If I need you to be ‘vulnerable’ so that I can feel my strength, my power, then I am deluding myself while ‘using’ you.
True strength and power are natural qualities and states, independent of anything and anyone. It is what we naturally, unconditionally are. It is our true nature.
If I need your display of weakness or fragility to amplify or make me aware of my power, what then would happen if you are not willing to be weak and fragile? What would happen to me if you are not feeling weak and fragile? If you are not feeling ‘vulnerable’?
Quite clearly, if my ability to feel my strength and power depends on you, then without you, I am weak, I am powerless. Can that possibly be a useful basis for a healthy, thriving relationship either with you or with myself?
Why do we want someone to be vulnerable with us? Why do we need to ‘get weak together’? What kind of twisted notion of self are we reinforcing?
And yet, we all seem to want this. We all feel less vulnerable, more reassured, in the presence of someone else’s vulnerability. It is why we hungrily devour accounts of celebrity scandals and failings. Perhaps it reassures us that if someone so rich, so ‘capable’, so endowed with ‘natural attributes’ as well as acquired possessions including partners, palatial dwellings and pricey lifestyles can come undone, then it can’t be that bad if we, with so much less, also come undone. Or if they have recovered from their ‘failures’, then, there’s hope that we too can recover from ours which are a much less steeply inclined drop/failure.
We can’t bear it when someone going through a hard time still seems able to ‘hold their shit together’.
‘They’re in denial’
‘They are not allowing themselves to grieve/be weak/be vulnerable’
We have learned that denial is one of the phases in the phenomenon of ‘grieving’ whether that grieving is over a death, a diagnosis, a job loss, or a relationship breakdown. So, we’re quick to analyse and name what we ‘know’ (sic) is their denial of their situation.
And what is ‘their situation’?
Some idea, some concept that we have in our heads about what it is they are experiencing. Can we know for sure that this is what they are experiencing? More importantly, why is it so important to us that we should know?
These are prickly questions. They force us to look at our own beliefs, at our own sense of self, of ‘who we are’. Inconveniently, they turn the focus from the other person right back onto ourselves.
I’m not suggesting that we never feel weak or vulnerable. I’m sure we all do. But how I express that vulnerability when I am feeling it is something that no rule book or statistically proven psychological study has jurisdiction over. It is entirely up to me and your demanding that I be weak in your presence is not going to help me. And it is certainly not going to help you either, for it is your sense of insecurity and dependency (whether to elevate yourself or help/rescue me) that is driving your demand for my vulnerability in your presence.
Then again, I may not necessarily be feeling vulnerable at the times and in the situations you expect me to.
You may feel that we can ‘connect’ better and more deeply when we can be ‘weak together’ or at least when I can be weak with you while you remain strong. You may feel that my willingness to be vulnerable gives you permission to be vulnerable. In other words, you’re depending on me for your strength. It’s not a healthy, empowering approach, is it?
So what is a better approach?
Find your own strength, your own power, your own freedom. And allow others to find theirs in their own way and on their own terms and not yours.
How?
By going within. Turning your focus inwards. Recognizing your own vulnerability, allowing it to express itself in whatever way it wishes to. If this means an open and demonstrative display in the presence of another, so be it. But that is for you. Don’t demand the same of the other.
And that’s not all.
Just as importantly, reach into that place within you which is true, which is unconditioned, which is naturally invulnerable, peaceful, powerful, capable, free, good and great. That’s who and what you truly are. When you experience this for yourself, you will see that this is also true for the other and you will be more inclined to look for and focus on this true and natural aspect of the other. So that, rather than seek to be ‘weak together’, you might be more inclined to be ‘free together’, to be ‘true together’ and the other’s natural strength and power will inspire rather than threaten you.
We have learned that it is good and healthy to be vulnerable. I say it is good and healthy to be who and what we truly are while acknowledging whatever it is that we are feeling on the surface, conditioned level of our consciousness. By being attentive to our feelings without getting embroiled in them and while staying grounded in our deeper reality, in who we truly are, we will be naturally and intuitively guided in our response. It is this natural guidance that we want to honour rather than any rule book of conventional ‘wisdom’.
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