5/40: Openness

Picking up from the previous segments, a personal reflection on letting go of the encumbrance of closing up.

How do you respond when your feelings are hurt?

I generally shut down. It is a basic form of self-protection, the closing off of the vulnerable part of me to attempt to shield it from further harm. Opening up again feels not only difficult but ill-advised.

Yet one of the most fundamental characteristics of being a contemplative is a stance of openness toward Presence. It is being here, listening, waiting, watching, every sense reaching toward rather than closing off.

Suffering comes in many forms or flavours. The first four I have been looking at having been the need to control, resistance, avoidance, and wanting.

What I have been noticing about suffering is that the various aspects of it bleed into each other. Shutting down to avoid being further hurt is closely linked to avoidance, but is also a form of resistance as well as the flip side of wanting, repulsion. It is also a way of trying to control.

In a way, then, any progress in one area affects others, and any movement back into suffering touches off the others as well.

Trust

I cannot open without trusting that is safe for me to do so. This is where the daily practice of contemplation, the letting go of the muscles so tight in my jaw, shoulders, arms, and back that have been conditioned over years to tighten in readiness for whatever onslaught is coming, is so essential to the rewiring of the nervous system.

Between fight, flight, freeze, faint, fine, or fawn, I think I veer between freeze, fine, and flight a lot of the time.

Settling back into trust, the security of knowing that I am still held, known, and loved, even when something has triggered me to feel rejected, misunderstood, and unloved, can be a real challenge at times.

It was encouraging to me yesterday when I was somehow able to exit the shut down mode more quickly than usual to return to a tentative openness. And it was rewarding that nothing terrible happened. In fact, the day ended in peace with sleep enfolding me quickly and securely.

Practising and Awareness

One of the other gifts of a contemplative practice is a gradually growing self-awareness. Watching myself close up in a kind of curious, ‘what is this all about’ way, rather than a reactive getting lost in whatever random stories are being tossed about by the false self, means that there is a closer path back to the steady state of equanimity. transparency, being with, release, and openness of Reality As It Is.

Everything is practice. Interactions with other humans. Experiences I have by myself, getting frustrated by situations, whatever is happening. Each moment as it arises becomes another opportunity to learn something more thoroughly, explore something more deeply, or simply to be a little more fully, sinking just a bit more into Presence and Awareness.

Vulnerability: Not a Negative

One of the things I noticed in my first post in this series, where I was looking at letting of of the need to control, is how thoroughly negative most of the words that were opposite to control were. In a similar way, vulnerability is often seen in this world as a minus. It literally means that you can be wounded, from the Latin vulnerare to damage or wound.

The world celebrated strength, superheroes, and thick, invulnerable armour.

“I am a rock/I am an island.”

I am in control. I can resist every attack. I am indifferent to the needs of those around me and they cannot affect me. I want whatever I want and take it. I am closed off and you cannot hurt me.

These are the messages that scream from too many headlines. The conditioning that we are told is necessary to toughen us up and prepare us for life.

But every such message is a lie.

John Donne wrote centuries ago,

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

It tolls for thee. Can you hear it? Can you feel it? There is a mountain of suffering out there, more than any heart can bear.

And yet openness to the suffering of the world on the one hand, on the other means being open to the Ground of Being, a vastness of security and being held that can encompass it all without being overwhelmed.

The Ocean Fixes Everything

Perhaps one of the ways the daily swim I enjoyed whilst in Tobago provided such a tremendous peace and delight was the comfort of the ocean’s warmth, vastness, the steady pulse of its waves. The Great Mother, if you will, a womb-like environment.

I could just be, and I knew myself to be held. I could not fall.

Maybe you have had a similar experience, lying on your back on a summer’s night, far enough away from cities to look at the sky with little or no light pollution, and seeing the wash of stars across the sky shining their light from untold millenia ago.

I am back home, a shawl around me, a blanket over my legs. There is no ocean to swim in here. It continues to snow.

Yet that feeling of ocean is still with me. The safety of knowing and the trust to stay open to what this day will bring.