Tag: inner work

The Paradox of Vulnerability

Leana LovejoyLeave a comment

“The Divine Speaks in Paradox” Robert Johnson

Vulnerability is paradoxical, as what appears at first glance as weakness is actually strength. To be soft, open and undefended, to let the heart remain permeable in a world that rewards armor, this is a profound strength.  It asks us to relax in the unknown without reaching immediately for protection. It asks us to feel what is here, rather than shaping ourselves into something more acceptable, more contained, more controlled. Stepping fully into a paradox takes courage, and yet, it may be the  place where we truly find ourselves.

I have experienced that there is a moment just before we choose vulnerability when the body hesitates, bracing for the blow. The chest tightens, the mind flickers with an old strategy: withdraw, defend, explain, diminish. These movements are familiar, we imagine that  they have kept us safe, or at least safe enough. And in this moment if we stay, the breath returns, the heart begins to open and beneath the tension something else stirs, a more powerful remembering.

This is what it can feel like to be fully alive. To say, “this hurt me,” without armor.
To admit “I don’t know.” To allow another to see the places in us that are tender, unfinished, still becoming. This is not weakness. This is participation in life.

The path that appears easier, the path of holding back, of guarding the heart, of carefully managing how we are seen, is quietly exhausting. It asks us to override our actual instinct again and again. What it really asks is for us to silence truth in favor of comfort, to perform instead of inhabit, to trade aliveness for a sense of control that never quite settles.

While this often happens in our relationships, it’s also experienced in the structures we’ve come to accept as normal. Rigid schedules,endless productivity and the all-too- familiar expectation that we should function like machines rather than living beings with rhythms, sensitivities, and seasons. Even something as ordinary as the eight-hour workday, five days a week, asks us, subtly but persistently, to ignore our natural flow.

TThen there is the true cost of this repression- the body tightens,  the spirit dulls, the heart learns to speak more quietly, until sometimes we can barely hear it at all. It’s likely that this is one of the roots of depression that is so pervasive in today’s world.

This process is perfectly illuminated in the plant world.  A seed does not remain intact in order to stay safe, it splits open. What appears to be its undoing is, in truth, its becoming. As a tender shoot emerges, fragile and green, it reaches upward without guarantee. It does not wait until conditions are perfect. It does not protect itself into stagnation. It grows.And then, eventually, possibly,  the bloom, and finally, the fruit grows, drops seeds and so the cycle begins again.  The blossom opens fully, offering its color, its fragrance, its nectar, it’s intrinsic knowing that in some way this openness is both its purpose and its risk. The petals will not last. The form will change. And still, the flower does not withhold itself.  

Nature does not confuse vulnerability with weakness. It understands that openness is the very essence of life.  Energy moves and creates… We, too, are part of this same intelligence. When we allow ourselves to be seen, to be moved, to be touched by what is here, we are not stepping into danger as much as we are stepping into alignment. Something relaxes. The effort to maintain a constructed self begins to dissolve.

And here is the deeper paradox:

Courage, which we imagine to be difficult, is truly the easier path.

Because truth, once spoken, does not require constant maintenance.
Openness, once allowed, does not demand endless effort to sustain.
Aliveness, once welcomed, frees our energy to live life more fully.It is the holding back that is heavy. It is the guarding, the managing, the shaping of self that drains us.

To live vulnerably is not to live without boundaries or discernment. It is not to collapse into every feeling or to abandon care. Rather, it is to remain in relationship with what is real—to meet life as it unfolds, instead of retreating from it. It is to trust that the trembling we feel is not a sign of weakness, but of crossing a threshold.

Again and again, life invites us to this edge. In a conversation where honesty would be easier than politeness. In a moment where tears arise unbidden.
In the quiet knowing that something within us wants to be expressed, even if we cannot yet name it. We can turn away. Or we can stay.

And in staying, we begin to discover something unexpected:
that the strength we have been searching for is already present within the very softness we feared. So perhaps the question is not how to be less vulnerable.
Perhaps the question is how to trust it. We can learn how to lean, gently, into the places that feel most exposed. How to honor the body’s hesitation without obeying it completely. How to remember that we are not meant to live sealed off from life, but in conversation with it.

