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Vulnerability Project - Week 6 Transcript

Welcome to Week 6 of the Vulnerability Project. In this week’s video, I’m going to share two

final ractices or aroaches to go along with all of the rinciles and ractices that I’ve shared

so far with you. !nd then we’re going to take a turn and send the last art of this video talking

about vulnerability, ower, and sirituality. "ut first, I want to share with you what I call fork inthe road.

#any eole who become very conversant with their emotions, who are able to ta in and to surf

and cradle, as you have been racticing in this rogram, still reach laces in their lives where

they have to make imortant decisions. !nd in those moments or e$eriences, it can often be

very challenging and confusing. %hould I go this way or that way& %hould I stay in the

relationshi or leave& %hould I kee this job or get another one& %hould I remain in the city I live

in or should I move somewhere else& 'his is what I refer to as the fork in the road.

(ow, when you are at a fork in the road and you’re not sure what the best choice is for you, what

I recommend as the most eaceful and connected and reliable aroach is to ask yourself, )!s I

consider choosing, am I considering from a lace of resistance or accetance&* (ow let me

describe what I mean.

+hoosing from resistance means I’m going to go in this direction because I don’t want to feel the

emotions that I sense will come to me if I move in that direction. (ow, choosing from a lace of

resistance is not wrong or bad. !ll it means though, because of the nature of resistance, is

whatever I choose to avoid on one ath or the other is going to come to me anyway on the ath I

choose. %o that’s why choosing to avoid emotion ultimately brings you back to the same lace

you were before, regardless of whatever choice you make.

+hoosing from accetance says, )I am willing and able to feel whatever comes to me in this

direction and whatever comes to me in this direction.* !nd therefore, you get to come to an

e$anded lace and really recognie where there is an intuitive call and choose from that deeer

and more reliable lace. -ften, it’s a great thing to do to use our rocess of worstcase scenario

and how will that make you feel. 'o actually bring u some of the emotions that you’re

concerned about facing on one side or another of the fork in the road.

!nd of course there may be more than just two sides/ there may be three or four, they all maybe

kind of mushed u together, but still, the best thing that you can do if you’re not clear, if you

don’t have that intuitive call, is kee feeling your way into and through all of the different ossible choices until you feel e$anded while oening to all of them. !fter that, the decision is

almost always stressfree, even if you can’t imagine that while you’re still bound u in some

resistance to one or more of the choices.

! good thing to remember in terms of the fork in the road is that often we’re telling ourselves

that we have to make a choice now. !nd that’s causing more stress and keeing us from being

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able to fully feel in to all of the otions and to let whatever is meant to come in that rocess

come to us and through us. %o often eole tell me I have to make a decision and I say, )1o you

really have to make it right now&* !nd often there’s a day or maybe even sometimes a week or a

month that the decision can be ut off. !nd that’s what I always suggest. (ot from a lace of

kicking the can down the road, so to seak, but from a lace of let’s use that time for two things.

2irst of all, to do the emotional work so that you are e$anded as you consider each choice.

'hat’s the first art.

'he second art has a certain element of trust to it, because almost everytime that I’ve ever

suggested that somebody wait and take the time they have before they have to make a decision,

something haens/ new information, new emotional release, or events transire that make what

seemed imossible to choose just a few days or weeks ago, suddenly clear as a bell. %o, just to

review, fork in the road, having to make a choice, see if you can get to the lace where your

choice making comes from a lace of accetance of all the emotions that are involved on any

side of that choice you have to make. !nd if you haven’t done that work or if you’re just still not

clear in getting a clear signal, then wait as long as you can and trust that more information will

come or more events will transire. !nd I honestly have to say, I can’t remember a single time

out of many, many choice oints that I’ve worked with eole through where those two asects3feeling through and waiting, haven’t brought a more eaceful and easeful decisions.

-kay, moving on now to the other ractice, and you can see a little smile on my face because I

don’t share it with you really as a suggestion, but it’s more of an idea to sit with that will hel

you in many moments of conflict with other eole when you would like to be resent and

connected and vulnerable. It’s what I call one syllable communication.

