A lot of what I have learned about vulnerability was through my love relationships, doing martial arts and being a disciple of Osho.
Perhaps the most valuable thing I understood experientially in combat was that when I would close myself, trying to imagine and prevent what might be happening, I would become way too slow and already be getting few hits in my face or being thrown to the ground. Instead, the more I was willing to letting go of control and stay open and centered in myself, present to who I was in the moment, the more there was a natural intelligence in the system - emotional, physical and mental - that knew spontaneously how to adapt to the moment and the movement of energy. The response that was emerging from this intelligence was direct, immediate, flexible, resilient and vastly more efficient than anything I could have thought or imagined.
Let me now use another event in life that is available to human beings: sexual orgasm.
What is an orgasm, if not a moment of complete vulnerability? Where defenses collapse, the fundamental separation between «inside» and «outside» disappears, me and another merge and boundaries dissolve. Where concepts regarding what should or should not, the judge, Holy Mary, vanish? The orgasmic moment IS a natural moment of complete vulnerability. Disappearance of boundaries, of time, of any particular dimension.
The question is that in general, it doesn’t last long.
How come it does not last long? Is that because physiologically it cannot last long?
No, it does not last long because there is an inner structure of control that, when orgasm reaches a point of what is “acceptable”, “proper”, “reasonable”, it immediately pulls the reins of “enough now” and reasserts control.
Everybody taught us that orgasmic energy is something to be afraid of because it is uncontrollable, therefore we are taught control to try to manage it. Otherwise, those moments are, if I am not mistaken, ecstatic moments, where we are free of boundaries and identity and separation. And then, the cage is back again.
Perhaps our organisms could not sustain living orgasmically, I don't know; what I know is that we can live ecstatically because ecstasy is a state of being, a quality of our true nature.
I was also very blessed that Osho gave me a name I could not escape from, Samarpan Avikal, where Samarpan means SURRENDER. And surrender means most of all surrendering control, disappearing as an entity and experience the vulnerability of being a mysterious unpredictable unfoldment in the eternal NOW.
Recognizing different shades of vulnerability, like being open, available, and existing including ever more expanding levels of energy, is a fundamental step for growth and joy; growth happens through energetic expansion.
So, if we want to grow, our responsibility is allowing our organism to having more fluid boundaries. Meaning, becoming more open, vulnerable and resilient, which, in the beginning, means with less rigid defenses.
As adults we have the capacity of protecting ourselves according to the state of the environment. Being vulnerable does not mean that we drop our defenses completely. It means that our organism’s own intelligence continually adapts its own vulnerability and defenses to healthy boundaries, instead of those mandatory ones.
Until we are in a body, we need boundaries, too. But there is a difference between healthy and conscious boundaries and the obligatory ones held by fear.
We learn as adults that boundaries and defenses are not wrong, but that they limit us because unconscious, habitual, because we put them up unaware of doing it.
Instead, as we open to vulnerability and conscious boundaries, we are able to recognize «I need this», «I don't need this». That is intelligence. A child cannot do that, but we can, grown-ups can. We need to learn when and how to do it, what resources to use.
And this is connected to Truth, and Love. Loving yourself and recognizing your truth in the moment, honoring the truth of any specific moment. Love and Truth do not need or function through control.
There is a dynamic relationship between Love and Truth, as one supports the other. Activating this relationship is not easy, but the good news is that once you do that, essential nature, True Nature, starts circulating in your system.
And in doing that it creates new resources, protection, openness, healthy defenses and the sweetest innocence of vulnerability according to the necessity of the moment. Manifesting the richness of presence embodied in all the unique forms that we are, not through a mental choice or the past.
