I CHOOSE TO EXPERIENCE AWE
One of the most beautiful things I can do for myself and everyone around me is to retrain my nervous system. As a masculine-identified man I'm trained in the defensive/offensive “warrior” mode. There are good reasons for this. Today, there are better reasons to learn something new.
Apprenticeship to Love: August 29, 2025
- Today’s questions: Are you willing to feel awe?
- Today's practice: Take five minutes. Be disciplined about this: set a timer and make this time for yourself. Just five minutes... As the five minutes begin, take a breath. Hold that breath for a few moments, then slowly relax the breath. Repeat this slow inhale, slower holding, and even slower exhale, twice. Now look around you. Notice. Perhaps there is something new to see, something that gently surprises you, gently allows awe to blossom in your awareness.
Rev. Hans Peter Meyer
TODAY’S MEDITATION
That’s it! I'm done with worry and half-lived moments. I'm done with resistance and fighting. Today I choose to experience my life, my world, this moment —all of it!— as awe and wonder.
I choose to live in the midst of the awesome and the wonderful, rather than the awful and terrifying. In a state of awe, I am encouraged to live as the husbandman. In a state of fear, I fall back on my conditioning and millions of years of training: defended, ready to take offence, always ready to close. That is the state of the warrior. I choose, today, to be the husband rather than the warrior.
…
Presence is a weight, a gravitas born of experience and learning the art of being a man. It emanates from my heart and my belly, grounded through my deep breath into my root.
Being present is a good thing. Being present I bring the fullness of my consciousness, my awareness to this moment. She yearns for my consciousness.
Being in the fulness of my presence, however, is so much more that being present. My presence is beyond awareness. Beyond consciousness.
My presence lives in a deep place in my body-mind's understanding of the world and my place in it. The quality and density of my presence is like gravity. It is, and it is undeniable. Nothing more, nothing less than the weight of who I am as a man.
As I become still, as I deepen my breath and open my body to feel into the world and to receive the world, She —the always changing, always flowing energy of everything beyond my awareness– comes to me with all of Her gifts. My presence penetrates the world. My presence blossoms Her.
…
I have taken Her for granted too many times. It’s easy to do. I’m privileged I’m so many ways. Every privilege, whether to be born a white man, whether to be born with intelligence and talents and aptitude and the means to develop these into whatever forms of wealth and power and comfort I choose, and every advantage makes it easy to take gifts and blessings for granted. As if I there are my due.
Taking it all as my due, and unaware of the many, many gifts I’m given, it's too easy for me to be numb to one of the greatest gifts of being alive: the capacity to experience awe.
...
One of the most beautiful things I can do for myself and everyone around me is to retrain my nervous system. As a masculine-identified man I'm trained in the defensive/offensive “warrior” mode. There are good reasons for this. Today, there are better reasons to learn something new. Today, I choose to learn the art of my husbandry, to be husband to Her unfolding.
One of the ways I do this is to practice a presence that eschews the habitual path of dominance, to walk in a way that tends and supports. I’ve found Argentine tango to be a profound way to practice. Here, in this dance without patterns, I am trusted to hold Her —the follow, whether man or woman, the one who will be held and guided. Holding the follow in my arms, I ground myself. I empty myself of all of my desires —except one: to know the follow's will to unfold, to blossom.
…
Being fully in my presence, I am the husbandman. I am transformed. And my beloved reveals herself as radiance, nourishing me. I am in awe and wonder, that I am so blessed. How can this be?
TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS
🌀…all matter is alive; all matter has a consciousness; all matter is consciously aware of the consciousness of other matter...everything interrelates with an association to time; to space, and is a carrier of soul energy. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma)
🌀The Conscious Warrior practices the cultivation of wonder and awe. (John Wineland, Precept 7)
🌀You are beautiful. (My beloved, my Oracle and Siren, my Muse)
SIGNAL CHAT
If you have thoughts about this meditation on the crooked path of sacred marriage, please join me on the Signal Apprenticeship to Love chat group at https://signal.group/#CjQKIPbfC01rTfBN7f8peArlP_VtY3q8aK2uchw4kmlTLlZCEhDKe0nFRfMoRDapdf3hAB7V
