I SEE YOU

Apprenticeship to Love: Meditations for the sacred masculine on this crooked path
March 20, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Her suffering and her need, they are a tsunami of feeling. Facing her, I know only this one thing: I am not enough.

The waves crash over me. I am frightened. I am doubting myself.

And, the wave ebbing, I am still here. Still standing. Still, and breathing. I am everything, and always. Surrendering, I am enough, just for this moment.

…

I want deep connection. This is was one of the few things she asked of me. That. And patience.

But I was impatient and I couldn't hear what her heart was saying. What, I insisted, What is this connection?

I didn't understand that her request was the answer, I just needed to learn to listen. To become an artist with what she offered. She was not, in those days of my impatience, to be easily understood. I did not want to engage or divine an oracle: I wanted things to be clear, simple —superficial. I didn't want to take the risk of creating an understanding that is never all of it, never enough, never the end of interpretation or creating or divining.

This I know now, and I owe it all to her unwillingess to submit to my self-deceptive logic and language: She will only ever be satisfied for a moment, if at all, with what I bring to her. With what I bring, from the depths of my surrender of all things clear and logical, to that deeper and darker part of her. She will not be satisfied until I sacrifice my self-protection.

...

I am not alone in finding this hard. I listen to men almost every day wrestling with this request for sacrifice —and for leadership in their marriages. Like so many of the brothers and sons and fathers and husbands I listen to, I too easily take this request for making sacred as rejection. As somehow telling me I am not good enough.

I am not, of course. There is no "good enough," except in the moment that passes too quickly. In my dance with this woman, with every woman I've loved, I am never done. Never finished. I've confused this engagement for something that knows a finite condition. But that's a delusion. No, for me to love her is to be in an endless dialectic. Failure is necessary for continuation.

...

I long for success. For the end. But there is no end to the dialectic, the infinite play of failure and flowering. That is what I am blessed with, a woman who is available to me for this play of risking and surrendering and failure and flowering...

...

She is a gift to me. She wakes me from a death-state into awareness. I feel the fresh and biting winds that are here only to blow me off my course to comfort and dullness. Aware, I smell the scents and hear the song that distracts me from my all-too-important mission and purpose, to taste the freedom that liberates me from my dullness and my comforts.

…

She asked me for connection. Am I ready for that, now?

Tasting her, feeling her, smelling her I am drawn into her wilderness and —just for moment!— we are connected. It takes a moment. Then the tsunami crashes down and I am torn apart, confused, doubting, struggling...

She asks for connection. And —I am learning!— I surrender. I open myself, fully. As vulnerable as I know how to be vulnerable. But I'm not dreaming that this will satisfy her yearning. For a moment, perhaps. But only for a moment.

Failure. Learning to breathe. Learning to listen and hear. To hold myself. To hold her. A moment of radiance. Then it starts all over again, the tsunami building...

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀...no matter what you do, you don't feel comfortable. …(Guru Singh)

🌀A good man understands that desire cannot be relieved nor eradicated. Knowing this, he stops trying to fill the hole in his heart, and embraces the feeling instead. He realizes that it's his eternal yearning that wakes him up in the morning--that mobilizes his limbs into action, that motivates him to take charge and make change, and drives him towards his life's deepest purpose. He learns to love the hole inside of his heart instead of needing to fill it. …The secret to mastering desire is to love what is.Love her as she is. Love yourself as you are.Love what is, exactly as it is.Stoke the flames of your desire, but free yourself from attachment to the objects themselves.Transform your desire into passion by channelling it into that which you already have.And use it to forge a lasting connection with the person you love, that supports you in becoming the man you must before you die.To love what is, is to surrender.And man would rather die than surrender.It's for this very reason that surrender is the highest virtue of man. (Justin Patrick Pierce)

🌀 In healthy relationship, especially long-term, it's normal to resist your partner's gifts-whether in the form of their masculine guidance/direction/insight or their feminine wisdom/intuition.Sometimes you resist because you sense that what your parter is offering is not coming from Love, but rather from a need to control or get something for themselves.Trust this.Other times, you resist because you sense that what your partner is offering is exactly what you need to grow, and this can feel edgy as f*ck to soften into. (Nina Lombardo)

🌀You see me. You hear me. You know me. (My beloved, my oracle, my siren)

🌀Now, the practice of yoga begins. (Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 1.1)