(ow, come to think of it, it’s usually after the first syllable that we get in trouble, that we trigger

each other, for the most art. %o when you get to the oint of I feel that or you should or

anything at all that has language to it, that’s not a direct e$ression of internal feeling, that’swhen all the troubles in human communication begin. %o imagine the alternative. 4ou’re driving

in the car with someone who’s close to you. 5e or she says something and it hurts your feelings.

4ou’re oen to it. 4ou’re racticing one syllable one communication. %o you say, )-w* !nd

the other erson who’s racticing too says, )5uh&* !nd then you come back with, )!hh* !nd

the other erson says, )-h* !nd then you say, )!h* !nd they say, )!hh* (ow that’s

ridiculous, on the one hand. "ut on the other hand, there might be something liberating in just

imagining that ossibility, because it’s after the first syllable that all of the interretation comes,

all of the layering on of meaning and also all of the assumtions.

%o, I want to give you an e$amle of what one syllable communication looks like in a reallifesituation. !nd you’ll see how it’s not e$actly like the car, but the car gives us a sense of when

and how we might resort, at least temorarily, to one syllable communication, to cut through all

of the noise and all of the triggering and the resistance.

#any years ago I was sitting at a table with my stedaughter and my wife. !nd my stedaughter

was just in one of those moods where she was icking at her mom, every little thing. !nd it was

getting frustrating for #om, it was getting frustrating for me. !nd I found myself starting to

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really contract and get really bound u inside of myself. !nd there was anger that was wanting to

move through me. !nd I sensed, because there was so much tension, that if the anger came out in

words that the words, one way or another, would go array. 'hey wouldn’t be helful. %o I

actually said in this moment, )I’m sorry everyone, but I’m feeling really frustrated right now and

I have to go into the other room and just move through this frustration.*

(ow I did this because I didn’t want to scare my stedaughter with a big dislay of manly

emotion. %o I went into the other room and I literally did something like this 8grunting andyelling9. !nd then I went back into the dining room and I sat down at the table once again. 4ou

can bet that the energy in that moment was very different than it had been before I left. I used

one syllable communication not just for myself, but also to disel some of the energy that was

getting more and more wound u, not just in each of us, but between all of us. !nd whenever

that haens, the diselling, the moving through, new ossibility for communication emerges,

and also eole get a little bit dislodged from their osition, or even just some energy that was

running them, as oosed to them having some more sace and choice. !nd this is true even

with the child who wouldn’t necessarily even know what was going on. !nd to this day, my

stedaughter remembers that e$erience.

(ow, to be honest, she doesn’t remember it as an emotional connection teaching. %he says,

):emember that time when you just got u from the table and you went in the other room and

yelled&* "ut also the fact that it made such an imression on her, really, I think, gives some

credence to the idea that doing it with one syllable with sound, movement, all of that, gives us a

chance to really break through to something new and owerful and is really a gift to yourself and

the eole with whom you might do it. %o again, not the whole communication or the whole

conversation in one syllable, as in the car, but there may be times where just saying )-w,* or

);w,* or )5uh,* or )!rgh,* is infinitely more loving ultimately to yourself and to the other

eole involved than getting in to all of the words. %o that’s what I mean by one syllable

communication.

-kay, now to switch gears for the very last art of this video series. I want to mention to you that

almost everything that we’ve been doing in the Vulnerability Project would come under the

umbrella of recogniing and releasing resistance so that we can go from a state of contraction to

a state of e$ansion. (ow, there’s a whole other way to aroach this, which is actually

cultivating e$ansion. !llowing oneself to get bigger and to connect more. !nd this often has a

very different flavor.

%o for instance, at the workshos that I do with eole in erson, I do a ractice called "eing

1anced. In this ractice, I ut on different ieces of music and I ask eole to stand erfectly stillin a rela$ed osition as the music comes on, and then to notice if the music dances them. %o not

to get in to their usual ways of dancing that have kind of <uotation marks around them, look at

me, I’m doing the swim or anything like that, or just like kind of isn’t this funnier, isn’t this

goofy. Instead, just to notice what haens when you let the inner choreograher have a break.

