FROM THIS MUD, UNREASONABLE BEAUTY

▶ Tonight: I invite you to join me for a #MENSWORK live podcast conversation, Listening to the Oracle (7:15pm Pacific time, after the evening Fatherhood group).

▶ Tomorrow: Yoga for the Sacred Masculine at 4am Pacific time. DM or email [email protected] for Zoom links.

• Today's suggested practice: Witness the unreasonable beauty unfolding... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Mozart, Rondo in A Minor (Seong-Jin Cho)  (thank you, to my friend Scott Harker for this, and other morning music)

• My morning practice: 1.5 hours with short warm-up for the lower triangle, followed by Kriya to Know the Other as Myself, and Linking to the Infinite pranayama and mantra (FYI: I'll be teaching this on Thursday morning)

• My vulnerability practice: I trust this silence and listen for her need...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Last night I listened to one of the witchy women who helps me receive unreasonable knowing. (I think every man should have at least one of these witches to be his oracle. Otherwise, we are stranded in the dry, barren desert of our reasonable resistance to the magic of this life.) I talk to this woman occasionally. She helps me to know the value of the slow, muddy season, among other things. She also warns me to notice the beginning of the flowering. To be sensitive to it all as Her benevolence, and to be unafraid of this unending fecundity.

Every season, perhaps every moment, has its magic. Some alchemy that lies beyond reason. Some, becoming a little less magical, but still enchanting, as our tools for measuring and limiting become more sensitive. The moon, waxing and waning and pulling our watery psyches here and there. Dressing and dressing the beach of its tides. And in the mud of the forest, it is the season of the Forest Lanterns emerging. The patches of wet brown muck now a garden punctuated with the brilliant fresh greens and yellows of Skunk Cabbage.

So am I dragged through my seasons. Reluctantly being changed by Her grace. Impatient. Resistant. Difficult. Unlistening. Insensitive. Yet changing, in spite of myself.

We are, as men, most of us, built and trained to be dense and thick creatures. Defenders. Our singular sensitivities tuned to any and every perceived threat of attack. I hunker down into this defensiveness, my mud and muck. But also, dimly aware of a yearning, a demanding for more: to be shown Her treasures of beauty, love, sex, money, food, success, devotion, everything beyond my limited and reasonable knowing.

I know this muck. I know this defensiveness. I know my desire. I struggle to become sensitive to that which isn't attack. Or, it's corollary, conquest. This is why I practice. I know there is more, and I know that my own reason is not enough to know the way to what She offers. So I listen to my witches, to the trees and the ravens, speaking their incomprehensible tongues. I hear the trumpeting of the Forest Lanterns a silent symphony from the muck.

I have all I need. Listening to this song of the Forest Lanterns I am, nevertheless, enchanted. I open for more. And there is always more, not for grasping but to be received, unbidden. She brings me endless unfolding. And there is always more. Is there a limit? None. None but my doubt, that I am worthy of these treasures.

Today I will walk through this garden of wild cabbages. I will stop to listen to the silent symphony of this early Spring time. I will listen and trust my own emerging sensitivities, and to the oracles —the witchy women and trees and birds and these cabbages— to which these sensitivities are becoming attuned. I will allow this unreasonable reason to tear my defences open to know my beloved and her tender dance.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS🌀...recreate this relationship with spirit; recreate a relationship with this ethereal silence within the material chaos; follow the guidance of this silence and arrive at your purpose -- your destiny. (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, It’s All Possible)

🌀Purpose is who we are, while we're doing whatever we do. (Kendra Cunov)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE  For at least 15 minutes sit or stand, comfortably. Without effort. Breathe long and deep. Become more still than the walls or trees around you. Take these minutes to notice the emergence of unreasonable beauty around you, within you. Be "immaculate," as John Wineland suggests, "in doing nothing." Nothing but noticing.

In this way you witness and hold space for Her —the divine feminine, nature, the never-ending fecundity of our lives, however you define the always changing, always moving in your life. In these minutes allow Her the freedom to be unreasonable, unconstrained, unlimited.

As you step back into your day, allow this moment of appreciation to colour every interaction. Whether we are man or woman or otherwise identified, this is our sacred masculine purpose: to hold safe space for this energy that gives birth to all the love and beauty and nourishment in our lives.