Vulnerability.  The truth for all living things.  Everything alive is affected by forces larger than itself: efforts, actions, desires, goals, plans, intentions, will...  important as they are, they do not ultimately nor singlehandedly produce the results we living creatures long for.  

Outcomes are up to more than what we bring to the situation.  All life faces this difficult fact.  But humans have the ability to actually know our vulnerability.  In the human brain our frontal lobes give us a reflective capacity that appears to distinguish us from our closest relatives.  We are able to recognize and reflect on the meaning of having limits to control over the things that matter to us.  And that feels like something - it feels like dissonance.  And dissonance does not feel good. 

And, we have the ability to not know the truth and meaning of being vulnerable.  We can deny and repress and suppress and distract and ruminate and numb ourselves.  In order to not feel the discomfort of dissonance we do many things - these are called "defenses" and they make our lives rigid and small.

We have a choice: approach or avoid.  Love or Fear.  Grow or stay stuck.  Love yourself in what is true in the moment, or fear yourself there.  It is up to us.

If we approach what it feels like to be human we will be challenged to tolerate sensations that we are deeply wired to avoid and escape.  The tension and arousal in the body feel like things we ought to shut down, if we notice them consciously at all.

To grow into the largest You, you need to be able to notice and take care of what it actually feels like to be affected by forces beyond yourself.  What it feels like to be touched by this life.  What it feels like to want and not yet have or not yet know or not be able in this moment to make it so, by your efforts alone.

This is so hard.  The work is to grow our neural circuitry for approach when we are so wired to avoid. 

It is the simplest thing, and so wildly difficult to do.  We need to practice practice practice.  We need to choose to approach, and feel the power in the choosing.  It is in doing it that we find out that these are only sensations - only feelings - and we are even more powerful when we come home to the body and feel them.  Our presence soothes the body.  We feel the power of that.

And we recognize that this is a struggle and we feel compassion for ourselves in that.  And there is power there too.

Today I invite you to tune in and be with the body, your body, in the little tensings and quivers of being human.  Of not knowing, of longing, of not having...  or of any feeling arising in you: sadness, anger, joy, love.  Gift yourself with your attention and slow down.  Feel the power of your presence in the moment in your body.

You are the medicine.  You are the meaning.  You are the power.  You can make the choice.

And you are so worth it.

Photo Credit:  ELB/DB Photos