WINTER’S SORROWS

• Today's suggested practice: Day 4 of this month's practice... (see below)

• My playlist while writing today's meditation: Hildegard Von Bingen, O Quam Preciosa https://music.apple.com/ca/album/o-quam-preciosa/1452652721?i=1452654590 (see video link below for a 4ish minute version)

• Practice: 5am: 45 minutes of yogic practice, including Meditation for Trust

• My vulnerability practice: Feel my failure to lead, my fear of leading, through the time of dead feelings…

Hans Peter Meyer

VIDEO

Welcome to this new year! And thank you to the men who are walking this Path of the Sacred Masculine

https://youtube.com/shorts/5dv4DyUrTd4?feature=share

TODAY'S MEDITATION

In a few minutes I will be leading a conversation with men and women on the topic of the “sacred womb.”

It is an awe-ful moment, considering this, preparing for this. A moment full of awe.

The womb is a dark place. Magic happens there. We are, most of us, unaware of this magic except in the most basic sense. How many of you, men, how many of you have any inkling of this womb space, what happens beyond the tickling of its edges that we are obsessed with? And you, women who carry this womb, how many of you treat this deepest part of yourselves with the awe we, as men, cannot fathom?

….

I am sorry. I am sorry that I have not played the part of the husbandman. No, there was much I didn’t know. And so much I didn’t bother to know. And, even more, so much that I was afraid to know. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please take my hand and let me walk with you now, into the darkness.

I did not see that even in this darkness the garden goes about its magical work. I did not see that this garden, its seasons, was unfamiliar to you. You’d only ever known its blossoms, and a little of its dying. And then, without someone to hold you safe, you ran. From blossoming season to blossoming season, afraid of the dying, ever more afraid of the dying. With no one to hold you steady. Safe.

I am sorry. This was something I could have done for you. I could have guided you through the dying season, and into and through the season of seeing death. I am sorry. I refused that so-basic tenet of the husbandman: to protect, to hold safe, yes even from the seeming death.

…

It is one of the blessings of being born into a place with seasons: my nervous system, at some elemental level, knows the requirement of dying and the sleep that seems like death, a requirement at least as powerful as that of blossoming and fruiting. I have this knowing, even when the culture resists with its insistence on blossoming.

Our culture fails us with this insistence.

Our families fail us with their fear of dying, their frantic and effusive attention to blossoming and fruiting, to the trappings of romance and birth…

But the dying, the falling apart of the romance, this is necessary.

And the death, the grieving, the loss —this too is necessary.

It is my blessing to be born with some knowing of the seasons. It is, however, my regret that I did not know to cultivate this knowing. And, that I was afraid to lead you through what, after so many seasons of I’ve, I’ve come to know are the inevitable seasons of disenchantment, hardship, the cold and barren times. I am sorry.

…

She needs to be free. Yet, She needs to be held to be free.

She needs to know that She can surrender, completely. Can allow Herself to be annihilated, to become all that She is.

She needs to be trusted, completely, to know Her way. Even when Her way seems so wrong.

…

Sex is a beautiful thing. But it is also a holy thing. It has its time, its place. Like so much of this life, this culture, what is deeply true of this way of being ourselves & being with another, is not understood. Is in fact rejected. Because to go deeply into sex is to sacrifice myself. To be annihilated. Surrendered. And then to bring this lesson, this understanding, into what seems the most unsexy of places, the dead zone of living without the distractions of pleasure or “needs” being met.

This is the bleak midwinter of every marriage. All of us are capable of weathering this winter. All of us. Few of us dare to stand so long in the cold, our hearts seemingly frozen, our sexual appetites seemingly withered, our love seemingly dead.

The culture encourages us to “move on,” to “let go,” and so we are lost to the deeper magic and transformation of this seeming season of death…

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀 Don't let anyone tell you that being submissive is being weak or a doormat.It takes courage to not only be your whole self...but to lay it bare before another (anonymous)

🌀This triad [of sincere apology, true forgiveness, and absolute gratitude], orbiting your being turns off the spell of this emptiness [of not existing, not being you] and turns on the capacity of using the theta brain and the parasympathetic nervous system to channel what is really your essence of excellence.

This can be frightening because it will seem so unfamiliar, but if you stay with it long enough it will become a habit and then the habit of you being you will be the way you live from here on forward. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀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)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICEDay 4 of this month's practice, take about four minutes today to sit and listen to “O Quam Preciosa”…

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, sit (or stand) in stillness as you listen to your heart, your belly, your sex, your root and let this question stir within you…. How do you feel this season of seeming death in your body? What are you allowing yourself to grieve? What are you not allowing yourself to grieve? Feel it, if only for a few minutes…

• Begin by closing your eyes and aligning your body into its truest, most elegant posture, tucking your chin to lift your heart, tilting your pelvis to straighten your spine. Become still, more still than you've ever been. Your alignment is the physical training for trustworthiness. Bring your hands to your heart, right (masculine) over left (feminine).

• Focus on feeling the vibration. That is all. 

• Set your timer for 6 minutes or listen to “O Quam Preciosa” by Hildegard Von Bingen  here:

• As the timer signals or the song ends allow your eyes to slowly open. Take three, relaxed breath cycles, no pressing, no effort, and feel yourself full, without thoughts, open. Safe to receive. Then, step into your day, letting the mantra echo as a nourishing vibration whenever you become still. You don't need to DO anything. Let the world come to you with its demands, its complaints, and yes, its endless tide of gifts and blessings.