FYI – This is Part 2 (see Part 1 here:http://on.fb.me/1QuAvy6)

100 Sunrises // Day 25

25 days in and still going strong. Everyday I wake up at 5:45am to meet the sun. This is a San Francisco summer so for the last 10 days or so it’s been so foggy I haven’t been able to see the sun. Nonetheless I still get up, walk around my neighborhood and let the energy and stillness of the morning flow through me.

I’m stoked because this has gone from an idea to a habit. It’s before 9am as I am writing this, and I’ve already meditated, done my breathing exercises, my gratitude list, my daily journal (a new habit I began within this habit), organized my tea collection, made myself breakfast, listened to a new podcast, and an entire Nina Simone album.

In general I feel amazing. More alive, more conscious, more present, more creative, more inspired, and happier. In addition to the sunrises, I’ve been meditating daily too. I actually started that before the sunrises. I’m on day 56 of my consecutive meditation streak. I’ve been using Headspace to keep track of my progress. It’s an app with great resources for beginning a meditation practice. I’ve also been using the app Elevate. It’s little brain exercises that were developed in collaboration with experts in neuroscience and cognitive learning. It keeps track of your progress and creates a specific exercise regimen based on your performance.

The road to embodying this state definitely hasn’t been without challenges. Around day 10 I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw my ex with her new partner. She was leaning into him while looking lovingly at the camera. The pictured was accompanied by a poetic musing about the healing nature of love. She rarely posts to social media and never posts about love or her romantic relationships, at least she didn’t while we were together, so it was a shock to see anything from her, let alone something like that. When I saw the picture my heart tensed up immediately. My breathing became shallow and my stomach started to feel uneasy. My first reaction was to go to her profile and hit the unfollow button. My finger hovered above the button but for some reason I didn’t press it.

I’ve been reading “Awakening Loving Kindness” by Pema Chodron and she talks a lot about letting the present moment be your teacher. Not resisting or grasping at it but feeling it. Observing it so that you can see what it is trying to teach you. It helped me observe a couple of things about how I was reacting.

First observation: I thought I was over the break-up with my ex, but I clearly wasn’t. Or if I was, it was in my mind, and not my body. I’ve learned from previous situations in my life that in order to move through something, you have to feel it in it’s entirety – body, mind and spirit. I went back to the picture, took a long look at it, and then put my phone in my pocket. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and focused on making sure my in and out breaths were full and even. At this point we’ve been apart longer than we were together so I was wondering why it’s taking me so long to move on. Part of it is that this relationship was the first one I actively decided to be really present in. I was wholly invested and thought in terms of “forever”.

Second observation: I thought that I was being present to make her feel reassured, but it was also about comforting myself. My mom has divorced twice and my dad’s been divorced four times so part of me was trying to insulate myself from the pain of separation. I kept breathing while these thoughts ran through my head and the discomfort in my stomach started to dissipate. The tense energy moved on.

I heard a voice in my head say, “If you really love her, be happy for her” and I smiled. That voice is one of the many gifts of meditation. Now my internal teacher speaks clearly on a regular basis. To be fair, I think that inner voice is always there, so perhaps a better way to put it is that when I’m meditating my inner world is quiet enough to hear its guidance.

Later that night I met up with a new friend for dinner. I had only hung out with her once before but was pretty excited to see her again. When we hung out the first time it was with a bunch of people. We barely talked but every time we looked at each other it felt like we were speaking our own language. When we hugged at the end of the night it was electric. Some people just feel like home.

When I got to the restaurant we greeted each other with stupid grins. Over dinner we gazed into each other’s eyes and it felt like we were moving into our own vortex of space and time.

When we went outside after we finished eating I could see halos around lights and the trees were waving at me. She saw me looking up at a tree and asked, “Do you feel like you’re on mushrooms?” I said, “Totally, that’s why I’m looking at the trees like this!” “Me too!” she said before sprinting away.

She ran back and then we just stood there on the sidewalk looking at each other. In love. Literally. In a bubble of love. There are many types of love. This was not the type based on knowing someone over a long period of time and being committed to them. This was a lighting bolt: the opening of a realm beyond our normal perception into a higher dimension. It was spirit giving a glimpse of itself. A reminder of that which exists beyond the material.

It was enchanting, intoxicating, and terrifying. We both knew the feeling didn’t have to do with any sort of rational knowing of the other person. It was something that was happening to us.

Over the next few days the lessons continued to come. Memories of my ex would flash into my mind and I would stop to sit with them and try to discern the lesson the emotion I was feeling was trying to teach me. I could see how times when I was annoyed by her for being “overly emotionally” were actually opportunities to for me to be a man and hold space for her femininity. That was something I just didn’t know how to do at that time. And what are relationships if not mirrors for where we need to grow? Over the next few days I processed through all the things I needed to make peace with and was left with nothing but gratitude for our relationship. Gratitude for meeting her, gratitude for sharing time, gratitude for it ending. If it had not have ended I wouldn’t have been forced to feel the pain from the loss of that connection. I never would have become aware of those ways in which I needed to grow.

Meanwhile, my new love was helping the transition. I’m a romantic and love is my favorite drug, so I could see that part of the reason I was able to energetically disconnect from my last relationship was because I had a new source to plug into. A new fix.

It wasn’t long before I was feenin. When the energy of love envelops you it’s like having your hand in an ocean with a current of water running over it. It can feel cooling and refreshing so long as you just feel the flow of it. Once you try to close your hand to grab it, contain it, you have nothing. The tighter you grip it, the less you have.

That’s when the voice came back. It said, “Return to your center.” I was able to experience this new love connection in the first place because I was centered, building myself from the inside out. The connection was a reflection of my internal peace and love for myself. I started feenin because I was relating to the new feeling as if it was coming from outside of me instead of being a reflection of me. Recognizing that, I went back to working on me.

The rituals of mediation and sunrises had kept me anchored in dedication to my Self. I took time to reestablish and deepen that connection. I bought a new gong fu tea set so I could create a new ritual. I joined Classpass and started working out everyday. I went to my first boxing class to increase my yang energy. I found a place where they were playing a free symphony and took in the beauty. I connected with a non profit to focus on giving. I walked around the street and connected with strangers. I went to a dodgeball league and played with adults like I was a 15 year old all over again.

I remembered that all of life is love, not just the specific manifestation I was infatuated with at the moment. There is always something to learn in the present moment. Each passing moment is ripe with feeling there to teach us some new wisdom. I don’t need “forever”, I trust that everything I need is in the now.

If I’ve learned anything from SOULS of Society it’s that you can connect deeply with anyone you pass on the street. Every moment offers you an opening to the infinite. The degree to which you experience that depth depends on how present you are willing to be in that moment.

Walking the streets I’ve explored north, south, east, west, above and below. Now that I really understand the way my inner experience creates my outer world I’m now ready to go in the 7th direction: inwards. That’s my mission and I’m committed to it.

This is my truth. I trust that you received what you were meant to.

Namaste