Vulnerability and gentleness

"I praise what is truly alive
what longs to be burned to death
And so long as you haven`t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubeled guest
on this dark earth"
- Goethe


- A text about personal transformation, and relating to others. How can gentleness and feeling pain really be a powerful strength?

When we first open to our pain, it often feels as though we are bleeding. yet this kind of emotinal bleeding helps awaken the heart, allowing vital energies in us that have become coagulated to circle again. To let our pain move in this healing way requires awareness, courage, and gentleness--being present with the pain instead of believing scare stories in our mind about where it might take us, opening ourselves to the place where we hurt inside, bringing caring presence to it, and letting those we love see it as well. In this way, helping us connect with our warrior spirit, pain can become a friend and ally.

A close friend, Tracy, has told me about some of her struggles, and transformation, relating to exactly these issues, and her partner Mark. She had a long time been feeling very resentful about her partner, but during a process where she allowed her pain about it to flow, finally accepted the situation. Thus when she felt her disappointment that Mark wasn't everything she would like him to be, and let this touch her, she realized, and expressed;
"We each have differences and imperfections that hurt each other. Yet there is nothing wrong with feeling that pain. it makes me feel my heart`s blood--my openness to myself, to him, and to love itself." In proclaiming her vulnerability this way, she was stepping beyond her fear of pain and heartbreak.

Unfortunately, the word vulnerability has pejorative meaning in our culture. Associating it with weakness and powerlessness, we often think of a vulnerable person as someone who is overly sensitive to being hurt or offended. Yet sensitivity to offense is something quite different from the genuine vulnerability of letting our heart be exposed. The ego is always fragile and easily wounded. It is a brittle shell or facade, a pretense that "we are in charge", that "no one can get to us" that we are "captains of our own fate". It is fragile because life is always threatening to expose our pretense of having power over life. By contrast, acknowledging our basic, human vulnerability--our openness to reality--is a source of real power. In fearlessly allowing our-selves to be vulnerable, we embody the bravery and gentleness of a true warrior.

Tracy confessed and described, that always before, she had tried to make her partners meet her emotional needs in devious, indirect ways. She would avoid stating he real feelings and needs openly because she did not like to feel exposed. It was much safer to manipulate her partner into blaming him when he failed to do so, or just withdraw.
In every relationship, there are times when one partner wants to connect more deeply, but that other is not as emotionally available at the same moment. At first when Tracy experienced this with Mark, she would feel hurt, and then contract, protect herself, attack, or hold it against him. Then, as her hurt and resentment built up, she would start to think about leaving him. Yet in learning to be compassionate toward the vulnerable part of herself, where she felt hurt by Mark`s unavailability, Tracy could let these hard, defensive edges fall away. When she softened to her pain, she could simply tell Mark about it, instead of holding it against him or shutting down her love. Expressing her needs more openly, rather than manipulating or accusing him, allowed her love to keep flowing. And she expressed that she felt stronger: no longer did she have to live in fear of pain or feel victimized when she got hurt. In this way, thorough making friends with our vulnerability, we discover a new kind of flexibility and power.

We usually think of vulnerability and gentleness as the opposite of power. Yet the softening that happens when we work with our pain can be quite compelling and influential. We become like water, which can generate electric power precisely because it flows so willingly, without resisting gravity or the contours of the land. Water is extremely vulnerable, in a sense. It is soft, it does not resist the touch, it can be molded into any shape, and it receives whatever we put into it. Yet for wearing down what is hard and tough, nothing surpasses it. Just as water, which is so soft, and accommodating, can reduce the hardest of rocks to sand, similarly gentleness is one of the most irresistible human qualities and can penetrate even the hardest of hearts. Whereas hardness stirs up aggression, gentleness provides nothing to resist.
So when Tracy show her vulnerability by saying, "I want to feel close to you right now", or "I just need to feel your love", Mark could not resist her. Because she was so appealing at the moment, he would often want to put aside his self-involvement and give her what she asked for. And when she could expose her pain-"It really hurts me when you get so tight"-instead of trying to get him to change, this usally made him soften. No longer was she the fussy princess expecting him to be a perfect prince.

In learning to appreciate and trust her broken-open heart Tracy says she felt more connected with life than ever before, and more capable of handling the challenges of an ongoing relationship. This was a tremendous victory, which only made her stronger and more attractive.
Men can particularly have a hard time seeing that their willingness to be vulnerable is often what touches women the most. They imagine that it is a sign of weakness, and that it will lead to scorn or rejection, or that they will loose control and disappear in the feeling. However, as one woman friend of mine put it,"I find it quite magnetic, when a man lets me see his vulnerability. It only turns me off if he tries to get me to reassure him about feeling that way. If he just presents it openly, I find that courageous and admire him for it." What she is saying is that ego fragility-trying to cover up the rawness of one`s heart-is unattractive, while fearlessly revealing it can be most appealing.

Thus the rawness of the broke-open heart, which being in moments of disillusion, is the transmuting force in the alchemy of love. When we let our heart break open, a certain sweetness starts to flow from us like nectar. As the Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat khan put it,"The warmth of the lover`s atmosphere, the piercing effect of his voice, the appeal of his words, all come from the pain in his heart." This is one of the great secrets of love. Instead of trying to ward off his pain, which is futile anyway, the lover can use it to transform himself, to develop invincible tenderness and compassion, and as the troubadours discovered, become a "gentle man" as well as a heroic warrior in the service of love.

Letting the heart break open awakens us to the mystery of love-that we can`t help loving others, in spite of the pain they cause us, for no other reason than that they move and touch us. in ways that we can never fully comprehend. Indeed, if those we love perfectly matched our ideal dreams, they would not touch us so deeply. What we love is just not their pure being, but also their heart`s struggle with all the obstacles in the way of its full, radiant expression. Although their imperfections cause us pain, they also give our love a greater purchase, a foothold, something to work with. It is as though our heart wants to ally itself with the hearts in those we love and lend them strength in their struggle to realize the magnificence of their being, beyond all their perceived shortcomings.

So, just as rocks in a stream accentuate the force of the water rising against them, the obstacles to perfect romance can help us realize the power of our capacity to love and who we truly are and what we are made of. - They force the heart to stretch so that it can embrace all of what we are.

This, more than finding the prefect relationship or having someone give us everything we want, is what can heal us.