(ow, some eole stand comletely still because the music doesn’t dance them. %ome eole

move just a little bit. !nd some eole find themselves moving a lot. !nd the reason this is so

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imortant is because something is coming through that isn’t made by ersonal choice. 'he ego,

so to seak, isn’t involved. !nd it can be really amaing to notice it’s still me here in my mind,

in my body, but as I’m being danced, something is dancing me, something is moving my body,

something is creating vibration and feeling in me, and I’m not using it.

%o when we’re not choosing, an energy moves through us in that way. !nd we allow it to do

that. What we notice is we get more oen and e$anded and more connected. It’s really

imortant. It’s so imortant that every %aturday night, at any weekend worksho that I do, wehold a dance and we oen it to everybody else at the facility. !nd I ask all the eole in my

grou for that evening to e$eriment as much as ossible with being danced throughout all of the

songs that I lay.

(ow, many times there are eole who don’t remember a lot of the content from the retreat, but

they sure remember that night. !nd they know suddenly what it’s like to be free inside of

themselves and in the resence of other eole in a way that was different from before. It’s not

your usual dance where there might be alcohol or ickus haening or any kind of social

convention. Peole can dance with themselves, they can dance with another erson, they can

dance with everybody all at once in the room. "ut something really different and freeing ishaening. %o that’s all about cultivating e$ansion.

'here’s another ractice that we do where all of these eole, no matter how refined and

sohisticated they are, I ask them to get on the floor in a circle with their heads ne$t to one

another and they’re lying on their backs and their feet as the rays of the sun. !nd for about >

minutes or so, we lay with sound. %o one erson makes a sound and we all make it. 'hen we do

an imromtu sounding chorus where we notice as we’re making sounds and as other eole are

making sounds how that is vibrating in our own bodies. !nd we mi$ it u. We do different kinds

of rounds with different instruction from me, but still the urose is to kee oening and

allowing not just inside of ourselves, but in that circle where we’re connected on the floor, wealso see how the vibration moves from without to within, from within to without. !nd essentially

by the time we’re done, we have the e$erience of making one sound together where we could

even say being sounded, just like being danced, for the urose once again of really freeing us

u.

%o cultivating e$ansion in these ways is really, really imortant. %ome of you, for instance, may

by familiar with ?irton@that’s 5indu chant@and once again it’s so gratifying for me because if

I warm eole u to this lace of sounding e$ansion and then I ut on the 5indu chant, often

eole who never would listen to that reviously find it moving. %ometimes the tears just start

flowing because the erson has been so fully freed u.

(ow, sometimes when we think about getting bigger, it’s more of a ersonal getting bigger. %o

for instance you might hear in certain ersonal growth circles, talk about what’s called an Aer

Bimit Problem, meaning if it’s outside of your comfort one or the habits of your consciousness,

to e$erience greater joy or greater success, then the idea is you want to e$and those uer

limits so that you can have more of what you want in your life.

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(ow also, kind of similar to the Aer Bimit Problem, is that famous <uote from #arianne

Williamson, which I’m going to read to you now and then we’re going to kind of take off from it

in a slightly different direction. %o what #arianne wrote is, )-ur deeest fear is not that we’re

inade<uate. -ur deeest fear is that we are owerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our

darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,

fabulous& !ctually, who are you not to be& 4ou are a child of Dod. 4our laying small doesn’t

serve the world. 'here is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other eole won’t feel

insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifestthe glory of Dod that is within us. It’s not just in some of us/ it’s in everyone. !nd as we let our

own light shine, we unconsciously give other eole ermission to do the same. !s we are

liberated from our own fear, our resence automatically liberates others.*

"eautiful, right& I’m guessing that almost everyone on the Vulnerability Project has heard or

read that <uote at one time or another. "ut I think what’s most imortant is how we take that

<uote, just also in terms of how we work with that uer limit roblem. !nd this connects to

emotions and also to vulnerability. (ow here’s what I mean.

