HOW I KNOW MY WAY

I think my nervous system is here to tell me something that will help me, not limit me. For me to become myself more fully, I have to trust that my nervous system is doing more than telling me to shut down.

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

15 Sep 2025 — 5 min read

“Your nervous system is built for relationships." (unknown)

Apprenticeship to Love: September 15, 2025

Today’s questions: *In these last days of summer, can you feel the season changing? Not just in the chill of the morning or the colours in the trees, but in your heart, can you feel the season changing?*
Today's practice: Take yourself outside for at least a few minutes today. If you have a garden, if you live near a forest or stream, stand there. If you are in a town or city, even there, take yourself outside and stand. Just for a few minutes, a few breaths. Smell the air. Hear the sounds. Feel the air on your skin. What does your body notice?

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer
(click on my name to join the Apprenticeship to Love Signal chat group)

TODAY’S MEDITATION

A year ago I came across this quote, “Your nervous system is built for relationships.” No source was given. It seems almost obvious now. But back then? It was a revelation.

I am built for all kinds of relationships. Friendships. Parent-child. Brother-sister. Collegial. Romantic and sexual relationships. Teacher-student.

My experience is that it’s so easy for me to fail at any of these. I may be “built” for them. But that doesn’t mean I am prepared. Or that I won’t fail.

What then?

…

We have so many reasons today to justify our failures: the other person is “toxic,” or “wounded,” or afflicted with the wrong form of “attachment,” etc. These words describe real qualities or experiences that stand between us. Qualities that we’ve noticed and that stand in the way of the beauty of relationship.

Kimberly Ann Johnson has talked about how psychology has replaced formal religion in the popular imagination. Rather than referencing God in our search for truth or a way forward, we reference the diagnostic manual. She doubts this helps us find our way.

I share KAJ’s suspicion of these ideas. I’m concerned that we’re pathologizing and codifying and reifying qualities that may be showing up in our lives for reasons other than judgement. I’ve listened to good people make their world smaller based on this new religion of how to be in the world.

Yes, I’m on a rant about the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). It is the new bible, and like the old one, it’s too easy for it to limit us as humans rather than helping us to become who we are. And: this new bible is getting thicker and denser as the list of our complaints with each other grows.

My complaints are rarely a good thing, if I take them at face value. When I do that, I’m just creating more reasons to mistrust —myself, and others. I think my nervous system is here to tell me something that will help me, not limit me. For me to become myself more fully, I have to trust that my nervous system is doing more than telling me to shut down.

I may just be ranting. I think you have to figure this out for yourself, what and how your nervous system works to make life a richer experience. I may indeed be shouting into a rushing tide of how we humans do things, a tide already so high that my mouth is full of its words: toxic, attachment, immature/mature —wounded words from wounded people (that’s all of us, by the way). I am drowning in these words and opinions and my shouting probably can’t be heard. Still, this is a tide of blame. I am shouting —No! I refuse to let complaint and blame be how I live or how I understand what my nervous system is showing me.

…

You have heard me say this before: In tango, the lead leads by following the follow. That doesn’t mean the follow tells me what to do, when I am leading. It says that I pay attention to how the follow wants to be led. In effect, the follow is the dancer at the furthest edge of my sensitivity, and they are communicating a way of beauty, if I listen. If I interpret with sensitivity, and with artful decisiveness.

…

My nervous system is indeed be built for relationships. I know feeling to be true, with *unreasonable knowing.* Knowing this, however, does not mean I am *prepared* for relationships. Of any kind of relationship.

I think my legacy of failures and stumblings is a testament to that. That is why I practice.

That is why it is necessary for me to bump into the unreadiness and failings of others. I need them. I need you, dear reader, that I may begin to know my own failings, my own unreadiness, and begin to have compassion.

Every morning I sit with myself, in silence and in the holy aura of mantra. My nervous system becomes more sensitive. I become more aware. I work to prepare myself for the others, the ones I love. The ones I hardly know. The ones I do not yet know.

I practice to prepare myself to receive and honour what I receive. I practice that my nervous systems learn to create and hold the safe spaces. For others. For their awkwardness. Their noise and their silence. Their pathologies —however they are named. The other person is the mirror that helps me know myself, and that allows me to receive, honour, and love the beauty and love that are all around me. Broken. Half-formed. Timid. Overwhelming. All of it, here for me.

I practice to let my nervous system become stronger and more stable. Only strong enough and stable enough am I able to begin to register what my relationships bring me. The words, behaviours, feelings, etc. and especially those that are most difficult to receive, ie. those that it would be so easy to pathologize— not as pointing to insufficiencies in me or the other, but as helping me to remember the man I am.

…

I am built for relationships. Am I ready for relationships? Am I stable enough to let all of these beautiful connections be my guidance system? Am I both strong enough and sensitive enough to receive everything and allow it all to guide me, a most challenging feedback loop, but one I need to know how beautiful and true I already am?

That is why I call my beloved my oracle. And also, my siren. Her words and actions and silence, as her tears and her laughter —all of it information that my nervous system needs, to know how to better open and become the man I am.

To you, and especially to you men: Find the way to strengthen your nervous system. Find a teacher. A path. A woman who you trust to be your oracle and your siren (to feel the way, to help you smash your ego). Pay attention as your body begins to speak to you. Be so stable in your postures and in your breath that you can take it all in, and allow it show you the man you are, the man you are coming to love.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Recognize that the other person is you. (Yogi Bhajan , Aquarian Sutra 1)

🌀…..stay connected to ground. There is so much to be swept up in and carried away by that we can lose our tether with the very space giving birth to the experience.
… just remember to stop, open the soles of our feet, and take a few breaths. (John Wineland, Some Lessons from Burning Man)

🌀There are so many…. and then I remember you, who sees me and hears me and knows me. (My beloved. My Oracle and Siren, my Muse)