TODAY I AM ENOUGH

• Today's suggested practice: Ten minutes to feel and hold your masculine depth... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Mirabai Ceiba, Humee Hum 

• My morning practice: One hour, with short warm-up, Kriya to Know the Other as Myself (mantra and mudra), and Linking to the Infinite (pranayama and mantra)

• My vulnerability practice: She changes, and I hold my heart open, afraid and strong enough ...

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION She is an always-changing current that frightens me. I want this moment of carefully cultivated comfort to continue, unchanged. But no. That is my childish conceit. Instead, She changes and I am tested, and I know myself more than my comforts, more than my fears.

Today I am the son of my mother. Today I feel afraid. My father died three years ago. That changed many things. My mother went into the hospital yesterday with unmanageable pain. My fear: that she may never leave the hospital. My fear: That she may never know her life without this pain.

The last of John Wineland's 11 precepts for the "conscious warrior" is to make death my ally, to allow it to sharpen my practice. To bring focus to my life, how I'm living.

In the face of their anxiety I didn't share my fears with my mother or my sister, and I became acutely aware of both my need to hold them, allow them to flow into their flood of feeling —and to hold myself, to allow myself to feel my fears without collapsing into this flow. To know my heart big enough to hold compassion for my fears, and those of my sister, my mother.

Yesterday my beloved reached out and thanked me for holding this space for her transformation. To feel her trust and her gratitude... To hear her emerging, like one of the forest flowers I'm beginning to see in this Spring time, from the muck and mud of her sorrow... More gifts of the feminine and her ever-changing nature.

These gifts are best received with my heart open to everything. No demand. No judgement. No wanting. Simply open and vulnerable to it all. Today I am the son. Today I am the brother. Today I am the lover. I hold holy space for myself, for my beloved, my sister, my mother. I am still enough and deep enough, rooted enough, that I encourage them to feel and move as they need to move, to the fullest expression of their flow. All of these changes I hold, without resistance. There is, paradoxically, no time to waste with resistance, and all the time necessary to allow it to flow.

I used to be afraid, and would close. "You're not like that anymore," she said. Today I know I am enough for all of this.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀The first chakra governs our physical survival; the second chakra our external approval; the third chakra tends to our internal approval...our nourishing of self through digestion. It's time to better understand the universal balance existing throughout this body region by deeply studying and appreciating its support of life.

Our prayer is that you practice this science of appreciation, within the art of compassion, every day, as you start your day. Approve of yourself, and you will begin to experience approval from life. Go(Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Approve Your Self)

🌀The Conscious Warrior makes death an ally, using it to sharpen his present actions, future plans, and current state of being. (John Wineland , Precept 11)

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

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Ten minutes to feel and hold your depth....

Read, then do the following...

• Set a timer for ten minutes. Sitting or standing, let your weight settle into your bottom, your pelvis, your thighs, your knees, calves, ankles, your feet, and down into the earth. Feel the earth's gravity drawing you down. At the same time, feel yourself lifting out of your pelvis, your spine straight, firm but not stiff, your chin tucked, your chest slightly lifted. Your heart is open, held by this beautiful posture.

• Close your eyes and roll them up and in to focus on your brown point between your eyes, breathing through your nose, begin to imagine your weight rooting into the ground from your pelvis, a giant root giving you three points of contact with the earth below: your two feet, solid, your root, slowly penetrating, being drawn into Her rich, wet, dark, fecund energy.

• Slow your breath to a six-count in, a six-count holding and pressing down into the earth through this "root," a six-count exhaling up from the depths of this root up and into your lower triangle (anus, groin, belly), up into your heart, up through your throat, and out the "third eye" at your brow point between your eyes.

• Bring your arms up as if holding a "basket" in front of your heart. Continue breathing as before, and now expand your heart into this "basket," this container. Imagine all who matter to you, all that matters to you, all that holds meaning in your life —a beloved, a mother or father, a child, a friend, colleague, your community, your art —imagine of this in this basket you are holding with your heart, supporting with this breath that travels through your body, into the nourishment of the earthly feminine, and into their hearts. You are, whether you are a man or a woman or otherwise identified, in this moment you are embodying your masculine capacity to hold deep and powerful space, holy space as it were, for all that your heart touches.

• Breathe into this powerful depth, every breath expanding your heart, deepening your root, expanding and strengthening your heart's capacity to hold holy space.

• When the timer signals, gently ease your breath and your arms, letting them fall to your sides, feeling this "basket" still very much alive and powerful even without your arms. It is your heart, after all, not your arms, that holds this holy space. Relax your body. Take a few moments to feel how deep and powerful you are. Know yourself as more than enough for anything this day brings, knowing also that the feminine will feel your depth and need to test you, to see if this root and this heart is as deep and as big as it seems. Trust yourself. You are enough.