When we e$and in the ways I was just describing and esecially when we attune to ouremotions, we recognie we’re not choosing any of it, esecially with emotions, when we get

really oen and vulnerable, we see that they arise. !nd our choice is simly whether we’re going

to resist them or accet them. "ut where do these emotions come from if we’re not the creators

of that& What this oints to is that emotions are the ne$us between self and sirit. We sto

thinking so much like we are skinencasulated beings and that our ower comes from getting

better and better and choosing more and more success or having new e$eriences and doing

them better and better. "ut we start to see that life is moving through us. !nd just like in the

e$ercise, we ractice being danced or being sounded. Altimately, the truest liberation on the

siritual ath comes from being lived, letting life move through us.

(ow, what’s often so amaing about this is that there are things that we have been straining and

struggling for all of our lives, ushing that boulder u the mountain. !nd when we sto doing

that, our first thought is, )Well, then nothing’s going to haen. We’re just going to sit here and

we’re going to be a blob.* "ut instead, we find that we get more connected to source and we give

that source an oortunity to live through us, and everything haens more vibrantly and more

successfully than before. 'his is true if it’s something about a mundane toic, like cleaning the

house. %uddenly you find yourself seeing house cleaning is haening. -r book writing is

haening. -r healthy relationshi is haening. !nd it feels like we are coauthoring, in a way,

our lives with sirit. !nd in that rocess, we’re not ushing and it’s not about willower.

%omething magical can haen that couldn’t have haened otherwise.

%ometimes in religious circles you might hear this referred to as not my will, but thy will. 'he

thy can get a little bit confusing because from the ersective of sharing with you, it’s not thy as

in another being, even a sureme being, that has a articular choice or lan for each one of us.

'hat belief and how you may relate to that belief is really ersonal and uni<ue to you and it’s not

something we need to get involved with. "ut whatever you feel about that or believe about that,

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you can still notice what haens when you e$and with the intention of not becoming more of

who you want to be or better at what you want to be good at, but instead more in tune with life as

it’s meant to be lived through you, which is often, I have to say, much different from what you

think you want or think you need.

4ou heard eole say, you know, if you want to make Dod laugh, tell 5im@we should say 5er,

too@your lans. -r life is what haens when you’re making other lans. %o there is a common

sense knowing about this. "ut what we’re adding here at this discussion is the idea that it’s a felte$erience that moves through you and it animates you, brings you to life in a way you can never

could imagine when you are smaller and more contracted. %o from my ersective, it’s not about

ushing ast an uer limit to who you can be. It’s not about self in that way. It’s about oening

ast your reviously erceived limitations around what can move through you, and that’s a really

big difference.

%o for some eole, when they oen u and become more vulnerable, they need to let the energy

of anger move through them because they’ve been so contracted against that anger that nothing

else can get through either. %ometimes a erson just can’t move in a dancing way because that’s

where they got shut down earlier. %ometimes it’s the voice. %omebody can’t sing or just letsound move through them because, again, of the ways that life and e$erience and eole have

kind of shut them down.

%o when we oen, we’re oening for the uroses of connection to all that is and to letting all

that is move through us, and even be us. "ecause ultimately where this leads to is that each and

every one of you is a erfect and beautiful e$ression of the one, the one manifested in the

millions, in the multitudes. !nd that’s’ when we truly come to life when we don’t even take

credit for it. 4ou now, I’ve written lots of books. I would sit here and tell you I earned the

success I achieved. It’s true, I worked really hard. I sat at a desk or a comuter a lot of times

when I didn’t feel like it. !nd I did ore over the substances to try to get them to be just what feltright to me. "ut everytime I started to s<uish, to ush, as soon as ossible I would remind myself

that ultimately, I don’t even know where ideas come from. I can’t oint to some rocess in my

brain. (euroscientists can’t oint to some lace in the brain from which an idea emerges out of

nothing into something.

%o I know that my job is to be ever more attuned to that, which is something that would be cray

to take credit for. 'he only thing I can take credit for is showing u and letting it haen. %o

often, I’m writing a sentence and it’s late and I’m tired and I really should <uit and it’s just not

right and I feel )grrr* %o I try to write it again and it gets worse. !nd then I try to write it again

and it gets even worse. 2inally, I give u, I go to slee, maybe in the morning I wake u and Itake a shower and I let the water oen my ores u and my being as well. I sit down at the

comuter and it’s almost as if the sentence writes itself. What couldn’t haen when I was

efforting haened when I was oening.

