of my life. Instead of letting this scare me, I choose to embrace it with wonder! (adapted from Tim and Marieke, Kundalini Yoga School, Infinite Trust sadhana, Day 16)

🌀The Conscious Warrior practices the cultivation of wonder and awe. (John Wineland, Precept 7)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Day 16 of this month's practice, 11 minutes to feel empty of needs, wants, and only allowing...

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, sit (or stand) in stillness with one question: How does it feel, to empty myself of all thought, all demand, all complaint...?

• Set your timer for 11 minutes.

• Sit or stand. If you are feminine-identified, please sit or lie down to allow your body to be still while inner tides ebb and flow. If you are masculine-identified, consider standing, consider feeling the tension in your body as you hold space for yourself and your own tides as you do this practice.

• Begin by closing your eyes and aligning your body into its truest, most elegant posture, tucking your chin to lift your heart, tilting your pelvis to straighten your spine. Breathe slowly through your nose and down through your softened throat. Feel the "almost-snoring" of your breath as it passes into your body, filling your belly, your heart, then pressing down into your pelvis. If you are sitting or standing, lift out of your pelvis, letting your pelvis and legs become heavy, dropping into the earth below. If you are laying down, let the weight of your hips and shoulders be held by earth's gravity.

• Feel your breath moving your diaphragm in and out, up and down, becoming slower and deeper, opening your body. As your diaphragm moves let yourself empty, every exhale a little longer, holding your breath empty a little longer, and releasing any complaints or worries or sorrows with your exhale, in your holding-empty feeling instead the brightness of your upper heart, the brightness of your crown... Let your emptiness expand with every breath... let it settle without boundaries... And, as you empty, notice how this feels in your empty belly, your empty heart, your empty throat, your empty mind... Notice the impulse to fill these spaces... just notice, and empty with the next exhale... always increasing the exhale, and the holding empty a little longer, a little deeper, a little more empty...

• As the timer signals the end of this short 11 minutes of feeling into your spaciousness, your emptiness allow your eyes to slowly open. Take three, relaxed breath cycles and step into your day... knowing yourself more surrendered, more able to receive whatever this day brings to you.

More meditations, practices, and inspirations at apprenticeshiptolove.com

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