cutting through BY ANITA REHKER
The V Word Vulnerability is the potential to experience. No labels, simply open to experience life’s vast menu. If we consider vulnerability as the potential for hurt or harm on the psychological or emotional levels and we armor ourselves against it, we must understand that we are simultaneously armoring ourselves against the potential for a precious experience. Armor is armor, and one size fits all. If we are heavily invested in protecting ourselves, it can become an obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to that which has the potential to satisfy us at our innermost core, to exquisiteness in all of its expressions. If individuals whose vulnerability led them into horrendous experiences dared not enter territory dangerous to the ego, we could neither learn nor benefit from their examples. We cannot be vulnerable and play it safe at the same time. Those who have left a legacy for a just and kind society such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, or controversial teachers such as Jesus the Christ or Osho who were shocking in their forthrightness and spiritual rebelliousness, how flat and passionless life would be. Vulnerability is availability. It is having a consciousness spacious enough to make ourselves available to the full spectrum of life and living it full-out. The ego’s natural instinct is misunderstood to be self-protection, when in truth it protects only a false sense of self-importance. Our social conditioning in all forms prepares us to enter the world well-defended so that we may avoid making mistakes and know how to cover our backside in case we do error. Where is the growth in such an approach? Vulnerability is the willingness to risk looking foolish, and equally so to appear glorious. It is the openness to being seen just as we are, without making a portfolio presentation out of ourselves. Raw, unedited, free of the embarrassment of being seen and known just as we are, as open and vulnerable as the day you exited your mother’s womb and confidently announced your presence on the planet. Now that you’re here, why not put an end to being alive but dying to live? Vulnerability will do that for you. ❂ 38
Volume 13
| Issue 3