I WANT MORE

• Today's suggested practice: Ten minutes of feeling —and enjoying!— your want... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: DiSarli, La Morocha 

• My morning practice: 60 minutes, short warm-up for legs and lower triangle, followed by Kriya to Know the Other as Myself (mantra and mudra), Linking to the Infinite (pranayama and mantra)

• My vulnerability practice: Feel this tenderness in my heart and allow it to guide me... slowly, slowly, slowly....

—Hans Peter Meyer

MY MEDITATION Yes. More love. More joy. More beauty. More of Her gifts. More of her silence. More of her radiance. More of this tango.

I will often refer to tango in these notes on my apprenticeship to love. It's one of the few places I get to practice this yoga of sexual polarities, outside of the profound experiences available through the coed workshops with John Wineland.

It is so important for me to practice.

Two years ago I was teaching tango. Hosting experimental milongas (tango's social dances). Then COVID closures ... Fortunately, over the next two years I had many weekends of practice thanks to John Wineland. These taught me many things. One, that I want more — more of what the feminine brings into my life. More of all that deliciousness — and that means I want more testing. Yes. More feminine testing. I want to experience more of the polarity that is that the heart of this yoga of sexual polarities, which is also the heart of tango.

Yesterday, only my second milonga in two years. I danced almost every tango (the three-four song sets we dance in a milonga) in the three hours.

I knew almost no one. So many "islands to be explored," as Melissa Bloxham has referred to the women we, as men, get to know. Indeed. Tango is an exceptional way to explore so much of the polarity of attraction, how we interpret the music, each other's energies, the flow of dancers with us, etc.

Every social setting, especially where I don't know many, is an anxious event for me. Perhaps milongas are especially so. If we've danced for a while we know that there is art to be found, created here somewhere amongst the tandas, with the dancers in the room. But there are few clues. How she moves with one man is only a hint at how she will move with me. How confident I feel with another is no guarantee that I will feel as confident and inspired as with another. The women are all beautiful. And all carry the mystery of their beauty deep within themselves, waiting to be known by a lead's subtle guidance. I will only find Her —the beauty and art I desire— by exploring, going far beyond my comfort zone.

I am always surprised. How She appears... as mysterious as what this art is that we create together. There is only the sense that here, in this moment, there is a necessary tension, pressure, friction of polarity that sparks magic.

What I know is this: in my tango, as in my life, beginning to know this magic starts with my breath; slowing down; feeling the heart of the woman, the heart of the divine in my arms. Patience. Slowing down. Allowing Her to arrive... in Her own time, Her own way. There is no hurrying this art.

And when She arrives... magic.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS 🌀Frustration arrives to demonstrate the need for a change at the core level. Once this demonstration performs, you must release frustration to enjoy the rest of the process...otherwise, all change will be frustrating. (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur, Ride the Joy)

🌀 ... "strength, integrity, and openness. Her desire is for his deepest truth and love. As he grows, so will her testing. The most erotic moment for a woman is feeling that you are Shiva, the divine masculine: unperturbable, totally loving, fully present, and all-pervading." - David Deida.......The more conscious we all are of "testing" the easier it gets to rise to the occasion with playful, erotic depth. If you're annoyed or overwhelmed by it, it's possibly time to recalibrate to your true nature. If you are unsure how to do that, step 1 go into nature. Practice regulating your nervous system... (Melissa Bloxham on "feminine testing")

🌀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 Oracle, She Who Must Be Ravished)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE Ten minutes of feeling —and enjoying!— your want...

Please read through first, then ...

• Set a timer for 10 minutes

• Your eyes are closed. You are sitting tall, your feet and sit bones feeling themselves held by the earth's gravity, your spine lifted, the crown of your head drawn upwards into the heavens. Feel yourself polarized, connected to both the earth (feminine) and the heavens (masculine). Allow your breath to move slowly, and even more slowly down your body into your belly and groin and down into the earth, then up the front of your body and up through your crown into the heavens. Slowly slow your breath as it moves between these poles.

• Feeling this effortless movement of breath and energy, allowing your body to circulate this energy, effortlessly but with attention now bring your mind into service by imagining your wants — feel the ache in your belly for the things you desire; feel the ache in your heart for the love you desire; feel the ache in your throat for the things you long to say, to hear; feel the taste on your tongue of the pleasures you long for. Slowly savour these wants, not as pains to be extinguished, but the very juice of your life! Allow the ache to become beautiful as you come to know yourself and your polarity a little better.

• As the timer signals, slowly release your belly, your heart, your throat, your tongue from their desires, their wants. Breathing slowly, without attending to the flow between the heavens and the earth, allow your body-mind to relax, the echoes of your wants reminding you of being fully alive, and, for at least another moment, fully polarized and magnetic. It is in allowing ourselves to become these desires, these wants that we begin to allow them into our lives. Our wanting only becomes an obstacle when we refuse to enjoy them, when we demand that they be satisfied in a time and way that we imagine is best for us. Instead, accept that your wants are holy in their own way, and that their satisfaction will, in its own way, be a sacred satisfaction, something you are unable, at this point, to imagine. Trust your body. Trust your wanting. And.... breathe into who and how you are at this moment. Complete. Beautiful. Powerfully magnetic.

• Now, step into this moment knowing that being present is the only thing required.