WE ARE SO EASILY CONFUSED…MORE ABOUT SEX & OTHER THINGS (Part 3)
Daily Meditation, Inspirations, and Practices for Authentic Relationships, July 20
Daily Meditation, Inspirations, and Practices for Authentic Relationships, July 20
• Today’s questions: How do you feel the impatience in your body? How do you practice, so that this impatience can be felt as beautiful yearning, and not something to be extinguished?
• Today's suggested practice: Day 24 of this month's practice, to practice for yourself, your wants, the things you yearn for (see Kendra Cunov’s short “Notes Towards Self Practice” below)
• My practice: 5:30am; 60 minutes of yoga, pranayama, and meditation for the Root Chakra.
• My vulnerability practice: Today my heart rests and wonders and I’m curious. A little afraid. But mostly, curious… We had a long conversation last night, stirred by Barbie, memories of Ahuyasca, and other things…
Hans Peter Meyer
TODAY’S MEDITATION
Remember this? “It is all “sex.” From the flash of her eyes to how I hold her breath, to the way the wind whispers my desire into her ears, a million miles away. Only a small part of it has to do with my penis. Even less, perhaps, with my ejaculation. For me —for most men I believe— this is hard learning. Herein lies wisdom that cannot be taught, only burned into one’s body and soul.”
I wrote this a few days ago as the closing of Part 1 of this series on being confused. Today, I’m writing about another conversation about sex, love, men, women, confusion… (You can read Parts 1 & 2 at Apprenticeship to Love online)
Our brains experience this thing we call “sex” in such different ways. It is not enough to differentiate between the orgasms of a body with a penis and that of a body with a yoni. That seemed to me to be an important understanding —or, an important misunderstanding, that we’ve conflated these experiences, giving them the same name.
No, now it’s remembering what most of us seem to know (and then so quickly forget) at the beginning: it is all experienced so differently. From the look that sparks the polarity to the brief flutter of fingertips touching to the breath of the lover on the neck of the beloved… to the crescendo and judders of whatever it is, this thing we call orgasm (both, all kinds of peaking)… And everything in between.
It is all so different.
And me, in my hurry to get to what my ejaculation and penetration-driven monkey-body is driving toward as the prize, I am too much in a hurry to attend to these differences. The nuances that give texture, not only to this mystery of sex, but to the never-ending exploration of this thing called love.
How to do this? How, without the endless recurrence of the same ancient misunderstanding that it is all the same for me as for her?
Practice.
There is a reason why the yogis and the dakinis and holy fools went into the hills and caves and forests for days, weeks, years, lifetimes: practice without distraction is a powerful thing. But I am not a renunciate, though I am renouncing many things and ways that hold me hostage to old ways, old habits, and especially the habits of this monkey-body. There is a reason why John Wineland includes practice in his eleven precepts for conscious masculinity: we are lost without it, our nervous systems too closely wired to the monkey-body impulses of our distant ancestors.
So, practice. And daily. And with devotion. Practice and again, practice.
Practice to reset and recalibrate my nervous system.
For me, daily practice. Hourly practice? When the awareness is set by early morning practice, the temptations to slip into habits are noticed at least hourly. So yes, hourly practice. Becoming aware. Not to hobble or emasculate myself. Not to denature or unwild myself. But to let myself know the deeper nature, the deeper wild that rests, waiting, beneath the layers on layers of habit and monkey-body instinct. My soul. Its ways. Its knowing.
With practice I notice myself, come to know myself. And, perhaps, to know that this experience of the dance of masculine/feminine polarities, the dance of Shiva and Shakti is always all around me. Always within me. Always a magic available to me when I… pay attention.
Consider this: Paying attention, bringing my consciousness to all that I experience, this is —really— sex. I am penetrating this moment of experience in all of its wonder and beauty and mystery with my conscious awareness.
Breathe that in, brother and sister. Breathe that in: every moment of awareness of how beautiful this moment, this breath, this thought, this feeling —I am penetrating what She brings me and I am released into joy unimaginable. This is the dance of polarities, the dance of sex that we —I!— miss when I rush to my apocalyptic moment of ejaculation (or conquest or dominion or whatever other word I use or you use to describe that overcoming that is how the masculine in all of us contains and limits and assumes it knows the feminine in the world and in ourselves).
Breathe that in. Allow that breath to feed the moment, to extend it. To hold the moment, gently. To know the flow of Her gifts…
As yogis we, men, were famously challenged by a teacher to begin our love-making 72 hours before this thing we call “sex.”
Seventy-two hours. Not foreplay. But, THE play. Her body knows this 72 hours of attention as the “warming” the Taoists speak of, the quickening of feminine energies she yearns for, a warming that could last a lifetime.
