vulnerability and boundaries

sally kempton's wisdom column in the february 2009 issue yoga journal (now on newsstands) is once again a masterpiece of insight, with wisdom we can all use.

she writes of an acquaintance, a surgeon, who began meditating and doing yoga to control stress. he's noticed a new tenderness toward people on the operating table, a feeling of softness and rawness, that he was unaccustomed to.

kempton says these feelings of vulnerability are not optional but part of the process.

she says the most open person she ever met was her teacher, a swami. when you looked into his eyes, there were no barriers; he would meet you at the deepest place you could go. at the same time, he had incredibly strong boundaries and a take-no-prisoners attitude toward challenging situations.

oh, okay, so this is what a swami is like!

what made me want to share this is this paragraph:

"the spiritual journey often looks like a dance between the two distinct poles of vulnerability and boundaries. it's a continuing dialogue between the impulse to soften and open and the impulse to contain and protect. the two apparent opposites turn out to be equal partners in the process of embodying spirit and heart."

in my NLP training, my teacher, tom best, has several times mentioned the idea that all our wants can be classified as either a drive toward security or a drive toward freedom. tom attributes that to someone else, i forget who--tom or NLPers, help me out here.

sally kempton's understanding of the paradoxical poles of vulnerability and boundaries is a similar way of understanding ourselves, more subjective, more feeling and behavior oriented. there is not one without the other.

ultimately, kempton says, entering your vulnerability and connecting with the source is key to recognizing your own spaciousness, which is invulnerable.

go get a february yoga journal to read the whole article, including the meditation practices kempton provides.