Vulnerability and Love

One of the things, i was really afraid about coming out here was being all alone and being lonely (because they are two different things). When I spoke to my mother one evening, I shared this fear with her, and she said she didn't see why I was worried, because in her mind I had already done all of this before: going away doing things on my own, for my own. Leaving home, moving cities, finding a place of my own to stay in, finding my own rhythm in life, friends I could depend on when I needed someone right by my side. And doing that over and over again. So what was there to fear? And the more I thought about that, the more courage it gave me. I began to trust my decision to leave everything for a month to do this training. And besides, if I do feel alone and lonely, I'll deal with it. Not new feelings, I've dealt with it before and can do so again.

Leigh, my teacher, and I had this conversation about feeling lonely, and having this overwhelming sense of you're all alone in this whole wide world. And that thought and feeling descends over you when you're in situations like the one I was going to put myself in. Because that is when you're truly vulnerable. You're opening up to all these different people you've never met in life and sharing some pretty hardcore stuff with them.You're opening yourself up to all these different philosophies and teachings, and who knows how that will affect you, what you will connect with, what you will relate to, or when that "ah ha!" moment will hit you, what will make all the things  you held to be true seem shaky all of a sudden, and what you'd never really considered suddenly become the center and main-hold of your entire being? So when you're opening yourself up to all that.... you're being vulnerable. And there is a huge chance that you'll end up feeling like you're all alone, because you'll be discovering all these new things and have no one to share it with. Well, I mean, no one to sit down and talk to face to face. We all have people we can 'talk' to, but for me, unless there is a human connection, a face I can touch and a voice I can hear from next to me or across a table, I don't really feel like I'm sharing. I still have this blog ..... And  I can write some of what I'm thinking about on here, but of course, there'll be a lot more stuff that I'll be confronting that I won't be putting out here.

So how does one deal with that? It's only been 5 days and I wasn't expecting a major breakdown so soon, but a part of me feels like that breakdown is not going to come. Leigh, at the end of our discussion said, maybe when we keep saying in yoga "you are good enough"  for whatever you can do, whether you get the full expression of the asana or not, it actually also means that you are good enough by yourself. You are enough for yourself... And if you have that core strong, you'll be ok wherever you are because you still have yourself.  This is not to say that I don't value all the other factors in my life. They are a HUGE part of what makes life worth living. Instead all I'm saying is, I'm ok with being alone with myself if the need ever arises. I've often come across people who can't be alone, and need to be around people all the time. I understand that need and I have some very close friends who are that way. But I would go mad if I were surrounded by people all the time, I need to be alone (and often for longer than being with people).

So I thought about that as well, that If I am ok with being alone and by myself, and if I had done it before, why should I be afraid of coming to Ubud then. But then, when has life ever been so simple. Knowing me I would have felt lonely anyway. I'm a bit of a drama queen like that. Again, it's only been 5 days, not even a whole week, but the reason I am at peace here, is because of Ubud. We spoke about it in class the other day after our Shiva-Shakti exercise ( or before, I can't remember now ), about how Ubud and even our studio at yoga barn is our container, that's holding us up and supporting us. I've said this before about bali and about the feeling of home-coming I experience everytime I come to Ubud, and maybe that is why I haven't felt all alone here (yet). Emily said this wonderful thing the other day, about how the opposite of loneliness is being contained by everything, to see love in everything, to even maybe see your struggles as your container of love. It's a heavy thought, and it makes sense to me and I can identify with it now, because of the conversations we've had in class, so it might seem a little abstract out here. But take it as something to think about.

This post is really turning out to be a little philosophical, ain't it? Maybe just the mood I am in tonight. My new friend, Yoska was talking about vulnerability and how we're always led to believe that being vulnerable is a negative thing. And I can identify with that thought, because coming from India, the last thing you want to expose to the outside world, is your vulnerability. You are taught, by your parents, your family, in school, to be 'strong'. And being strong and hard are seen as opposites to being vulnerable, almost as if vulnerable and weak were synonyms. When actually they are not. This evening, we all sat down in a circle and as a part of our "Voice Module" had to speak to the group about how we were feeling and what our thoughts were about what we were encountering, in Ubud and at the training. And everyone, spoke about how they were so afraid of being vulnerable, but how actually, it is not all that bad, and that they do, on the contrary, feel safe opening up to people and sharing their stories and experiences and their life with people they've only met 5 days ago. Everyone spoke about how everyday, they are shedding a layer of themselves, this layer that you put on, this facade that you cover yourself with every time you leave the safety of your home, because who knows  what or who is waiting to rob you of yourself out there. And that for a change being vulnerable feels light and easy and seems natural, as if we were born to be this way and why would anyone choose to be any other way. Yoska shared this beautiful TED talk with me about the power of being vulnerable and it's a pretty good one. Brene Brown talks about how we are so afraid of putting ourselves out there and that most often the people who feel like they are loved and feel like they belong are the ones that think that they are worthy of it. It's just as simple as that.

