We settled into the issue of vulnerability last time. We discovered both our resistance, sometimes fierce, and also our longing for the openness, delicateness of our presence, which is surprisingly safe, clear, intelligent, and alive. How is it that something that we usually associate with weakness, foolishness, fear, unprotected, shameful, is something we long for.
We explored this with the following questions: tell me what vulnerability means to you; tell me a way you resist your open vulnerability; and explore your open vulnerability or lack of it.
We discovered that being being open to vulnerability AND being open and curious to our resistance to our vulnerability that a presence opened in and among many of us on Monday night. There was a sense of a shared sense of alive, vulnerability, open and safe. Even those of us caught in our fears could see that simply the openness to the questions could bring us closer to this miracle of us as humans of being. Being by its very nature is open and vulnerable. And really openness is simply another name for vulnerability.
All of us have scars, wounds from our past and even the day to day wounding and suffering of our current lives. And we learned as children to brace, to create boundaries, to hold ourselves tight, small. Some of us pretended to be big and powerful, some of us focused all our attention on the needs of others. Some of us went to sleep. We all buried that openness that we are all born with, the amazing transparent presence of the the baby and the young child. We had to bury our delicate, impressionable presence as an emerging baby soul, to protect the core of our preciousness until such time as we were grown up enough, safe enough, courageous enough, intelligent enough, loving enough, discerning enough, and longing enough to begin this journey back to ourselves not to the infant presence, but to the open, vulnerable presence of us now! And as some us discovered on Monday night this open, vulnerability is the essence of ease, safety and receptivity. This is the door way to the many face of our presence, whether it be the fire of I can, the stillness of silence or the sweetness of love. Without receptivity we are stuck in all the barriers, defenses of the ego shell, and the soul is frozen at that stage of development.
I described on Monday night one way to think about the ego and its development. We arrive as an infant soul, open, transparent, infused by love and also buffeted by all the survival instincts which insure that we will live in this utterly dependent state. We utterly open vulnerable to all the ways our environment is attuned and all the ways it is not, and worse yet how it may be destructive. So the soul goes through a transformation it becomes an ego, a shell if you like, a separate self, that becomes me, who I am. Deeply buried is the remembrance of me as an open soul of presence. But for all practical purposes we no longer know ourselves as presence. Sometimes events happens that crack us open and we may get glimpses. Or we may have found ways to tap into this source of who we are. But mostly we live in ego, and as ego. And so it should be. This is part of the course of human development. And we grow into more or less functional adults, doing the best we can to show up, be in the world, to live, to engage and to contribute.
But at the core for some of us we intuit that something vital is absent. It can be a longing, or a deep sense that something is missing, or simply a desire to know more and more about what this is all about. I mean really what is this all about!!!!! And that itch, that longing, that curiosity is the smoke signal from our presence deep in our unconscious. Gradually we know that we must seek and we must find this. And we think mostly that it is seeking out there. And that searching out there can go on for a long time, even a life time. But when we hear from the teachings from all the traditions that what you seek is inside, is the true you, the self deeper than the ego, our divine nature,is closer to you than your own breath, then we realize that we must turn inward. So when we turn our attention to this quest-- note this is different from therapy--then the ego starts the next stage in the journey of the soul. In a curious way our ego is called to return home. So this is not about killing the ego, but allowing for this new stage in growing to emerge with greater greater confidence and commitment. And gradually the ego finds its proper place, not as master, but as servant to what we really are. And gradually the ego can stop its incessant struggle to be in control, and come to rest and even disappear for periods of time. The ego is finally held by our true divinity and so it can rest! What a relief.
Without receptivity, without openness, without vulnerability this journey is impossible. The good news is that we are not thrown off the ten meter high diving board, although sometimes it might feel like that. No, we are asked to enter the wading pool, gently testing the waters of vulnerability. We learn slowly, tenderly that this vulnerability is not the vulnerability of the child within us, but is living presence, mature, open, grounded and exquisitely delicate and responsive to the currents of being.
As you can imagine the superego is adamantly opposed to this. So with each opening watch to see if and how the superego operates.
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