I want to share one other really imortant ersonal e$amle with you about this. #any years ago,

when I had my really deely transformative and awakening e$erience, things started coming

through me that I never even imagined. !nd a lot of them stretched what I saw as even the

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ossibility of what a erson can be. 2or e$amle, I would often, in the resence of another

erson just be drawn to utting my hand somewhere3 in their back or in their forehead. !nd

when I would do that, they would reort to me that really owerful healing energy was moving

through them.

%o suddenly I had to ask myself, am I a healer now& !nd it was very <uick that I started to try to

ut a bo$ around that, like we often do, that 8Inaudible E F3=F3=F9 loves to do. What is this

healing energy& What should I call it& Is it okay& What if it goes bad& "ut as I trusted more andmore, I would just notice that when I rose and I felt was in a safe situation was someone who

knew me and felt okay with it, I would just let it haen. !nd I saw that ultimately what I was

doing was getting out of the way. It wasn’t something I even knew about or could control. It just

woke u in me. It was a new asect of being.

!nd even now I have some challenges with this because I’ll be sitting in a worksho setting and

I’ll be doing a one on one with an individual in front of the grou. !nd we’re racticing

emotional connection. I’m facilitating. What’s haening right now, where are you feeling it in

your body& !nd everybody guessed that we’re all on the same common ground because we’ve

built u to that.

!nd an e$amle of this haened just earlier this year where someone was sitting ne$t to me and

we were doing the rocess I described, and suddenly my hands started shaking like this and I

could feel that energy was coming u. !nd inside I’m thinking like, )Ahoh What do I do& I

haven’t talked to anybody about this. Is this going to be okay& Is this going to freak someone

out& !re they going to think something’s wrong with me or this isn’t what they signed u for&*

"ut because I’ve been at this for many years, I let it haen and I reached over, and as the erson

was having a really difficult e$erience, I just ut my hand, not even on them, but just a few

inches away, and I let the energy move. !nd something that had been stuck for that erson

reviously just kind of burst forward and they released a lot of emotion. It was ainful. 'hey alsofelt really held in that moment.

%o after it ended and we took a break, here’s the interesting thing that maybe this has something

to do with the fact that I was at a yoga center and who was there isn’t your average oulation

member. "ut I wondered was anybody going to say anything& Was anybody going to object&

!nd the amaing thing was not a single erson said a word about it. I never heard about it

afterwards. It was meant to come through in that moment is how I interret this. !nd it felt right.

!nd I didn’t fight it. !nd so it also felt right for everybody else. !nd they saw how it was

integrated or organic to the e$erience.

%o, as each of us oen u to the fullness of who we are in cocreation with sirit, releasing the

reins more and more, showing u, cultivating our e$ansion more and more and more. We find

that what is ossible for us to be a erson and to be a community, to be the human race, is more

and more and more than we ever could have imagined reviously. %o as we come to a close here

in the Vulnerability Project, I want to invite you not just to release your resistance, but to kee

noticing where you’re called to get freer, to cultivate your own e$ansion, to see what is meant

to uni<uely come through you that hasn’t yet. "ecause that is the greatest gift you can give

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yourself and the world, to come fully alive. !nd in fact, what I believe is that we are beginning,

just beginning, to e$eriment of what we can be as individuals and as a secies.

!nd the key is emotional connection. 'he key is vulnerability. "ecause it’s vulnerability in a

hysical embodied emotional sense that allows what is ever meant to come through, whatever it

is that’s greatest in us to not just come through, not just do it’s magic, but also them to be

resected, honored, and celebrated. !nd when that haens, with one, but with esecially with

two and then even more so with the community, the result is awe. !we at what is, who we are,and what we can become.

%o that’s where I’d like to leave you on this art of the journey. "ut I’d also like to stay

connected with you, how you travel to the ne$t arts of the journey, to share with you in that

awe, the awe that we have that overwhelms us even at what is truly ossible when we’re

vulnerable.

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