Vulnerability...

Vulnerability is indispensable to enlightenment.

The thought-based self is a set of masks—mental mechanisms designed to protect a false self center. We hide behind our roles, identities, beliefs, fixed positions, opinions, and stories. We pretend to know the answers to questions when we really don’t. We pretend to be doing better than we really are.

We defend ourselves out of fear of being wrong. We avoid rejection at all costs. We point outward at what others are doing, which is a perfect way to avoid seeing what is arising inwardly—within the body and mind. These are all examples of the ways in which the ego-mind avoids exposure to being hurt. Ego is a mechanism of control—mind movement designed to avoid vulnerability.

By simply being awake to what is arising in the body and mind in this moment, we are vulnerable. It is a bit misleading to say that “we are vulnerable.” Being awake is not something “we” do. It is what we are.

By noticing that we are not the roles, identities, stories and all the other mechanisms of mind that create and maintain a false self, awareness is realized to be our true nature. Awareness is naturally open. In that openness, it is realized that there exists no real threat to awareness. Only a false self image would define itself as “vulnerable” or “under threat.” Awareness is simply awake to what is.


-Scott Kiloby, Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment