Hello Everyone. Today I
am feeling the need to address you in a
personal way that can be best done human to
human. I wish to talk with you about strength
and vulnerability. Most people probably think of
vulnerability as synonymous with getting hurt.
When you are vulnerable and trust, something
great could happen but usually that will end
sometime and you will feel pain. Thus we think
of vulnerability as including fear.
The same could be said for
our idea of strength. Strength has typically
been synonymous with protecting ourselves. When
you are strong, you think, you are less likely
to get hurt or at least you can recover fairly
quickly. People tend to think of strength as a
necessity and the hallmark of adulthood and of
vulnerability as a weakness. Some think of
strength as a masculine quality and
vulnerability as a feminine quality. Still both
of these definitions are fear based. As such
they tend to set you up for the result of fear,
which is pain, separation and more fear.
I wish to propose “new”
definitions for vulnerability and strength,
based on love and not fear. When you think of
getting power and love, of getting your needs
met from other people, these needs can cease
being met at any time. Try as we may, and we
really do try a lot, we cannot control the
actions of others. Many of us die trying. When
we try to get our needs met through others not
only do we expend a lot of wasted effort, but we
put out a lot of expectations and set ourselves
up again and again. Then we point to our
situations as confirmation of the need for more
strength, for more need to be in control. It is
a vicious cycle that we put ourselves in.
If instead of choosing to
live from a definition of vulnerability and
strength based on expectations of others, and we
redefine these terms based on our Divine selves,
we open a new paradigm before us. The truth is
that All-That-Is, is inside of us. Anything and
everything we need is accessible inside. This
includes fulfilling relationships with “others.”
This does not mean we are completely independent
and do not need to interact with others. Quite
the contrary, this paradigm allows us to be with
others without the entanglements that occur when
we need something and do not receive it. It
allows us to not experience the anger, the pain
and the fear that comes when we are in the old
definitions of vulnerability and strength and do
not get our needs met.
When you realize that all
you need is inside you, you come to experience
the interconnectedness of all life. You come to
realize that we are all one. It is from this
interconnectedness of the Oneness, that you can
be with “others” and not be attached to the
results of the interactions. Vulnerability then
becomes the process of opening to yourself, of
your Divine self. Since your Divine Self is
infinite, and includes All-That-Is, you will
never really lose anything. It is all there and
cannot be taken away. You can never lose
yourSelf. Even if another person does not love
you back, you are still complete and your needs
are being met. Thus you can allow yourself
freedom to be whoever you are and not need to
conform to the expectations of “others,” to
survive. In the process, this frees the people
you know and love to do the same. When you have
expectations of somebody this entangles both of
you. Freeing yourself frees them too, although
they may not see this at first.
The same applies to the
new definition of strength. Once you realize
your Divine Self, the old idea of strength as
having power over, become unnecessary. All is
one, and your strength is in living this
knowing. It becomes about practical application.
From this perspective it is easy to reach out
and offer who you are to the Universe. You
become both strong and vulnerable at the same
time. They are no longer “opposites.”
To explain this
symbolically you can think about the idea of
expectations as plugs. When you expect something
from someone, you could see energetically a cord
with a plug that plugs right into them. When
this happens, you are both having expectations
and also draining each other by those
expectations. To change to the Divine Self
definition entails trusting enough to pull the
plugs. This process takes a while for most
people and it needs to be this way. It gives you
time to adjust. It give time for you to
accommodate the life changes and responses from
those with whom you exchanged plugs. Chances are
that if you have plugs in them, they have plugs
in you. Expectations are a two way exchange.
The spiritual path is not
always the easiest or the quickest path.
Changing the way you view the world around you
is not an instant process for most people. To
me, the spiritual path is primarily about
changing world view. Then comes the learning to
work with what comes up as a result and making
still more changes. The great thing about this
is that it is all done internally. We can allow
other people to assist us, both formally by
asking for help, or informally as mirrors which
happens without asking all the time. But however
we work with each other, we are uniquely
empowered as human beings to do the changes
ourselves, at our own pace in our own time, in
our own way.
I thank you for the
opportunity to share my learning with you and
hope it is helpful. I am learning a lot about my
own strength and vulnerability and am glad I
could share it with you person to person in a
way the guides cannot. From the Oneness,
Linda White Dove (and
Guides)
