Sometimes we try to open up or soften, but we don’t feel safe enough inside to do it. Our nervous system holds armor — bracing against vulnerability, against the truth that life includes aging, illness, loss, and uncertainty.
This is definitely something I’ve experienced, so this week I explore how to resource yourself first — to feel steady enough to lower your guard — and how vulnerability itself can become a doorway into peace, love, and freedom. When we stop compensating for old wounds and instead welcome our vulnerability with compassion, we discover something deeper that was never wounded at all.
Click here to join the free Wednesday Meditations – which are open to everyone!
Talk: Accepting Your Vulnerabilities – Including from Early Childhood
Timecodes & main topics:
- 00:00 – Why we must resource ourselves before softening
- 01:16 – Impermanence and the passing nature of every moment
- 03:10 – Steadying and quieting the mind
- 05:51 – Shifting identity from thinking to spacious awareness
- 09:14 – The four heavenly messengers: aging, illness, death, and practice
- 11:47 – Vulnerability as a fundamental truth of being human
- 17:26 – The “primal wound” and compensatory patterns
- 27:26 – Practicing acceptance and compassion for vulnerability
- 31:12 – Discovering what is not vulnerable
- 33:33 – Honoring the courage of continuing to live and practice
A Meditation: Steadying Your Mind and Quieting It
When you’ve been bracing against stress, holding tension in your body, or feeling like you always have to stay on guard, it can be hard to truly relax or feel safe inside yourself. This meditation helps you gently lower your defenses by recognizing that you’re okay in this moment, softening the body, and allowing the mind to settle into a sense of openness and ease. As you rest in spacious awareness, you may discover a quiet peacefulness—and even a natural sense of warmth and lovingness—that was there all along.
