Vulnerability & Lovingkindess

<p>Lovingkindness is foundational to cultivating wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness practice. A lot of people feel like mindfulness is a peaceful and relatively sterile thing where we are aware of our surroundings, but I’ve found that at deeper levels of mindfulness, there is also an element of love. </p><p> </p><p>So yes, we can mindfully move through the world with love. But when you’ve had life challenges, that can be hard to do, right? It takes work. We long to love - to be <i>vulnerable</i> - without holding back! But when we’ve been hurt we want to protect. And we may have even been taught to hold back our love by our cuttural upbringing.</p><p> </p><p>I was doing some awesome introspection recently and I realized that despite all of the growth and breakthroughs I have experienced over my life - and especially recently - I still have this armor around my heart - even towards those I <strong>want</strong> to fully love without reservation. </p><p> </p><p>We think we’re <strong>protecting</strong> ourselves when we hold back, but it’s the opposite. The <strong>true</strong> protection, the <strong>true</strong> refuge, is to love fully. Think about it – if someone happened to someone you love, would you think, “Wow, I’m so glad I held back because now this hurts less?”</p><p> </p><p>No.</p><p> </p><p>The true refuge isn’t in protection – it is in vulnerability and in loving fully. If you lose someone you love, you will be glad you loved fully - no holds barred.</p><p> </p><p>And I think we really all want to experience that - being <strong>free</strong> to love fully, but it’s when we feel threatened that we stop being open and present. Like when we feel unsafe that someone might disappoint us, or hurt us or that we might lose them. And depending on our culture or our family, we have been conditioned toward different degrees of separation or belonging. </p><p> </p><p>So we begin to get to familiar with that threshold, and we try to control the story, and we armor up.</p><p> </p><p>Usually it’s a deep di