The purpose of BraveSpace is to generate embodied spaces save enough to take the risk of being vulnerable.  What makes vulnerability a worthwhile goal?  This was the topic of last weekend’s BraveSpace Focus Group ‘Beta Test’.  (There’s another next Wednesday Nov 1^st @6pm MT).  Here’s some of what came up in the discussion.

Vulnerability is the door to intimacy; to being real and present in relationship.  One participant in last week’s group shared an image of a hand reaching out inviting them to ‘the other side’.  What is the other side, I asked?  It is the authenticity which arises from and generates the possibility of oneness—with self, others, and the divine wholeness of all-that-is.  This tenderness is not available when we are busy protecting ourselves, positioning ourselves to take power-over, or projecting ourselves out of the present place and time.  In this way vulnerability is framed by the willingness to recognize all that we do not know, as well as the willingness to listen and to claim what we do know.  I find my own vulnerability these days in this second part—to be willing to stand for what I see, and willing to be humiliated if that’s what comes.  If I use ‘not knowing’ as an excuse to not be involved in life then that is guardedness, not vulnerability.  I do that sometimes.  I am vulnerable when I include myself in ‘us’, offering myself from a place of caring.  

Vulnerability is essential in the eros of creativity.  To allow my weakness, show my underbelly, be raw, messy, and willing to be humiliated are prerequisites to eros of all types, from sexuality to the pragmatic creativity of writing this post.  To imagine the possibility of something that I have not yet experienced requires me to be vulnerable.  I think this is because such imaginings do not come to pass unless we long for them.  Longings arise from depth beyond the desires of the egoic self.  In my longing I uncover something within that I cannot control, and I yield to it.  Vulnerability arises when I admit I cannot control of my longing—only how it is expressed.

I’m personally invested in and grateful for vulnerability because I wish to support a communal transition from a force-oriented paradigm of domination, where power is manufactured by privileging self over other, to an inquiry-oriented paradigm of co-creation, where power is revealed by being with what is and creating in tandem with ‘other’.  Co-creation is vulnerable.  The transition to co-creation is nothing new—it is in many ways the teaching of Jesus, Buddah, and so many others, yet we are at a key point in our evolution:  We have the ability and possible inclination to commit global pan-species suicide.  There are no ‘other’ people at a planetary scale.  Perhaps there has always been war, and yet it seems apparent that if anyone is to survive there cannot continue to be.  We are vulnerable either way, but one path consciously embraces it.

I want to honor that vulnerability is not always available to me.  There are conditions for vulnerability, and it is important to have boundaries that match the conditions present.  To find our own vulnerability, and to encourage it in others, we cannot just stand up and declare it.  Rather, vulnerability requires setting up conditions that make it safe enough to take conscious risks.  It is a process and navigation, and the principles of BraveSpace are my take on what’s required.