Vulnerability

Sometime in the last three or four months, I’ve come to realize that I dread my own vulnerability. I know that’s a little like saying I fear being afraid, but there is a subtle difference.
Here’s Dictionary.com’s definition:

“Open to emotional or physical harm. Without adequate protection.”

“Capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt. Physically or psychologically weak.”

I think that it has a more nuanced meaning: to be vulnerable is to be completely open to the world around us. To be without defences.

Everybody is vulnerable. We try to control our vulnerability with big muscles, lots of money, fancy clothing, metal studs in our eyebrows, concealed weapons, blank expressions, wide smiles, Hummer’s, snarling dogs, fancy philosophy, meditation practices, spiritual retreats, and long black trench coats and black eyeliner.

It remains that vulnerability is a fact of life. The flesh is just flesh, and subject to attack, to disease, to ageing, to the impact of harder objects that move really fast. Its mostly space, a subatomic whirlwind that gives the impression of firmness, but is really almost nothing at all. And what isn’t nothing, is mostly water.

The heart is vulnerable too. Maybe more so than the flesh. Injured, we build a wall around it, thinking that we must defend it from without, but it is most vulnerable from within. First order of business: having trouble loving others, try loving you.

And the psyche, that complex tangle of neurons and chemicals and electrical impulses that make up the human mind might be the most vulnerable of all.

We are all vulnerable.

Some have recognized their vulnerability and still fear it.

Some have recognized their vulnerability and learned to accept it.

Some have surrendered to it. I’m beginning to believe this is one path to freedom.

I’m trying to recognize my vulnerability.

Over the last few months I’ve found myself in the most vulnerable romantic relationship of my life. There has never been a moment where there was an ounce of certainly about the future. In fact, moment to moment the entire relationship teetered on the brink of disaster. It has been beautiful, and intense, and loving, but it has also been rife with pain, fear and guilt. It made me feel safe and secure one moment, and weak and desperately helpless the next. Correction: my response to it was to feel alternatively safe and helpless.

When, a week ago, it came to an end, I realized just how vulnerable I had been.

More vulnerability: I live in a rental home that will be put up for sale in the near future. I might be able to muster the resources to by it, and I might not. I don’t relish moving again if it is sold to someone who wants to live in it, or who might jack up the rent, or let the basement suite to the drummer of the band that lives next door.

More: I am a consultant. For the first 18 months I was in business, I didn’t know from one month to the next if I would be working, for whom, and if the pay would cover the costs of living. Before that, I worked in the non-profit sector. Before that, seasonally for the Park Service. Job security has never been high on my priority list.

I am learning to accept my vulnerability.

It came as a shock that I was vulnerable. Its not that I haven’t been experiencing it. Down on my knees, weeping, I certainly was experiencing vulnerability. Running through madrona groves clinging to the side of rocky hills, I was in bliss. I was vulnerable then to. I was experiencing sorrow and grief, happiness and bliss, but I was experiencing those feelings because I was vulnerable. Because I was “Open to emotional harm.” I was “without adequate protection.” Because I was wide open.

There is a pattern here, no?

I got into the relationship knowing that it was completely uncertain.

I’ve made choices in my life that lead me to be a renter once again.

I could go and get a job as a…well, actually, I don’t really have any hard skills to speak of, so I’m not sure what I could do, but I could do something that was 9-5 and paid the rent. Maybe. Probably not. But man, I really know how to pick careers that leave me vulnerable.

Patterns.

I am learning to surrender to my vulnerability.

It is complete illusion to believe that we can be anything but vulnerable. And it is complete folly to believe that we are not completely safe.

Right now, my work is perfectly suited for my life. Not only does it provide infinite flexibility, letting me run when I want and spend plenty of time with my children, but its fascinating, exciting and deeply fulfilling. I meet with someone one day – they might be an entrepreneur, a fundraiser, a business owner, a CEO, or a leader of a social profit organization – and a month later, I’m helping them figure out how to make the world a better place, and decide what role their organization or business can play in that extraordinary cause.

I’m pretty sure the universe won’t let me and my kidz end up the on the street.

And love.

Deepak Chopra says this, in The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire:

“When you’re in love…romantically and deeply in love, you have a sense of timelessness. You are, at the moment, at peace with uncertainty. You feel wonderful but vulnerable, you feel; intimate but exposed. You’re transforming, changing, but without trepidation; you feel a sense of wonder. This is a spiritual experience.”

Romantic love is never for a moment certain. We can hope for it, and give it, and when it is given freely in return, cherish it, but romantic love is never certain.

But true love is the basic fabric of the universe. It is the energy of the universe, and it is ours to wield at will. So while romantic love between two people might be ephemeral, true love simply is. Forever.

At its most basic level, our vulnerability provides us with an opportunity for transformational spiritual growth.

First, we must recognize that we are vulnerable: we are just flesh and bones, energy and information, a tangle of pulsating love that is mostly nothing at all: the localized conglomeration of love, of energy, of ideas and information that has been swirling through space since the big bang started this whole whacky trip billions of years ago. Improbable. Deeply uncertain. Completely vulnerable.

Next, accept it. Ok, so, I’m not as tough as I thought I was. I’ve learned that the hard way. Pain. Fear. Sorrow. Self loathing. But I’m a good person. I’m loving. I’m compassionate. I am loved. Am love.

Then, surrender.

For me this moment came on the acupuncture table last week. I was so sick and tired of feeling fear, of feeling vulnerable, that I just let go. I surrendered. What more could I do? The dozen needles sticking in my arms, hands, legs, feet, and forehead helped.

Surrender for me meant knowing that I was vulnerable, and knowing that there was nothing that I could do about it. I decided to simply embrace it. I stepped aside, and realized that while I was completely exposed, I was also completely safe.

I found my way back to a place where my happiness in this world was centred on my own soul, in this very moment. This moment. Right now.

I let go of past and future. In this very moment I was safe. The pain I had been feeling for more than a month poured out of me, and was gone. Forever? I’m not that naive. But for this moment….

My lover may or may not choose to be with me. I am absolutely certain that I want her in my life. I am completely clear in my intent. I have done all I can do, and I surrender to my own vulnerability and simply wait, be watchful, intuitive. In this frame of mind, I find that I am without the fear that has ripped at our relationship. I am spontaneous. I am alert. I am loving, without possessing. I can be attentive to her needs, her pain, her sorrow, without clouding it with my own. I can stop being a selfish jerk and think about her needs for a while.

In short, I am free to love without expectation. I am safe to love unconditionally.

To surrender to vulnerability means to be open to mystery.

Every single step we take is into mystery. Every step.

There is no way of knowing what the future might bring. The future doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as any point in time but the very moment that we are living. Right now. My vulnerability was so focused on the future, that I was forgetting that this moment was the moment of creation, when I could experience the magic of life.

The next moment is mystery.

Surrender. I know one thing for certain: I have invited the experience of vulnerability into my life to learn something powerful from it, the lessons still disentangling before my astonished eyes.