Like the garden, we are always in the process of opening.

And like the garden, we are strongest when we do. 🌿

The Jewel in the Virus

Leana Lovejoy1 Comment

A very well known Tibetan mantra is” Om mani padme hum” which translates roughly to “the jewel within the lotus” and is a message to let the “mud” of life feed and nurture the beautiful sacred flower – the lotus.  There are many ways to translate this mantra, but I am uplifted by this interpretation.  Scholars, beware I’m not here to debate, and am not clinging to my perspective either, I may well be getting this wrong. Still, on the path of higher truth, being wrong is also good – it leads to humility, which circles right back to the meaning of the mantra.

A couple of weeks ago I was sick in bed for 3 full weeks.  One day I was up, the next, flat as a pancake burning with fever. Interestingly it’s quite big news right now as the media is using the latest viral infection as a huge fear tactic (everyone has heard of the Corona virus by now, I’m sure).  I decided to consider this a time to purge, physically and emotionally from the pressures of the last year.  It was a year of big challenges, lots of loss and transformation, most of it seemingly unwanted.  Ahhhh, surrender, accept, let go…. I know all the words, I’ve said them many times, but wow I was in the big shredder and coping was sometimes out of my range.  (there’s the humility!)

Just as some of the bigger issues in my life were working out and things were resolving better than I hoped — it hit, the waves of nausea, a high fever and complete fatigue.  I was grounded.  The timing was so perfect, I could acknowledge that, I had no pressing projects or even engagements on my calendar so I just coped.  I took my temperature a lot, and watched the fever just linger and linger. I let shows just run on Netflix, which gave me some comfort and a bit of false companionship.  Nobody wanted to visit, friends and neighbors dropped supplies on the porch, and who could blame them, I didn’t want to pass this along.  Still, more than a little bit of self-pity crept in.  I remembered my two year illness of 2002 and worked to keep myself from falling into despair.

Then, as it started easing up I felt some new lightness.  I noticed that old joint pains were gone which felt fantastic, and imagined that I was letting go of  old emotions and ideas that had lingered in my body for too long.  That felt good, I know how to meditate, I know how to be with my feelings, or so I told myself. As the healing screeched to a standstill I groggily recognized the opportunity to witness some inner dialog that I just don’t want to have anymore, which is the main purpose of a vision quest.  It’s a conscious decision to stand still and take a good look around in our often neglected inner landscape.  It is so easy to be distracted from ourselves, there is always something apparently more compelling to do besides roto-rooter our emotional and spiritual bodies.  My being wasn’t having that.  Once again there were no distractions possible.  I didn’t have the energy to even read a book.  What is the message?  Standing still calls for a lot of things including listening to the “small, still voice within”.   I generally experience this as a loud voice but apparently there has always been more, beneath and beyond the title pages.  This is where I reached.

Wallowing in self pity doesn’t do much for the spirit, or indeed the body’s immune system.  Healthy mind, healthy body, right?  Having the body rendered useless does send a message of surrender, and seems to force negative emotions to the surface to be recognized, processed and ultimately accepted.  Loved?  Appreciated?  This is the holy grail, and PhD of spiritual work. As this flu experience has subsided and my life has returned to a semblance of its “normal” routines I want to hold on to the precious jewels in the lotus of the illness.  Being in the middle of it is painfully challenging even staying positive and grateful, and sending love to my shadow it was all I could do to just get through the day.  Nighttime was worse since sleep was almost impossible until I propped myself and slept in a more upright position.  This virus wasn’t going to let go until I learned what I needed to learn.

I’ve been known to say “no mud, no lotus” from time to time.  The darkness is a rich place, so my latest mission is to enjoy it, or at the very least to drop some of my resistance to it.  To be really clear, that doesn’t relieve us of the commitment to honor our body and build our immune systems to stay healthy, so my higher self says…. healthy mud makes for a bigger lotus!  Be well, stay grateful and drink your green juice…. I love you!