AND THEN, TO PROCEED ON FOOT
Today I know this: I have been called, chosen, and have often turned away from the choosing and the calling. That cost me.
Apprenticeship to Love: Meditations on this Path to Authentic Relationship, November 25, 2025
Today’s question: Have you ever been lost, had to get off the train you had been riding comfortably, as it were, and make your way, with difficulty, "on foot," through the dark forest that surrounds you, and only then found the way you needed to go?
I look forward to hearing from you! Please feel free to comment on the Apprenticeship to Love chat group on the non-profit/non- billionaire Signal app at https://signal.group/#CjQKIPbfC01rTfBN7f8peArlP_VtY3q8aK2uchw4kmlTLlZCEhDKe0nFRfMoRDapdf3hAB7V
-Rev. Hans
TODAY'S MEDITATION
I am being reminded, again to slow down.
(There is so much “again” these days! I have to remind myself: it is the necessary spiralling through experiences, to learn, slowly. Rarely pleasant.)
…
It is very dark. Very quiet. I will miss Her, the divine feminine, the Shakti that moves everything. I will miss Her soft & subtle sighs, meant only for the ears of He Who Listens. I will miss these delights if I am pursuing…
I am so much more than that, now. I believe that. But I don’t know the man I am until I slow myself. Until I am proceeding with a plodding, step by step forward. Breath by breath.
…
Without effort. Love without effort. Just open, and receive. Open, and give. Breathe.
The effort: opening against my habitual closing. I want to protect myself. I have a habitual suspicion. The effort I make is trusting. And this is all about me. I am the one. This has nothing to do with anyone else. Not with the ones I choose to open or close to.
…
I am spending time with my very young granddaughters. They teach me about opening. They give me insight into the habit of caution. They show me, because of how they are being raised, a habit of opening again after hurt.
Things to be grateful for: how my daughter and her husband raise these children. They raise me too.
…
Some time ago a man, puzzling over how to open to love, given his entirely reasonable desire to protect himself, wondered at my seeming habit of opening. Taking the risk of love. More recently, having opened, he is caught up in a storm that twists him, sorely. He has what he wanted. He also has all that he was afraid of.
There is no denying the polarity. There is resisting. But no denying. There is the dance of it. But that requires acceptance, and allowing.
...
Do I have the courage to open against my habits, as this man thinks I do? Where does this courage come from?
Do I have the patience to stand, open, against my habits and against the teachings of this culture, and especially this culture of men? We are so afraid to stand with our hearts open. For good reason. The hurting is inevitable. We may fistpump and yell, "No pain, no gain!" But that's for the gym or hockey rink. Here, in the land of our so-tender hearts, the gain of pain is rigorously avoided.
I am not so young as most of the men I listen to, with their guarded hearts. Today I am, I hope, a little wiser. And, I am less concerned with the pain of heartbreak, am accepting that it is the price I am willing to pay for beauty and love unimagined.
Today I know this: I have been called, chosen, and have often turned away from the choosing and the calling. That cost me.
Today I know that it is never too late to open, to follow the calling to know love, intimately, deeply, powerfully enough that I am reduced and refined and reborn through heartbreak into the man I love.
Today, I love the man I am.
This calling to become myself becomes stronger as I practice. It becomes more powerful the deeper the silence, the testing.
…
The slower I go, the more I feel myself. The slower I go, the more I feel Her, moving through me, moving around me. Always, limited only by my knowing, my unreasonable knowing. This unreasonable knowing, trust. How long it has taken me, to trust myself.
…
I wrote the following after a men's retreat I hosted several years ago.
"These days and weeks after the intensity of the retreat have been hard. I have been stumbling through a fog of disorientation and neediness. Yes, wanting so bad that I almost convince myself it is a “need,” to be held by the woman I love, who has no desire to hold me.
"But, I realize, I have been held by her. I have heard her words of love, knowing what I do, now. Appreciating what I do, now. It isn’t she who needs to hold me; it’s me. Remembering, again, with difficulty, this most elemental of truths: I am alone and am always alone in the neediness and I alone can hold myself. Love myself. Know I am enough. Know that I am all that is needed. And, remembering that slowing down, feeling the air thick with the vibration of life and love, feeling that vibration holding me. Less effort. More awareness."
…
There is, David Deida says, Only opening, and closing.
My default is to close. To protect myself.
To protect myself from what? From the inevitable hurt of experience, the inevitable joy of experience, if I breathe and allow.
In this circuit of the spiral I now see and feel and know this: My solitude is beautiful, and in this solitude She is always with me. When I, without effort, hold myself dearly, She moves and I am complete. For this breath…
TODAYS INSPIRATIONS
🌀Having arrived at the final station, I decided to get off the already crowded train. Since then I have tried to proceed on foot. (Alfred Schnittke)
🌀Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.
All things break. And all things can be mended.
Not with time, as they say, but with intention.
So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.
The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you. (L.R. Knost)
🌀How can I work with you in this space and find a way for us to swing?’ (Wynton Marsalis)
🌀A mystic’s dynamic silence produces a powerful magnetic field that those around you can experience; it unifies the entire environment around key points of the unspoken wisdom, and nourishes everything and everyone within the field.
It becomes an even stronger experience for those who can appreciate it and not question the motive. This is, in fact, the value of being appreciative and being this way often.
After all, you never know when you'll bump into someone, or something, who’s in this mystic’s space -- one who effortlessly connects your dots and then connects you to them.
…
Our prayer is that you are around such mystics and mystical places often; that you enjoy the joy of deeply listening to their silence whenever you are, and that you practice getting your own point across with just the twinkle in your eyes...it’s a real eye opener. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)
🌀I see you doing it. (My beloved, the one who leaves a threat to draw me through the labyrinth)
