Wednesday 19 October 2016

Fears and longing

My mentor shared this with me last month. It is a quote from Matt Licata:

“The fear of being abandoned. The shame in being rejected and not seen as you are. The terror of being alone. The anxiety of being dependent on another. The panic of unbearable vulnerability and exposure. The dread of the looming death of yourself and everyone around you. These are the great fears that come as you wake, as you fall asleep, and as you wander along the path of the heart. But, perhaps the greatest fear of all is the fear of being loved, the dissolving of the trance of unlove once and for all. For when you are truly loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. Life is always seeing you in this way. If you will allow this revelation in, you will never be the same again. You will no longer be able to pretend that you are other than radiant and whole as you are. You will watch in astonishment as the spell of unworthiness is dissolved in front of your very eyes.

While it may seem that this is what you are truly longing for, please consider the consequences of the death of this ancient dream. The game is over. Dare to see that you were never unhealed; that nothing is missing, and that you are fully alive, now. Not after you ‘heal your past’, find your soulmate, manifest a conscious job, get into a ‘high vibration’, or replace the burning with joy. Allow the dream of postponement to end, now. For you are here. You are present. Your raw heart is beating. Your senses are online. Allow the unlovable one, the unworthy one, the ‘broken’ one, and the ‘unhealed’ one to fall away into the soft, tender vastness that you are. To let in the implications of this is utterly exhilarating. And completely terrifying simultaneously. One world is ending so that the true world may appear from behind the clouds of separation. The world of love is here…..now.”

Monday 17 October 2016

Vulnerability

"To be vulnerable is to be alive."

For the longest time I’ve been struggling to let people get close enough to see the parts of me that hurt, to see the parts that still feel broken and still need repairing. I have been reading Brene Brown’s work on wholehearted living, and have started to realise that it is only when we open up to others in this way that we can truly connect and be our truest selves.

In Daring Greatly, Brene discusses the results she obtained from different people when asked what vulnerability means to each one personally. I gave this some thought and wrote down everything that came to mind. No filtering or overthinking.

 For me vulnerability is:
Allowing someone to see the real me
Being loved
Taking risks
Standing in my truth
Making new friends
Maintaining friendships
Sharing my writing with others
Loving and caring for someone
Seeking connection
Exploring sexuality
Being sexy and attractive
Putting in effort
Being ambitious
Asking for help

This is quite a list but I have started making some progress into understanding and accepting it. Some things I find easier to do than others. Some days allowing myself to seek these things feels fine, and completely doable while other days I find it a bit more challenging. I often struggle to tell my friends that I am having a tough time, or that I am feeling stuck and not good enough. Most of the time I am worried about how they would respond to seeing this “weakness”. The mask that I wear most often is that everything is OK and that I have all my shit together. I want to be that person, but I kept falling short. 

I am learning more and more each day that vulnerability is the furthest thing from weakness. As Brene says, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”


I remind myself that all we have to do is take one tiny step in the direction towards what we want and eventually, when we glance back, we’ll see how far we have come. This is what keeps me going.