TOO AFRAID TO ASK

• Today’s questions: What am I avoiding, not saying, not doing? What am I afraid of even allowing myself to feel afraid of?
• Today's suggested practice: Day 11 of this month's practice, to prepare to receive it all.
• My practice: 2:30AM: 90 minutes: Yoga, then a series of mantra meditations, ending with Gayatri meditation…
• My vulnerability practice: There is no hurry. Feel it all. Even the parts that I’m too afraid to know —and especially these feelings of fear that I am afraid to know. Feel them. Hold them. Know them. Become deeper & stronger….

★ The next #menswork conversation is another co-ed conversation with one of my teachers, Diane Gansauer, on the topic of rituals and ceremonies in our lives. As a subscriber to these chapters there is no charge. Use the “subscriber” ticket option at https://is.gd/Ohh2DV

Hans Peter Meyer

TODAY’S MEDITATION

The morning wind called me to sail. But my habit and my comfort from waking is to sit here, in this garden, and write.

I say “my comfort from waking,” because more and more I feel waking as a wrenching. Maybe it is like the flower that feels forced to bloom? Or the woman, forced to yield, because custom and expectation require this? I don’t know. What I do know is that mornings have become a sweet and tender time, and I am happiest when left entirely alone, with my dogs. Telephone calls or visits from children are permitted. From my beloved, yes. But mostly, I want to feel my own tenderness as it is susceptible and vulnerable to what the world brings me.

The dogs are sleeping. Their moment of excitement at my waking and their mad dash across the backyard to chase… Imagined bunnies? Stray cats who sometimes live in “Jane’s Cabin?”

Then their breakfast, and back to sleep until they sense me move. Always alert to my potential adventures.

But for me that moment, including making coffee and feeding the cat, is almost too much: I just want to sit and be in this liquid state, absorbing and being absorbed by the morning. Doves and ravens and crows and little twittering songs. Trucks in neighbouring streets (the city works yard is a block away —many interesting sounds from that quarter). Occasional childrens’ sounds. I heard a girl singing once. Sometimes two girls. Reminding me of mine, so young so long ago. And yes, the wind. Soughing through the trees. Calling me…

Yesterday my colleague A told me things, through tears. Her hard beginning with her man. Hard because she, perhaps, she thinks, moved too fast. And all sounded too familiar: how fast did things move with my beloved, with no ritual or ceremony or observance or breaking of the momentum to notice what we were doing. Undoing. Some regret there, for me. But she wore the pain of it, felt it more deeply than me. And so I listened to A, and remembered how easy it is when things seem good, to forget to feel into the dark corners where some true feelings and thoughts are hiding. Or have been pushed.

I’d been wiser once, in a similar circumstance. But I was, as Dylan sang, so much older then. I was younger and more impatient as I became impatient with the approaching end of my days. Younger but older, wiser at least, I tended to these hearts more consistently. I was a husbandman to a garden before I understood the need for the husbandman.

I do now. And I am sorry.

And then, to hear A’s advice to me in my current moment. That felt too close to what I know & know & what I still failed to do in these few days together with her, my beloved: to ask. To pick the fruit that seems so ripe for picking but I am still afraid to … To declare myself in an ask, not in a plan or an abstract wanting. No, to reach out and pluck with the ask, opening up the vulnerability of both hearts and just trusting that when the wind calls me it’s time, to ask.

But, didn’t do it. And, again, I am sorry. My sorrow mitigated by this: there is no hurry.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Recognising and honouring our own needs and feelings with compassion allows us to recognise and honour those of others as well. We can then enter into a dialogue based on equality, compassion is about holding space not about feeling pity.

… when it’s your turn to talk keep tuning into your inner silence so your answers come from deep within, transcending habitual reactions, moving towards a heart-centred dialogue. (Kundalini Yoga School, Speak Your Truth sadhana, Day 20). )

🌀Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. (Pema Chodron)

🌀The Conscious Warrior is ruthlessly honest with himself while being kind to others. (John Wineland, Precept 1)

🌀You’re not like that now. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE

Day 11 of this month's practice:

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, set two alarms, one for the early part of your day, one for mid-late afternoon when you may be feeling low energy.
• When the alarm sounds, wherever and however you are, take less than three minutes to do this short practice:
• Stand or sit, with a beautiful and straight spine, feeling your feet or your sit bones heavy and connected to the earth;
• Close your eyes;
• Inhale deeply into your belly, letting it become soft and round;
• Exhale by gently and slowly, much more slowly than your inhale, pressing your navel to your spine;

Repeat three times, letting the front of your body become softer and more open to receive as your shoulders relax and your spine remains firm.

When you’re done, stand for another minute and breathe gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself, What am I avoiding, not saying, not doing? What am I afraid of even allowing myself to feel afraid of?

Notice if your body-mind feels somehow changed. And whether you notice a change or not, be content with yourself, exactly as you are in this moment.

Continue with your day until the next alarm sounds, and repeat.