HOW DO I BEST ENJOY THIS LIFE?

Apprenticeship to Love: The crooked path of sacred marriage (edited June 27, 2026)

TODAY'S QUESTION

What am I if not my possessions? What happens when I turn "my breath" into "the breath," "my relationship" into "the relationship," "my dog" into "the dog," "my life" into "the life that is given to me?"

TODAY’S MEDITATION

Afraid, I hold onto what I think is mine.

I generate "needs" as a way to defend against my fear: If I have a "need" that must be filled by another, then this emptiness isn't mine to hold, alone.

Or: My greatest “security” is my patient awareness. Even with this emptiness.

Let it be. Notice it. Breathe into it. Allow it to become what it needs to become.

To be capable of this patient awareness, this is my only real "need."

...

I am gifted with a defensive reflex. Unfortunately, all too often, I deploy this gift to protect myself from receiving.

My gift is most properly deployed as a sacred duty —to protect those more vulnerable than me. The women and the children, other men, the community, the natural world —all the vulnerability around me that is blossoming to make my life beautiful. Protecting this blossoming is the right application of my gift.

Only by becoming more aware (and, ever more aware) of how important and sensitive and fragile this blossoming impulse is in my life will I know my right action. Even more important: becoming patiently aware of this sensitivity and fragility and powerfulness guides me to right stillness, or right inaction. Follow the follow.

...

The way is not straight. The way reveals itself through trial and error. Failure. Through sacrifice and regret. The way is one revealed through the joys of stumbling.

Sometimes, I stumble my way onto my path. But only sometimes. Humility matters more than courage, even. I become, not a warrior, but a husbandman. I am, with humility, tending and holding this garden, making a safe space for flowering.

Being this way, as the husbandman, a patiently aware man, this is how I best defend and hold safe what is important in my life.

To understand and live this way, it's been a crooked path. Crooked, but true.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent.
So many are alive who don't seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched.
But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those who grip you for survival.
You are not dead yet, it's not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there. (Ranier Maria Rilke, Love Poems to God)

🌀When there is no grasping, the right actions get shown and you free yourself from the prison of "my.” (Kundalini Yoga School)

🌀You’re not like that now. (My beloved, my oracle, she whose blossoming shows me my way)