Being Vulnerable
Written April 2011
The usual media hype describes this as being the victim, of suffering, being taken advantage of, being made the scapegoat, letting bad things happen to oneself, no self-confidence, of low self-esteem. Some people experience events and situations in their lives that paint forever their role as the timid, the meek, the slave, the servant, the lower cast. Not a very nice place to be in anybody's book.
For me, being vulnerable is one of the most powerful states to experience (once I had fully understood what vulnerability actually means that is!).
I have encountered many events and situations in my life and these have provided me with a new way of seeing the world, a different perspective, a new perception that painted me in an altogether new and more complete spectrum of light.
Yes, I was the timid, the scapegoat, the servant, the slave but later events conspired to force my life's direction into something much more spiritual. And yes, I did resist. For years actually, until my little finger, my last connection with the cliff's edge, finally gave in and I fell, spiralling downwards in that forever space in-between tick and tock, and into the abyss of personal growth and transformation landing in the comforting arms of spirituality.
I was not rescued by another person, God, or the Rapture often quoted by the religious communities. Sure, God threw into my path the right people at the right time to help guide the crawl out of the chrysalis but it was my willingness to open my own personal Pandora's Box and stare intently at its contents. I found the only way forward was to accept responsibility for my own life, my very own Phoenix moment, and cast off the baggage manacled to me by my ancestors. With that, I had to accept the inner shadow as well as the inner light.
Most people don't realize how essential the inner shadow is. It gives us depth, roundedness, power and strength, gravitas. If we had no shadow we would be flat, uninteresting, shallow, trivial and one-dimensional. We don't exist just as black or white. We are grey, all colours of the spectrum, visible and invisible.
As we grow from babies, to infants, and eventually into adults, we garner many things which are both good and bad, useful and not so useful; deciding which is one of the most difficult things to do. We gather the dust that others shed thinking that this is the way to act, to behave, to perform, unknowing at the time that we will have to spring clean eventually when we discover the wrongness and the hideousness of that dust.
Our journey through life brings us into sharp focus with many people whose role it is to guide, to teach and to help us grow into something more than just a clone of them. The clone is the typical result, particularly in those countries that have a democracy so obvious by its absence. Religious doctrine and political ideology hang around the throat like chains, insidiously seeping into every crevice of the growing mind stifling freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of action.
Are you strong enough to throw off the shackles and bindings of the past and those of your ancestors to find out who you really are?
My journey has given me many blessings but also many blind alleys which have, and only from the distance of time and hindsight, been the most transformative moments in my life. Routes we see presented before us ask us to make choices, mostly difficult choices, to move on from where we are and into a new state of being, of growing in wisdom, in stature and in confidence. We can always choose to disregard the opportunities given but that will leave us at a disadvantage compared with those who are excited by the challenge and experience of being outside their comfort zone.
Most people will find and use techniques to manipulate and control, suppress and subsume those around them just so that they can maintain their view of their world. They do this simply because it is the easiest way to manage the distress and agony they experience from those dark feelings and emotions surging up from the depths of their inner world, many of which they would rather not look at or even accept exist.
Real vulnerability comes from the willingness to view, to dissect, to dismantle and to explore those deeply suppressed feelings. As there is an outer journey defined by our relationships with others, so there is an inner one; and that is our relationship with ourselves. If we do not or cannot honour ourselves then we insult those around us because we are not truly authentic or genuine. We manufacture barriers and walls that stifle communication and build assumptions that damage our reputation.
Real vulnerability is experienced through honesty, truth and openness. Being brutally honest with oneself means looking under all the unturned stones, un-papering the cracks and admitting you have defects and flaws, and that occasionally, you might just be wrong.
Real vulnerability with another is to let the mask fall away to show the real you. You waste time and expend energy concocting routes that curve around the truth saying lots but never really communicating anything. How can you possibly mean what you say unless you can say what you mean?
I discovered that the more I liberated myself from other people's opinions, the more I became vulnerable, honest and free. The weight of other people views became much less a burden allowing me to develop on my own terms and in my own time. The less fear I broadcast from my sleeves, the less I was challenged by those around me. Very freeing indeed.
As I moved further into this transformation, I began to preach to everyone wanting to shout how wonderful spirituality was and how this was The Way. I was oblivious that this action actually turned people off the very thing they needed to embrace, or what I thought they should embrace. Thinking you know where another person should be is the height of ego.
When the shackles of the voice are broken, we explode outwards trying to find our boundaries again. It was as though I had become the very thing I hated in others; that preachy, born again Christian who shouts from the rooftops about sin and redemption. I wasn't that bad but I still had to find the edge of my new comfort zone. Rather than preach about religion, I preached about spirituality. My opinion and philosophy was now a position I had to defend at all costs.
Once the explosion had subsided and the dust settled, the mellowing period began. Instead of preaching (doesn't work, never will work), I would teach. Not in the classroom sense but more of a listener, listening to the struggles of those I was giving healing. I was also advising from my experience rather than helping them to discover their own answers. It was more of a telling them rather than asking them to question their thoughts and opinions.
Still further down the transformational road, I began to be. I began to teach by example, showing rather than prescribing, illustrating rather than imposing, allowing those around me to see the transformation, and seeing the possibility of change within themselves. I had become the pebble thrown into still waters.
This vulnerable space is really difficult to describe. It is an empty space, a space full of infinite potential, full of light, full of darkness, a space where I became the observer and the observed. It is a space, a philosophical space where I never have to defend me. Gone are the shackles, gone are the reasons to protect and preserve a belief or to attack another for having differing beliefs. Gone is the need to be the puppet or the slave to another's needs. I am a watcher, an observer, a witness to another person experience the very same struggle as mine but not becoming part of that person's struggle.
I observe with great compassion the sadness in the world due to misunderstanding, lack of complete honesty, the lies, the deceits and the many being used by the few. I can do little to help another come to the same gnosis as mine simply because their journey has a different map littered with different obstacles. I can though be there when they are ready to open their box to explore its contents.
So what does being vulnerable really mean? It means observation, acceptance, compassion, surrender, support, consensus, agreement, communication, freedom. It means that your belief about you and your life is not dependent upon another's belief about you, or to put it another way, your belief about their belief about you. It means you have nothing to defend.
And when you have nothing to defend, you are simply being vulnerable.
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