AND WHO WOULD CHOOSE TO SLEEP?

Apprenticeship to Love: The crooked path of sacred marriage (July 28, 2026)

TODAY'S QUESTION

Are you listening? And are you willing to listen even to the confusion and noise of the world, your life, your love?

TODAY’S MEDITATION

Is that all there is?
I was a child when I first heard Peggy Lee sing famous wondering. It was more than a little frightening then. I'm not sure I feel much better about it now.

...

Is this, what I'm doing now —is this what I’m meant to be doing?

What am I not getting? What am I not yet fully awake to knowing. Because I feel it, this something beyond me. And still, I'm not quite hearing what it means, though I feel it means something.

...

The first stirrings of this not-quite-hearing/understanding started very early for me. The information of existence was almost overwhelming, but —confident in my seeming super-human capacities to experience and understand—so delightful!

So many possibilities!

So much, and all of it for me, the centre of the world!

I knew this confidence because, for all of the struggles my very young parents were going through, I knew myself held in the benevolent arms of family. I really did feel it was all for me. Certainly not something to be afraid of. I was held.

It's a feeling I still have. A gift from how I was raised.

...

In my teens and early adulthood, I had so much less confidence. I struggled to know my way in the wake of my sister's death and the figurative death of our family. In those years, long rambles in the forest held me more securely than what remained of my family. Also: surrogate families. I think the experience of death (my sister's, my family's) limited me. I was not ready to feel the confusion of what I was living, hearing. I wanted to be safe. I did what I could to be safe. I limited myself.

...

Life —fate, luck, destiny, mystery, love— continues to knock on the door of my heart. And I choose to answer.

I'm not yet ready for the safety that means being dead to it all. So I choose what I think is love. I choose to husband, and to father. I choose to start —and to end— relationships and businesses and careers.

This is how the pain of existence becomes real to me. Through commitments. Through children. Through the making and losing of money, family, love. Now, tested and still alive to it all, finally, I become ready to listen. Now I am waking to it all.

…

I wake, and I feel joy. I am held, again. There is light and love, and it is all for me. These children. This woman I love. These friends. This family.

Waking suggests it’s possible to fall asleep, again. ThIs path of light and love I am walking may be slowly dimmed. I may easily slip into old habits, take things for granted.

...

I’ve been wakened several times in my life. Right now I am more vigilant about staying woke. Daily practice. A note on the dashboard of my car. But the temptation to close my eyes and nod off…

…

All of this is for me to experience. The waking, and the falling asleep. To be aware of it. To feel it as its happening. And to be amazed: it’s all for me. Am I listening? Am I learning on the job?

…

Apparently galaxies are able to merge without “hurting” each other. They harmonize. I notice as the galaxy that is she and the galaxy that is me merge. I am softening and allowing. I notice. I trust.

There is strange and beautiful magic here. All it requires of me is willingness, noticing, trusting.

There are so many things to feel. So many possible choices. For reactions. For rejections. For acceptance, and for pleasure.

Breathing, I let it all happen without raising an alarm. I am just noticing, and wondering. (And wondering too: how did I loosen the strictures of expectation?)

…

A recent conversation: She brings me herself, unprotected. It’s not what I expected. Nothing is as I’ve expected. Always something new. So often, something that presses sharply against my sense of what I want, against the limits I’ve set on what is acceptable or understandable. But this time, less sharply. I’m just aware of the pressing, and curious.

That’s what doing I’m here: opening, with curiosity.

Always, now, opening (and closing) to these strange gifts she brings. Treasures that take some unwrapping, some silence. Some sitting. Some wondering — and then, some feeling of awe that so often threatens to rip me open.

It’s rarely pretty, this process of listening and receiving.

This time though, there is a strange (because unfamiliar, not usual) calm. I am noticing the pressing but not feeling the sharpness, just the pressure to open just a little bit more.

It's all for me, and the more I allow myself to merge with what I am hearing, the better I am at listening, and enjoying.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Each moment has choices -- different ways to view the experience and various places to step. With each choice you receive thoughts, feelings, and emotions that dictate the sensations that you're experiencing, but this is not your experience, this is the illusion of observation.
 …The outcome is your destiny -- this is guaranteed, but the path through the moments is caused by the choices you make.
…take full responsibility for the experience you’re having, and make the most of wherever you are, whenever you’re there. (Guru Singh and Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀The Conscious Warrior takes 100% responsibility for the reality he has created — seeking what needs to be changed in him before blaming others. (John Wineland)

🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, she who must be heard to be loved)