Life is precious and beautiful.
And here we are experiencing this classroom,
This journey against a supernatural backdrop that is disguised from view.
In this podcast,
I am exploring all things mystical and poetic and exploring how to live our lives in a way that is here on Earth and engaged and yet always beyond,
Transcendent.
This is in the world,
Not of it.
Today I want to talk a little bit about one of my Insight Timer posts.
It was a meditation and talk I gave a few years back that got some attention and I ended up getting a fair amount of questions and comments on this particular piece.
The piece was titled,
Inside of Your Weakness is Your Hidden Strength.
And so I thought I would go into that just a little bit today because it's such an important subject.
We all have within our ego structure a certain degree of feeling weak,
Inadequate,
Meaningless,
These more nihilistic kind of experiences that sit at the core of ego structure.
So when the circumstances are ripe,
When something happens where we feel that we are inadequate or that we don't have the capacity to meet with the circumstance effectively,
It'll evoke these corresponding feelings of weakness,
Inadequacy and such.
Normally what we do when we're faced with this kind of experience is we want to hide from it or we want to conquer it.
So what typically happens for individuals is they begin to employ strategies to overcome this sense of weakness or to get rid of this sense of weakness.
And if we look in spiritual and psychological work,
We often find these strategies unconsciously encouraging a sense of avoidance of these qualities.
But when we don't avoid the sense of weakness,
When we don't avoid our inadequacy,
But instead courageously and boldly face toward it,
There's a transmutation that happens.
And this transmutation can only take place really through the courageous,
Bold engagement with our sense of weakness and inadequacy.
If we're looking for a meditation technique,
A teaching,
A practice that will help us to overcome the weakness,
There is an inherent flaw in this approach because the approach itself is coming from a place.
It's oriented within us in such a way that we feel that this sense of weakness is something that is literally something to be afraid of,
Something that is hindering our being.
And understandably,
Because it's painful,
It's hard,
It's difficult.
But if we begin to treat it as something genuinely threatening,
That we need a strategy to overcome,
We empower this sense of weakness with some kind of force that it really doesn't have.
In essence,
When we experience this weakness or sense of inadequacy,
All we're really experiencing is a frailty in our ego structure.
If we can experience that and see that objectively and encounter it with some kind of courage,
With some kind of strength,
Then that weakness itself is a medicine.
It's,
As Rumi said,
It's the hurt which blesses you.
It's the problem that brings you to the solution.
So we shouldn't regard our weakness or inadequacy as some kind of problem to be overcome.
That's how most people are treating these types of feelings.
And of course,
As they're written into the body as residues,
Elements of our childhood,
Elements of our past that we have incorporated and fixated on,
It's no wonder we want to get rid of these experiences because they are painful,
They're hard,
They're difficult,
They're depleting.
But if we can see that it's our approach to this weakness that is the majority of the problem,
The majority of what is causing such distress in us,
Then we can begin to see that working with weakness,
Working with inadequacy is something that can build the essential strength and vitality,
Courage,
That is the very thing we're seeking to find when we seek to overcome the weakness and inadequacy.
So this is an alchemical process.
It's a tantric process of turning toward and engaging with the sense of weakness and inadequacy in order to transmute.
But there's a careful point in this,
Because if we use even that to try to get rid of the weakness or inadequacy,
We find ourselves in the same trap.
So we have to stop treating this weakness and inadequacy as a problem,
Something that is an obstacle,
And begin to see that it really is genuinely an opportunity for the integration of our strength,
Our power,
And to bring about those qualities within us of boldness and courage and the life force that comes with those things.
Because often with weakness or inadequacy,
There's a depletion of life force.
So using this approach to turn toward and engage with these qualities brings about the very life force that we're seeking.
And when our life force is freed up this way,
The weakness we've been experiencing,
The inadequacy we've been experiencing,
It ceases to be a problem in the same way.
So when we feel this way,
It's a rich opportunity.
It's a tremendous possibility for a powerful integration to take place.
We shouldn't miss that opportunity by trying to overcome weakness or inadequacy.
We should see this as the fertile soil in which our vitality may grow and expand and flourish.
