“What do we need those days? What do we need as humanity, as a Planet?” I asked myself sitting on the train few days ago. It is short before Christmas December 2019. We accompany the old world on its death bed and we are midwifing the new times and hopefully more wholesome civilization. What do we need to uplift our lives and those around us, to experience more happiness and fulfillment? What are we lacking in life of our species these days that we put on hazard our future. What is inherent in our being that got dimmed by greed, fear, resentment, or simple survival, which has been triggered in our nervous systems by various economical, ecological and political conditions? What will help us to transit into more hopeful future? How can we move from survival into being alive?
Vulnerability
I believe a first step to change our little individual life as well as the whole societies is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is when we put of our shields and armours and then breathe… and take the courage to feel… let ourselves be. It is a prerequisite of being authentic and building real intimacy with others, you need to become vulnerable authentic and intimate with yourself.
There are many silent and loud voices in us which try to be heard or try to hide, and feelings that want to be felt. We mostly ignore them or mentalize them for various reasons. We try to do as if they don’t exist. Maybe because we are afraid that when we let the wall fall we would feel pain, if we allow the true expression of our feelings we would be judged, rejected, condemned or abandoned… Possibly we push them away for so long already that we forgot their origin and what we see is merely a projection of the old pattern, some old event on actual people in our life. So we keep recreating the story as if it was something real.
Stop!
If you feel that happening just stop… Maybe it will take some time and practice until you manage to stop for a moment, but eventually you will. When, lets say, an inside-your-head accusations about your partner’s possessiveness, indifference, ignorance of your true needs, or lack of love makes you upset, sad, frustrated, frantic or furious, and all you want to do is to push him or her away, pack and leave, treat him or her indifferent too so he or she can also feel what you feel… This is the moment to stop and take a breath. You are not vulnerable here. Your defence mechanisms kicked in. They make you spin the stories that might, but more likely are not be truth.
Quite often we do not allow even ourselves to see what is behind. Though lets say you stopped, and you lay down on the earth and breathe… What is it what you really need? Do you want to really push him away? Do you want that she feels as badly as you do? What is this real longing that you hide from yourself, that you do not allow yourself to have? It perpetuates this spinning business in your head and body? To let yourself feel, it is to be vulnerable with yourself, to share it with your partner is to be vulnerable with the other.
A shift
Maybe you actually long for more intimacy and closeness. Then your very thoughts and behaviors have opposite effect to what you desire. If people are not aware they sync with our emotional field, and start to play part in our movie… as we do in theirs.
I know that at first acknowledging your need, accepting yourself just as you are is noble but very hard task. It might made you feel weak and needy while you want to be strong, self-sufficient basically flawless and you normally just clench your thees and carry your cross on. Yet, just try to breath out all this stories and tensions, “mussn’ts” and “have tos”. Then say: Wait a minute, i really need to be held; i really just need to rest; i want to lay in the grass on the bare earth and let my body go for 15 minutes; i really just long for feeling loved and wanted; i want to be desired, etc.
When you stop for a moment and allow this part of yourself be felt heard and accepted something will shift. Probably you will feel deeply touched at first. Perhaps you will realize that story you spun in your head is not about your partner, kids, boss or work but some echo of the past: the father who left, was unavailable, drunk etc… or mother for whom you were never good enough… or…(fill the gap). Maybe they even are something just passed since generations in your family and nobody knows anymore where they come from.
Let your beauty shine
When you allow yourself to feel what is under all this conditioning, what is it that you really need at that moment or long for, then there is shift of consciousness happening. You put your shield and armor a little down. And you get in touch with deeper and well-protected sense of self, and with your inner child. You became vulnerable. First to yourself. That’s the bigger and more difficult step! Nobody lies to us as we do. I know that when you make this step and finally start to feel your true feelings that the real beauty starts to shine through and life starts to pulse more throughout your body.
In lak’ech ala k’in
What does it have to do with the world? Firstly, we are maybe lonely but not alone in denial of our feelings, desires and needs. Choosing vulnerability we improve the quality of our life. We become honest with ourselves and than the others. Yes, not everybody may like it, but it is worth risking. It will create natural selection of people around you. Tough if they want to stay, there is a good chance that you staying in your vulnerability, sharing from an authentic place in yourself will create intimacy which then invites the others to do the same. Like this the walls, shields and armors can be replaced by connection and intimacy.
Once you start to see and honor yourself, once you develop compassion with yourself – this is what vulnerability does to us – you will have easier time to see passed the defenses of others and develop compassion for them. Them as individuals and them as groups, those different than you, and with time “them” will become “we” on this very planet earth. You will also start to feel the vital need of your local population, society, species, the planet… and when this happens, hopefully you won’t deny it but give it a space within and tend to it with a loving kindness… Then take an action which helps this raging demon to transform into nourishing quality that sustains you and us all. I am another you. You are another me. In lak’ech ala k’in.