HOLDING HER INFINITE ACHE

• Today's suggested practice: To hold your infinite ache (see below; I’ll be talking about this on Wednesday’s live podcast at 7:15pm Pacific time - here’s the Zoom link) ...

• My playlist while writing today's meditation:  Gotan Project, Vuelvo al Sur 

• My morning practice: 1.5 hours with short warm-up, followed by Kriya to Know the Other as Myself, and Linking to the Infinite pranayama and mantra

• My vulnerability practice: I hold this distance, this silence, this emptiness as full and holy...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Do you know this ache? To be held? To be known? And to be beyond being held, beyond knowing, your ache infinite and unquenchable?

This ache - never-ending, never satisfied. Yet, when I hold it, flowering.

Held, my beloved blossoms with a powerful radiance, an overwhelming radiance calling me to be more.

Yes, I am overwhelmed. I want to shrink. Instead, I answer this call and, magically, know how to hold her safe and cherished. For this beautiful moment only.

Feeling for days now this ache, to be held. Knowing this: there is no one who can satisfy this ache. And know this too: this ache is another of the oracles that speaks to me about what is true and beautiful, and managing to hold myself for my own beautiful moment, this ache becomes all that I need.

I went into the woods yesterday. To walk in the trees and their silence. To sit and meditate in this cathedral of Her green beauty. My church. With my Furry Angels gathered round. I'd forgotten how important this is. Weeks now with a sore foot have kept from these deep trails and this practice. I sat, my spine tall and lifted from where I was rooted to the forest floor, my eyes soft, looking into the distance as I chanted and breathed and tuned myself to this place.

Then, finished, sitting and watching the still forest, hearing the birds, the soft wind —"doing nothing, immaculately," as one of my teachers advises— I felt myself on the edge of hallucination: the firs and maples and sword ferns dissolving into a pattern of endless motion. Slow enough that I knew that all of this world is nothing but energy spinning into constellations of experience. My stillness the awareness to Her infinite magic. My magic, the deep presence that holds Her in awareness, knows Her for that brief and beautiful moment. Feeling myself dissolving, bathed in this infinitude. This is why I practice this magic. To feel myself held in my own awareness.

This ache to be held, known - it never ends.

Yet, with practice, I see you and hold you and know your infinite radiance and am overwhelmed —and, not afraid of your overwhelming radiance I am nourished, I become the man I love.

I had forgotten this magic.

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

🌀The subtle energy circulating throughout your body is part of a larger body. The whole picture is far more inclusive and holistic...nothing acts alone. With all of its moving parts and subtle features, your physical body aligns with these larger bodies; this holistic mechanism unfolds exponentially. ... (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Action on Purpose)

🌀A warrior is not about perfection, or victory, or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability. That's the only true courage. (Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE   Take five minutes for this. Read it through, then...

• Standing or sitting or walking, feel your connection to the earth. Feel your spine lifted into the near heavens. Feel yourself a lightning rod for all the sensations....

  • How does the air around you feel on your skin?

  • How do the sounds around you vibrate on your ear drums, your skin, your heart?

  • How does the air taste on your tongue, how does it smell?

  • How does the infinite arrangement of molecules in front of your seem to your eyes?

  • How is your heart beating to the rhythm of the energies around you —the pulse of traffic, conversation, tees leaning into the wind, ocean kissing the shore?

  • Listen and feel and taste and know this moment in all of its infinite sensations —you are holding the ever-changing, always moving feminine and, still and witnessing, you are the consciousness of this moment. Strong enough to hold it all, including yourself.

• Bring your attention to yourself holding all of these sensations. Notice the man or woman you are, being still. Conscious of your consciousness.

• This is what it means to be held. For this brief moment, enjoy this spaciousness, enjoy this infinitude. Enjoy!

• Your body is, as I've said before, your "first" oracle. As you take a moment to hold your own awareness of your own body you begin to know —not in words that "make sense," not in ideas that you can categorize, but in an unreasonable knowing— yourself as more than you can imagine.

• Finally, shake yourself from your shoulders to your toes. Then, step back into the spontaneous flow of your life. Remember that everything that feels overwhelming is simply a call for you to hold it with this spaciousness, this attention that will reveal its beauty.