Vulnerability requires real toughness

In my past I used to put up walls around me. Me and my friends had a pretty rough way of speaking to each other and I definitely was one of the most active driving forces behind this jargon. I felt proud of not caring what anyone said to me. The positive side of this is that I can still take a joke and I don’t have to take everything that others say to me seriously. But the negative side is that this goes both ways. Just like I didn’t take in things that could hurt me, I didn’t talk about things that made me vulnerable either. 

When I started going through my real spiritual awakening, I suddenly found myself sensitive towards things that I previously would have brushed off as nothing. I had an initial awakening many years ago, but lost sight of it after a while. It became undeniable that something strange was going on first when I med my wife a little more four years ago and we started to have one strange experience after the other together.

But back to the main topic: vulnerability. I could suddenly not deny that others could say things that hurt anymore. Understanding this, I coul also understand that words can have real power. What I say can hurt. What we say to each other matter.

Now, I’m not talking about some politically correct nonsense, where we have to walk on eggshells around each other so that we don’t accidentally say something that can be interpreted as racist or sexist. I still believe that offence is taken and not given. And I believe that in this context we need to turn things around anyway. Turn things around in the sense that we stop demanding things from others and turn towards ourselves instead. We can complain forever about what others are doing to us and whether or not they are doing it on purpose. Or we can look at our own wounds, why certain things trigger them and how they cause us to say and do hurtful things. 

This is how we get out if this cycle of victims and perpetrators: we stop making others responsible for how we feel and open up to each other. Vulnerability is not the same as being whiny and weak. I was that for a while as well (and can still be sometimes), but this is not to be vulnerable in a positive, responsible way. But it’t easy to be vulnerable in this way when walls that one has built up around oneself during one’s whole life suddenly starts to crumble.

Vulnerability is about courageous trust. About knowing that others can use our vulnerability against us, but choosing to trust that they won’t. To accept the fact that some may and live with the consequences. Ultimately, as with so many things right now, it comes down to whether we want to live in survival mode or not. And in the times that we are living in, survival mode is inevitably going to turn our lives into nightmares. 

Trust and openness takes time to build and in the beginning many of us will get hurt. In a sense, this is a new type of battle. One that is the opposite of taking up arms together and going to war. Instead it’s about our individual, inner struggles and laying down our weapons and shields, both the literal and metaphorical ones. About giving others the chance of choosing not hurting us even if they can. 

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

The journey to self-love

Self-love isn’t easy. Neither is it the narcissistic monstrosity that is promoter by our culture. That is the opposite of self-love. Our culture’s idea of “self-love” is about projecting an image based on pride and taking what we can from the external world.

Real self-love is about our insides. And let me right now confess that this is one of my greatest struggles. Why? Because I’ve done lots of things in my past that I’m ashamed of. Lots of things that I, at the time, thought that I could just bury afterwards. But the cliché, that we can never escape from ourselves, is true. We can pretend that our actions don’t mean anything to us till the day we die and not grow one millimeter. But the day that we truly start caring about ourselves and our lives, they will come back to haunt us. 

Therefore, self-love is about bringing all of our darkness to the surface so that we can forgive ourselves and let it go. Real self-love is not a happy-pill that we can take and instantly feel good about ourselves and our lives. It’s a bitter medicine that needs to be taken many times before it has any effect. Because in order to love ourselves, we first need to take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. We need to dare looking at ourselves and not shy away from what we find. 

What I’ve found going through this process, is that this is much like peeling an onion. And the more layers I peel off, the more hurt I find. I’ve thought that I’ve brought my most shameful aspects to the surface many times, just to discover that there is even more there.

But I think that I’m finally starting to get to the core of the issue. And it’s strange to see how all of this struggling and complexity was in some way necessary. But that it at the same time led to a simple end. Namely that at the core I just ensnared myself in a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts that have nothing to do with who I really am and that I’m free to either believe or dismiss. 

I’ve done lots of destructive things. But in my confused state I actually believed that I was doing something totally justifiable. And every moment is a new moment. I’m free to choose something better. And every time that I become aware of an unwanted thought, I can just let it pass. I know that my relationship with God, myself and other people, plus what I believe that I came into this world to do, are what’s important. And anything that is not in line with this needs to go. 

I don’t need to believe thoughts that run contrary to who I really want to be. Who I know that I already am behind all of the layers of ego that I am not. I already love this person. That which I cannot love about myself is an illusion.

Photo by: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash