Finding the Vulnerable Heart, Part One

The Myth of Invulnerability
The attempt to protect ourselves against vulnerability is a crucial aspect of the human journey. It's how we survive as individuals. Ideally, our protective strategies give us a 'skin' without creating a hard shell. But the shadow side of our strategies is denial of our vulnerability, and therefore of the possibility of growth. When the ego runs unchecked by logic, its protective instincts go haywire. "You're scared of being abandoned?" it asks. "No problem, I'll make sure you're the one who does the abandoning." And there goes your marriage. Or, it takes the stance of the victim, convincing you that your problems are caused by an ever-changing cast of people who have it out for you, and often unintentionally creating more situations that help you feel victimized. Or it takes refuge in a spiritual practice or a religious belief, thinking that it can be saved by some form of orthodoxy, or by staying positive. (Staying positive is surely the true American religion!) The strategic ego may convince you that you'll be safe if you own your own home or (especially in our celebrity-focused culture) if you're recognized or famous. Then, when you lose your faith, or fail at your assigned task, you feel as if you've lost everything.

The ultimate form of protective denial is the closed community—whether the wealthy suburb or the Green Zone of Baghdad, where walls and gates, literal or figurative, keep out intruders, so that we don't have to see anyone who isn't part of our tribe or cultural 'family'. We have myriad ways of convincing ourselves that vulnerability is for the 'others'—the homeless people, the poor, the victims of genocide or hunger in distant places. Vulnerability is for the designated 'victims,' while we, the lucky ones, keep our distance, even though we may give money or support, clinging to our belief that somehow for us things will always turn out okay.

Until, that is, it doesn't.

Disillusionment
At some point, most of us are forced to reclaim our vulnerability, whether we want to or not. Life takes no prisoners, which means that if you don't consciously reconnect with your vulnerability, it will eventually come around from behind and bite you in the butt.

For most people, this occurs through a head-on collision with a painful external reality—an illness or accident, the loss of a job, a partner's infidelity, a teacher's 'fall.' This moment of collision with the unexpected is one of the great archetypal themes of literature and life. In the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, the royal Pandava brothers lose a dice contest and have to leave their palaces and wives for exile to a forest. The wealthy Jewish aristocrats of The Garden of the Finzi Continis find that their garden walls can't keep out the Nazis. For Lauren, a ski champion, it was adrenal burnout. For my beautiful designer friend Sasha, it was breast cancer at age 29. For you, it might be the loss of your job or your lover, or the big collective awakening to vulnerability that hit the United States after 9/11 and has escalated through the economic crises of the last few years. This is the moment of disillusionment—the rending of the illusion that anything can ultimately protect you from the acute vulnerability of human life.

At this moment, we can either freeze in fear or grief, or choose to look beyond our Green Zone and use an external disillusionment as a stepping-stone on the inner path. In fact, the challenge posed by disillusionment is the very challenge that yoga prepares you to meet. Yoga is contained in the moment we meet our essential human vulnerability and choose to learn from it instead of rejecting or denying it.

In the Indian tradition, it's said that we practice yogic disciplines so that they'll be with us at the time of death. I'd say that we practice them for those little deaths that come up in the course of life. When we can meet our own vulnerability without armoring ourselves against it, we begin to discover its gift of radical openness. All the higher emotions—generosity, gratitude, compassion, forgiveness, and especially humility—emerge from this place of openness and vulnerability. To recognize our vulnerability is to connect with the mystery of life, and especially, the mystery of how life can be so wondrous and beautiful, and yet so absolutely terrible.

I often observe this in people going through intense processes of upheaval and change. They start off by trying to 'fix' the fear and confusion that change has created. They'll call or write me looking for a quick yogic solution to the pain of a lost lover or difficult work situation. As we talk, I sense their feelings of "Why me?" or "What did I do wrong?" I also hear the hope that somehow, there is a short-term practice that will work magic, or a correct attitude that will bring back the cheating partner or the lost job. Sometimes, of course, it does. But most often, healing comes in that moment when the ego gives up the struggle against circumstances, and willingly steps into the vulnerable feeling.