Adithya, my best friend in this whole wide world, and I often talk about love this way. Both of us are hardcore romantics, who believe in the power of soulmates and we usually give ourselves completely when we are in love, simply because we know no other way of being in love. So, if we like someone, we usually go up to them and tell them that we like them, we ask them out, we write them letters, and what not. It has worked and not worked for us in the past, but the point is, we will never stop being that way, because we don't know any other way of being. And that's what I need to understand about vulnerability, that it is the natural way of being. Not to say that we have to go around sharing our deepest stories with everyone on the streets, but meet the people you meet in life with complete genuineness and offer them the best of what you have to offer. Trust in your own worthiness and in their worthiness.

The other thing Adi and I usually talk about, depending on who wants that pep talk in life, is the power of believing in your dreams. We are both huge believers in the lessons that the alchemist tries to teach, that if you really want something, the universe will conspire to make it happen. And today I shared this with my group when we did the sharing exercise. About how when I was in Ubud last May for a retreat, with some brilliant friends and two lovely lovely teachers, all I wanted to do was come back and be here for a longer period and do whatever calls out to me. And because i first came to Ubud with a yoga retreat, I can't not associate ubud with yoga, apart from the fact that once you are here, you quite naturally feel it yourself. Like I said, it calls out to you. So, the universe, made it possible, it gave me the tools, the resources, the encouragement and lastly the courage for me to sign up for this training and live in Ubud for a month. It's Maktub, as Adi and I would say. This journey, this training, Ubud and all these people I'm meeting were written in my life and I'm so thankful for that. I have the universe to thank for, a higher being perhaps who is guiding my decisions, and lastly me, myself, because I made it happen.

I should've maybe written this earlier along with the 'Love is Everywhere' mantra, but I can't be bothered about the structural format of what is already a very vague post! By the way, every time i say or type, love is everywhere, I automatically think of the movie Love Actually and the song "Love is all around me", sigh, me and my movie madness. Anyhow, Emily spoke about what happens when love is absent. That's when all the bad things happen. And I've experienced it in my friendships, in my relationships, in my job, in my physical yoga practice, in my meditation, even when I bake! When love is absent, it just stops being beautiful, you stop seeing the purpose or beauty in life or in anything you do or any situation you are in or the person you are with. When I'm not feeling love in my friendship for whatever reason, it often strains the relationship and cracks begin to show, we start to disconnect with each other, we fight. When I'm not in love with my job, I suck at it, to an extent where I make mistakes and someone has to point it out to me, before I start pulling it together. When I'm not in love with yoga, my poses are all over the place, I won't be able to do a simple forward bend! When I'm not in love with my meditation practice, my concentration and focus is all over the place and i usually snap out of it quicker. When I fell out of love in my last relationship, it made it bad and very sad for everyone. What do you do when love is absent? It causes disharmony, violence, heartache, lying, cheating, theft, greediness, jealousy. All of the things that you're not supposed to do according to the yamas or the yogic code of ethical behaviour. You could avoid doing all of those things and putting yourself and everyone out of all that misery, if you believe in that one simple phrase, that I'm finding to be true day by day in this training : that love actually is everywhere.

The last thing I will talk about is this thing that a fellow student made us do in class, he held up a book, a random notebook. He held it up for everyone to see and said, 'imagine this to be some thing or person or place that you love, and with that thought, look at it with all the love you have in your heart for it, just look at it with all that emotion, directing all that energy to it'. And then he put the book down, and said, 'continue to feel whatever you were feeling in your heart and hold it there'. And it was magical. All of us, about 30 folks, were directing all of our love to this one mundane object, and then it was gone, but it didn't matter, the love we felt and that was emanating from our hearts stayed and you could feel it in the class, that heat, that energy. What a wonderful way to show and feel that there is so much power within us to love and so much love within us to share and spread. If only, we were conscious of that and if only it started being a part of our being, so that we don't have to be conscious of it anymore..

I'll end with this Rumi quote :

"When you seek love with all your heart, you shall find it's echoes ......in the universe"

Namaste