HERE, LET ME CARRY THIS BURDEN

• Today's suggested practice: Day 22 of this month's practice... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Sally Beamish, Gala Water: Lento https://music.apple.com/ca/album/gala-water-lento/331293285?i=331293429

• My morning practice: 5:30am for 45 minutes of physical, yogic, and Meditation for Authentic Self-Expression (day 29/40)

• My vulnerability practice: Rooted, I stand, my heart open with my words, my offers spoken into this October wind… I don’t know where they blow…

Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Your hurt. I can carry this. Your anger. That too. Your weariness, from doing it all on your own? Yes, that too.

…

I have spent so much of my life and my life’s energy defending. Avoiding. Denying.

Stephen Jenkinson (I’m full of him after the recent “Nights of Grief & Mystery” performance) talks about regret in a way that I understand. I’m paraphrasing here, but you’ll get the impression at least of how I interpret his words.

We aspire to a “clean” and “productive” field from which to reap life’s harvest. But to clear this field we pick out our regrets and carry them to the far end, the distant end, and create a fence row with these stones. We don’t imagine ourselves every walking to that end of the field. But we must. The inevitability of our dying forces that walk.

Jenkinson counsels visiting that fence row well before that final walk. Become acquainted with these stones that we’d rather forget. Handle them. And make with them that lasting legacy of our lives.

So, today, I’m trying something different. Instead of adding to the weight of that fence row and my inevitable reckoning with it, instead of carry the weight of denial and defending, I’m going to weight a few of these stones right now. Here. To take responsibility.

So, I say to you who’ve experienced pain because of my selfishness and willfulness, Your sorrow, I will carry it. I know that I am a part of it. Your anger? Yes that too. And this weariness of having to be your own defender when no man stands to defend and protect you, even as you would only dance and be beautiful and all that your feminine arts desire? Yes I will carry that too.

I am not imagining that I alone am the source of your discomforts. But I am knowing that one man needs to stand for you, needs to begin to shoulder this burden. It can be another man. I could wait for him to see what needs doing. But then I’d be forfeiting both the love that I have for you, and the gifts you’ve already given. No. It’s me. Now.

…

Everything I’ve read and everything I’ve learned points to this: I alone can change my experience of this life. All the clever ducking of responsibility. All the nice words. The sophistry. All the selfishness I can draw on won’t give me the peace or the love I want to share with you. And if your radiance, your ease, if these are the fruits of carrying this burden, then it is light indeed.

…

So I will not add to the regrets that are piled on that distant fence-line of my life. Instead, I will, gladly, carry your hurts and anger and your fears and your loneliness and your confusion and weariness, and I will begin to feel myself worthy of this beautiful life I experience. The beautiful love I have for you. All of it, that I unequivocally enjoy. Yes, let me carry this burden, for it is light and I am strong.  And I am here. And I love you. And this is what, I believe, the lover offers his beloved, to carry this weight, with joy.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀 Started my day crying while reading the daily meditation ... Yes it's so important to me to feel and see what men do right. And reading his words and experiences my own hurt, sadness, and sorrow surfaced.It's there in my body and nervous system. The pain. The wounds. The memories when I was deeply hurt by men I loved. (Katrine K)

🌀A man of depth can hold both the joy and the pain of life at the same time. (GS Youngblood)

🌀Our prayer is that you do a gut check and consciously determine your reactions to these times; that you place yourself into a daily pattern of reset and reframe, to refrain from carrying any disconnect forward, and then use the tools at the root of all matter...this magic will expose itself in your silence. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 22 of this month's practice, take 11 minutes today to sit and listen to, or chant, the Mangala Charn mantra... This meditation (Aad Guray Nameh, Jugad Guray Nameh, Sat Guray Nameh, Siri Guru Devay Nameh) is a prayer for protection and projection from the heart. We extend our heart without fear. We draw into our heart, without fear.

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, sit (or stand) in stillness as you listen and chant, or simply listen to this mantra, let this question stir within you…. If you are masculine-identified, Where are you feeling the weight of your days? Where are you avoiding the weight of your deep power to hold space, hold the heaviness that burdens the woman you love, whether she is your wife or your daughter or your sister, your lover, your friend, your mother? And can you breathe into that avoidance and know how strong you are, that you are worthy of the trust to carry that weight, releasing her to be more of who she is? And if you are feminine-identified, Where do you feel the weight that has been left to you? And can you breathe into that place and allow yourself to recognize how strong you are?

• Setup: your "setup" for this month's daily practice is how you "hold onto yourself" and receive...

• 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. Become still, more still than you've ever been. Your alignment is the physical training for trustworthiness. Bring your hands to your heart, right (masculine) over left (feminine).

• Focus on feeling the vibration. That is all. 

• Set your timer for 11 minutes or listen to the mantra sung by Snatam Kaur here:

• As the timer signals or the mantra ends allow your eyes to slowly open. Take three, relaxed breath cycles, no pressing, no effort, and feel yourself full, without thoughts, open. Safe to receive. Then, step into your day, letting the mantra echo as a nourishing vibration whenever you become still. You don't need to DO anything. Let the world come to you with its demands, its complaints, and yes, its endless tide of gifts and blessings.✨