Vulnerability
Is it such a risky business and what are the benefits?
Most of us are shrouded in personal armour which has built up over many decades of lived experience. It is there to protect ourselves from psychic or emotional injuries. It is what helps us cope with a world that can seem hostile and a threat to our sense of personal integrity.
Most of that armour is unconscious and unrecognised, but it can be the source of much of our least positive behaviours, the stuff we often beat ourselves up about. So then we must ask what is its real purpose? To keep others out in case they hurt us, to push them away, to let them know we are on to them or they are unwelcome? To attack them before they attack you?
We are usually protecting ourselves from those who we think will effect an assault on our sensibilities in some way. But can someone effectively assault us if we don’t allow them to, if we don’t take them seriously? Perhaps we don’t need to if we hold the balance of our own values to which we are true and are thus stronger than the slights of the world.
Being vulnerable
Being vulnerable leaves us open to others in all sorts of wonderful ways as much as it does in awkward ways too. It leaves us open to being truly loved and to being fully mindful and awake in the moment. It leaves us no choice…