Who has the stamina for that much warming? Perhaps, as a contemporary writer suggests, it is time to “rethink sex.” Indeed.
Justin Patrick Pierce, a teacher of sexual yoga, recently asked, publicly, for women to tell us, How long should we (men) wait before penetrating you, with our penises?
The answers ranged, widely. But all of them were on the side of “wait beyond waiting.” All of them were closer to, He should wait so long that I am demanding him to enter me —and even then, to wait longer!
Who among us, men, who among us has this kind of patience with and devotion to her deepest yearning? Not only to begin to feel and cultivate the stirrings of sexual desire three days (because that is 72 hours, if we’re applying all the lessons), but then to stand, ready, at the edge of the abyss. To feel the ache and the desire to throw ourselves into the inviting, wet, surrendered abyss of oblivion, in fact to be commanded to penetrate this veil of mystery and promise —and then to have the depth to stand firm, hard in fact, even longer? Who? I’m not going to pretend that I’m there. More practice. And, strangely and beautifully, more experience of this all-around-me experience of the feminine as glorious and benevolent and pleasurable. (Perhaps I am becoming ready… Perhaps?)
She asked me for very little. You may already know this, if you’ve been reading. There was, however, one thing she needed from me: my patience. And, that’s how I failed her.
So now I practice. I practice and begin to feel an energy, the dance of Shiva and Shakti, the dance of my sexual energy penetrating this world of experience and feeling, and am undone and remade beyond my imagining.
We live in a pornographic culture. This from one of my recent conversations about sex and love and men and women and how it is all beyond us, except when it isn’t.
As a culture, we in the West have learned so much in the six decades since the pill and feminism launched the “sexual revolution.” Are we now, finally, beginning to know that the bigger sexual revolution is this holding space for the feminine, this profoundly patient and disciplined penetration of all that we experience, that this is all of it, sex? And that for us as masculine-identified men the greatest and most beautiful of these experiences is to know the feminine in our own sexual bodies?
Do I love myself —let alone you!— to know this surrender?
I am reminded to be gentle with myself. To be honest with myself, yes. But also, to be gentle with myself. To learn the first lesson of compassion: my own limits and failings and stumblings, and especially in this most-taxing dance of sex. And, perhaps learning this first lesson, to become gentle with her, and with you.
This is, I believe, our sacred path in life. It involves the undoing and unknowing of so much that I have learned, that I have inherited, in this body. In this mind.
We, my beloved and I, will pass each other many times on this path. Experiencing. Understanding. Re-experiencing. Misunderstanding. Forgiving. Allowing. Holding. This is holy work, this understanding/misunderstanding, this devotion to the path.
Patience, she asked of me. Patience.
And of myself I ask for compassion, to make the work of patience less painful. Because I am still in a hurry.
It so confusing.
(Part 3/3)
TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS
🌀The Fool, according to mythologies, never knows when they’re being insulted, and therefore cannot be hindered by any negative reaction to their actions.
This is a position you must take if you're going to live an outstanding life...of standing out from the crowd. For whenever you're outstanding, there’ll be equal forces pulling you back inside the parameters of being "normal" -- of being "smaller" -- of being more practical and “realistic”. This is the time to be un-cautious, but not unconscious...this is the path of the Fool...small focused steps producing outstanding moments without stumbling. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)
🌀As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You're not thinking about loving; you're just being love, radiating like the sun. (Ram Dass)
🌀The Conscious Warrior is committed to developing strength of the mind, physical body, and nervous system through dedicated physical, yogic, and meditative practice. (John Wineland, Precept 6)
🌀You’re not like that anymore. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)
TODAY'S SUGGESTED PRACTICE
Day 24 of this month's practice:
Please read through first, then ...
Today, set a time —at least five minutes, perhaps 15— when you can be alone and in stillness.
• Stand or sit or lie, with a beautiful and straight spine, firm but relaxed, feeling your feet or your sit bones or hips 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,
• And listen to Kendra Cunov’s few minutes on practice:
When you’re done, stand or sit or lie for another minute and breathe gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself: How do you feel the impatience in your body? How do you practice, so that this impatience can be felt as beautiful yearning, and not something to be extinguished?
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, open to the gifts it brings.
★ PLEASE join me for the August 16 Apprenticeship to Love Virtual Workshop where we’ll talk about Barbie. Register at… https://is.gd/97d9hv (Premium subs please choose the no-charge. If you’re not a Premium, eg. paying, sub please choose the Regular ticket or subscribe at https://apprenticeshiptolove.beehiiv.com/upgrade )