I LET JOY FILL THESE SAILS

• Today's suggested practice: Day 10 of seven minutes to train your nervous system.... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Dulce Pontes, Soledad https://is.gd/pZSNHK

• My morning practice: 75 minutes with short warm-up, Linking with the Infinite mantra and pranayama, followed by Solving Communication Problems kriya

• My vulnerability practice: I feel the tide of her need, the wind of her impulse to fly, and breathing into this seemingly endless unknown, trusting myself to hold it all...

• What is "nervous system training?" A good place to start is with a "vulnerability practice." If you're ready for this, please be in touch: https://is.gd/Lmp9nm

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION I am not a warrior. I am a man learning to sail the always-changing currents and tides of Her ocean. I am a man committed to practices that train my nervous system to feel the thrill of joy as I face the always-unknown of this ocean...

My life: tossed from calamity to disaster to undoing by my untrained and desperate reactions to what Her tides and currents bring to me.

My life: slowly, so painfully slowly, learning the art of sailing Her unfathomable waters. This art rests on one thing only: my nervous system, ready to be alone, ready to be joined, and always only reliant on itself.

A truism: nothing is constant, nothing is forever, except change. This is Her nature: to always be turning and dancing and unfolding. This is my nature as a masculine-identified man: to enjoy this endless unfolding within myself and in my beloved, in the world around me, to enjoy as awareness, noticing my fear and allowing it to blossom into even deeper, more joyful awareness of this: She gives me everything as nourishment. I yearn to be still and the world to be done with me, with this endlessness. And yet She is always inviting me to become deeper in my awareness and appreciation of Her gifts, treasures I don't know I seek. Deeper, always deeper into vulnerability.

I am alone, always alone. Our nervous systems are built for relationship. But I am always alone, and today, grateful for this solitude. Not always so. But today, yes. Knowing that this moment of solitude is but a moment of rest, a moment to become aware of myself, my fear of Her whims, my readiness to fill my sails with joy as Her whims show me how much more this to this life, how connected I am, how many are so close to me, with me. And, then, alone again. Resting. Letting Her gifts nourish me, preparing me for the next storm, the next tide, the next moment of being not-alone.

I am alone, and grateful. And allowing this nervous system to expand and receive and become ever-more artful as I sail this ocean.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS🌀Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. (bell hooks)

🌀The Conscious Warrior is committed to developing strength of the mind, physical body, and nervous system through dedicated physical, yogic, and meditative practice. (John Wineland, Precept 6)

🌀I never thought I'd be coming to you like this. (My beloved, my Oracle)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Day 10 of this month's practice, seven minutes towards building your nervous system capacity to be not the warrior vanquishing what life brings, but the sailor who begins to know the art required to appreciate and enjoy all that this life brings...

Please read through first, then ...

• If you don't have the Mera Man Loche on iTunes https://is.gd/uqOxd8 you'll find it here on YouTube:

This is a song of longing and devotion and self-discovery. You will listen to this while you...

• Standing, if possible, let your body settle. Breathe slowly, deeply into your belly... Allow yourself to become soft, vulnerable to an imaginary (or real!) wind of change that blows through this moment. And, soft and flexible to this wind, also rooted, held firm in the embrace of the earth's gravity...

• Turn the music on and, breathing through your nose, notice your breath moving with the sounds...down through your throat, your heart, your belly, down into these roots.... As you exhale, imagining yourself still rooted but energy moving gently up your legs, through your the lower triangle of your perineum, your sex, your belly, up through your heart and throat, and up into the heavens above through the crown of your head. Your body moving gently and ever more slowly, with the music, with the vibrations of your own body and its desire or resistance to movement...

• This is a song of lament and abandonment, of loneliness and devotion... a song of coming to self-awareness as the solitude, the being-alone that is all that is required of any of us, knowing ourselves entirely alone and the centre of all that unfolds, all that can be felt, heard, known, each of us the awareness that might be called "god" that holds everything... The sailor that is afraid yet unafraid of the seas that endlessly churn, the beauty and love that ebb and flow, endlessly, when we fill our sails with our self-awareness, self-trust... always there, always not-there, always returning, always leaving, always... always held in our awareness.

• As the song ends, bring yourself to stillness. The winds have, for a moment, ceased to blow. The tides have rested, for this moment. Gently take three relaxed breath cycles, without effort, and open your eyes. As you step into your day know this moment of your artfulness as a sailor. Let joy fill your sails as you continue with this day...

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com