Vulnerability

The dance between selflessness and protection. 

Most people live in fear. They fear success. Or failure. Or harm, injury, death, etc. These fears are real, but they are not the deepest one.

The deepest fear is selflessness.

It makes sense. Selflessness is the loss of identity and its protective measures. However, these are the exact things standing in the way of the deepest form of love, consideration, and service. So the fear of it is really a fear of love itself, or more precisely, a fear of what love requires you to release in order to receive it.

Selflessness vs Protection

Vulnerability is not something that happens to you. It is a choice.

It can evoke fear. However, that does not make it a useless exercise. It serves a purpose. But the choice it presents is not between vulnerability and safety. It is a dance between selflessness and unwarranted protection.

Most people, as the default, will choose protection. Not because they are weak, but because full surrender asks the ego to take a back seat, and the ego does not do that willingly. After all, the ego will gladly claim all credit for your protection in this incarnation.

Choosing protection of the self feels like knowledge. It feels like self-respect, like strong boundaries, like having finally learned your lesson and implementing the fix. However, it is none of these things. Really it is just fear, dressed carefully enough to be mistaken for self love.

Releasing Your Grip

Vulnerability requires release. I am not referring to the release of a person, or a relationship, or your desired outcome. I am referring to the release of the idea of what you think something should look like.

It is being completely present, and completely at peace with not knowing what happens next and not holding the expectation of how it should look.

That is the part people skip. They want the vulnerability without the not-knowing. They want to open up on the condition that they already know how it ends. The happy ending, the rainbows, the gain. But that is not vulnerability. That is a negotiation.

My Dignity

Vulnerability does not mean letting someone walk all over you. That confusion keeps people from ever attempting it at all. As if the alternative to protecting yourself is submission.

But the truth is that it is neither. It means recognizing that the fabricated self is what stands between you and ultimate, unconditional love. Not the relationship, or the other person, or the circumstance. The fabricated self, the version of you built to manage, perform, and defend that fabrication, is the actual obstacle. 

Removing its armor does not mean removing your dignity.

The Stalemate

I hear this same pattern constantly, in every kind of relationship people bring to me - romantic, friendly, familial.

One person in the relationship chooses a fortified stance. Then the other person chooses a fortified stance in return. And ironically, neither is protecting anything real. They are only protecting themselves from each other's protection. A stalemate, mistaken for a boundary.

In romantic relationships, it looks like two partners each waiting for the other to go first, each reading the other's guardedness as proof they were right to stay guarded.

In friendships, it is quieter. Nothing gets said. The distance is chalked up to "not wanting to make it weird," which is only protection wearing a more casual outfit.

In families, it runs deepest, because the fortifications were often built before either person had the language to name what they were defending against. These are the hardest walls to see, and so the hardest to release.

Truthfully, none of it is based in love. It is based in fear of what happens if you become vulnerable first.

What You Are Protecting

Ask yourself plainly: what are you protecting? From what?

In the stalemate, the answer is usually the same on both sides. You are protecting the fabricated self from the other person's fabricated self. Neither of you is protecting anything true. You are defending an illusion against another illusion, and calling the standoff peace.

The reward found in love is far greater than the comfort of staying in that state of protection. But you will not believe that until you have tasted it, because protection will always feel safer in the moment when you are choosing it.

Love Cannot Be Manicured

Love cannot be engineered into existence. It cannot be arranged so that every variable is accounted for before you allow yourself to feel it.

It is walked into blindly, an agreement to release the self and become selfless. It is a feeling of exposure, not a feeling of control. If you are waiting to feel certain before you open, you will wait forever, because certainty and vulnerability do not coexist. One is the absence of the other.

The Discomfort That Expands

The discomfort of exposure is not a sign you have taken a wrong turn.

You do not have to interpret it as this feels wrong, I should stop. You can interpret it instead as this is right, because it is forcing me to trust something greater than myself, something divine. The discomfort is not the obstacle. It is the expansion.

Roles and the Safety of the Ego

The safety of the ego is not the answer. Sometimes the answer is to be bold instead.

Our sense of safety is usually built on the roles we hold, the parts we play so consistently that we mistake them for identity. (I've written about this at length in "Roles".) Fortification of the self is just another role. It is worn so long it starts to feel like a personality instead of a defensive measure.

Divine Trust

Vulnerability does not work without trust. Trust that there is something guiding you, something larger than the fabricated self, something that will hold you even while you are exposed.

That embrace is what allows you to keep walking without armor. Not certainty that nothing will hurt. Trust that you are not walking alone, and that the ego does not need to stand up in fear and command the return to comfort. It can stand down. Something else is already holding the position it thinks only it can hold.

This is also the answer to the stalemate. Someone has to move first, and it will not feel fair or equitable. It will feel like you are the one giving something up while the other person stays exactly as fortified as before. But do not move first because you expect them to move in return. You are moving because you trust something larger than the outcome of that specific relationship. The other person's walls are not yours to manage. You manage your own.

The Cost

Choose to surrender and love without limits. Without exception. That is what is on the other side of every stalemate, for anyone willing to move first. And that is what is found in choosing to be vulnerable in a space of love.

Avoiding vulnerability will not protect you from loss. Instead, it will cost you everything in the end. Not all at once, but slowly, in every choice of protection vs selflessness you choose rather than risking exposure to gain the reward of unconditional love.