Vulnerability and aliveness are one

As we take the risk of opening more, we might discover that emotional vulnerability is in fact the only response that makes any sort of sense in a world that has gone a bit mad. In this way, we can re-contextualize and re-enchant our emotional experience, breathe new life into it and behold its sacredness.

It is magic to experience emotion, to dance in that holy alchemical middle between dissociation and fusion, where we practice intimacy with the colorful display while not losing touch with what we are as the vast playground in which all feeling comes and goes.

To travel inside the core of emotion, to explore its texture, its fragrance, its color, its tingly felt sense … we do not know if this miracle is unique to this star, but we can wonder in awe at the opportunity laid out before us.

More than anything, we long to feel alive, to fully participate in our lives, to no longer postpone fully being here: to behold a sunset, to look into the eyes of our lover, to hold our child, to fall to the ground in awe at being given one more breath. Before we know it, all of this will be gone, it will vanish into the arms of the great weaver, and this rare precious human birth will be over.

If we look carefully we might see that this longing often comes with a condition, though it can be very subtle. Yes, more than anything I want to feel alive, connected, and in intimate contact with everything around … but only as long as it feels safe, as long as I can take the known with me, as long as I can know how it will all turn out, and as long as I do not have to be too naked, too exposed, and too vulnerable.

But there is no aliveness without vulnerability. In fact, they are the very same thing. Vulnerability and aliveness are one, co-arising together, and weaved of the same substance. We can’t have one without the other, it just doesn’t seem to work like that here. Perhaps in another world.

The aliveness you are longing for is not far. It will not be revealed by way of an exhausting search. It is hidden in the core of the tender, the broken, the shaky, and the raw, buried in a secret chamber inside you. Go there. Live from there.

My new book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available 

The Way of Rest summer retreat – as of June 30 there are a few seats left