THIS OCEAN, SAFE FOR ME TO SWIM

• Today's suggested practice: Day 7 of 7 minutes.... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Christoph Stiefel and Lisette Spinner, Burasi Mustur

• My morning practice: 45 minutes with warm-up, Linking with the Infinite ♾ mantra and pranayama, followed by Solving Communication Problems kriya

• My vulnerability practice: In silence, the currents of her need, her love, her confusion pulling me... and I am still... (If you'd like help creating your own "vulnerability practice," an essential part of building your capacity to hold space, to "swim the ocean of Her love," please be in touch )

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION I have always felt the pull of water. Always wanted to be swimming, diving, floating, a feeling of flying and freedom whenever I plunge into Her unfathomable wet...

I am not a warrior going to battle. I am a man who is learning to swim Her ocean with grace and confidence, and profound gentleness.

I am not conquering and accumulating, I am not achieving. I am allowing myself to rest into the depth of the man I am. And in this depth, this stillness and this awareness my beloved begins to speak the sounds of her radiance. Murmurs. Gentle, barely audible stirrings of her tender tender heart. I feel the currents and remain, still, amazed at my capacity to be still, amazed at my capacity to receive rather than take...

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀Love is an ocean in which all life lives…

The key here is to experience safety. When this happens, love is experienced. To achieve this sensation of security, the ancient wisdom keepers taught the science of meditation, yoga, chanting, prayer and lucid dreaming to build the awareness of the eternal self, the indestructible self... (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀When we avoid something that is arising in our experience--because it is uncomfortable, because it is painful to look at--we are turning away from Life as She is incarnating through us. In this turning away, a division is formed, from which fear and anxiety swell. Sustained severance from Life within leads to severance from Life without. Our words and actions become truncated from recognition of Her Presence in all beings. Our inner division propagates into our relationships, and before we know it, we feel alone, disconnected, scrambling to find refuge in Her Love again, forgetting that She has never left. (Nina Lombardo, Way of Devotion)

🌀The Conscious Warrior honours and protects the feminine, both in himself, in women and children, and in the world. (John Wineland, Precept 8)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Day seven of this month's practice, seven minutes towards becoming the diamond you are, a brilliant and stable presence formed by the pressure, friction, tension, stress of Her testing. You are more than you imagine, beyond struggle, beyond demand, beyond the "warrior marketing" that brands you as insufficient unless you learn to fight... You are learning to swim with Her tides, learning to be so beautifully magnetic that She flows towards you with Her infinite gifts...

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...

• Sit (or stand) with attention to your spine, it is the structure that can hold so much more vulnerability than you can imagine —when you attend to it. Start by closing your eyes and tucking your chin, gently lifting and opening your chest. Let your hips and pelvis settle down, feel their weight held by the earth's gravity. Gently lift your spine out of your pelvis, as if the crown of your head were reaching for the heavens above, drawn upwards by the stars. Imagine your alignment as an elegant line extending from below the base of your spine to the infinite space above your crown. Feel your spine gently lengthening, pulled between these subtle polarities of the earth below, the stars above...

• Gently slow your breath, filling and softening your belly as you inhale, gently pressing your navel against your spine as you exhale. As your breath slows your spine becomes subtly more aligned...

• After three cycles of long and deep breathing turn the music on.... listening past the words to the devotional tone, a tone devoted to the journey of your wisdom, your truth, your experience, your surrender to yourself...

• Keep breathing slowly and gently into your aligned posture, making micro-adjustments throughout the exercise, feeling yourself becoming more... noticing how your body feels the tone and pulse and tenor and the vibration of this song...

• Breathe and receive. Imagine yourself easily swimming the ocean of life's tests, its tensions, pressures, frictions, and stresses. Easily swimming and in this gentle, almost motionless motion, receiving everything you need, everything you want, all that you imagine... Then, notice all the feelings and thoughts that eddy around you and within you as you swim. Notice, and let them drift, carried by Her endless tides.... No need to fix or fight or push away, they move as you allow them to move, as you allow yourself to move in this ocean....

• As the song ends, bring yourself "back to shore," as it were. Relax any tension your breath and posture may be holding from the practice. Release the image of the ocean. Take three breath cycles, without effort, to transition into opening your eyes. As you step into your day know that all you need is here for you. There is an ocean of energy always moving through you and around you. Know this, and walk into your day with your heart a little more open and a little more confident that you are both worthy of this ocean, and capable of swimming its tides and currents, a little stronger and more stable than you were seven minutes ago...

More practices and meditations at apprenticeshiptolove.com

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