Inside Your Weakness Is Your Hidden Strength

The Vajra Heart teachings make the ancient and esoteric spiritual teachings accessible to the contemporary mind. In one sense a synthesis or blend of teachings that originate in Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, Shamanism, and Mystic Christianity, the Vajra Heart teachings arise as a current path to spiritual and psychological freedom. With meditation, inquiry, and the art of presence, these teachings address the core of human suffering and confusion, and introduce the Truth that is disguised by consensus reality and its viewpoints. What exists within the core of every being is innately free, alive, and precious. These teachings convey the understanding to live these innate possibilities in a real and full way. These teachings are intended to revolutionize the consciousness of those who come into contact with them, and spark a transformation in those ready to come Home.

Transcript

Today in yoga class I was talking a little bit about trust and letting go.

And you know that's a phrase that gets sort of used a lot in spiritual groups and circles,

The notion of letting go.

But there's a complication around the idea of letting go because what happens for most individuals is that they seek to let go of what is bothering them,

What is troubling them,

What is hurting them,

What is confusing them.

But in truth a person can't let go of something in that way.

And I'll tell you why and as soon as I say it you're going to know it to be true.

I say you can't not because it's not a possibility in you,

I say you can't because anything you've ever tried to let go of you couldn't let go of.

Hence it's return again and again and again.

And what usually happens in us is that we want to sharpen or hone our letting go skills so that we can get better at letting go of that thing that we want to let go of.

But you find that what we end up doing is that we just have more sophisticated means of tricking ourselves into thinking we let go of something only for it to return a week later,

A day later,

A month later,

A year later.

Because there's only really one method for letting something go and that is by fully and completely understanding it.

And it's impossible to understand something if you're trying to get rid of it,

If you're trying to push it away from you.

So we talk a lot in non-dual teachings or in these kinds of circles about disidentification.

And one of the ways that we speak about disidentification is our ability to discriminate between who we are and what we're experiencing.

And when we're able to have that discrimination we're able to see that if I'm having a thought in my head that because I can perceive that thought I'm not the thought.

Pretty simple,

Very basic actually.

Can have very deep connotations about it but it's very simple to simply observe a thought you're having in your head and recognize that there's a difference between the thought that's being thought and the awareness or consciousness which is perceiving it.

It's pretty easy discrimination to make.

In the practice of a disidentification what normally happens is that we try to create a space between ourselves and the thought or ourselves and the emotion or ourselves and some complicated experience that's arising in our field of experience.

And from what I've observed mostly we're frustrated by not being able to do the thing that spiritual teachings tell us we should do,

Let it go.

And the reason we can't accomplish that is because without even understanding what that thing is we don't really even know what it is that we're trying to get rid of or what we're trying to let go of.

We may think of it as our depression or our sadness or our confusion or our fear or our self-doubt,

Whatever it may be.

But the truth is that that thing that we're trying to let go of isn't what it seems to be.

And so as long as we're trying to let it go,

As long as we're trying to get rid of it,

We're not able to comprehend the enormous gift that that very thing has to offer us.

And until that gift is understood,

Until we can see what that thing we call fear or that thing we call self-doubt or that thing we call our anger,

What it actually is,

There's no possibility of being free of it.

So we have to understand that disidentification or letting go is not a technique of eliminating things from our experience.

Because if we have this attitude of eliminating things from our experience,

What will happen is that very eliminating attitude is still stuck to us.

So you might eliminate things temporarily,

But you still have the attitude of eliminating about you.

And guess what that attitude of eliminating will draw to you?

All the things you want to eliminate,

Right?

Because as long as you have the attitude or energy of elimination within you,

Then the things that you need to eliminate will be drawn toward it so that you can eliminate them.

And so we'll find ourselves in this endless cycle of things we want to eliminate and an eliminating attitude toward them,

Which mostly just goes in circles.

This all arises because of a loss of trust.

And when I say trust,

Ordinarily when we talk about trust in this setting,

It's very difficult to comprehend because we think of trust as something that happens between two things,

Right?

Like I trust you,

You trust me,

Or I trust my wife,

Or my wife trusts me,

Or I trust God and God trusts me,

Or all the various variations on trust.

But what we don't normally familiarize ourselves with,

Just because we're not aware of it,

Is a state of basic trust,

Right?

Where our trust isn't necessarily being aimed at any one person or any one thing.

It's not as though our trust develops because we take a teaching and we trust in it.

Because what will happen is that whatever we try to place our trust in,

Whether it's a person or a teaching or God,

That thing will change form.

And it'll show that what seemed trustworthy a moment ago is no longer trustworthy now,

Right?

You might have great trust in your friend or your partner,

And then tomorrow they do something that hurts you or deceives you,

Right?

Or you might come to a great trust or faith in God,

And then you find out maybe God doesn't even really exist.

And so,

Right?

Or you trust in yourself,

And then you find out you were totally off,

You missed the mark completely.

So what you thought was so trustworthy,

You weren't so trustworthy about.

And so we're left often with this unfulfilled pointer toward trust.

There's something deep in our being that knows trust is essential,

And yet we can't find anything that seems appropriate to trust completely,

Right?

And that's for good reason.

For very good reason.

Because when we trust in a conditional way,

Such as,

I trust you to treat me a certain way,

Or I trust you to fulfill certain expectations I have of you,

Certainly those conditions are going to be rearranged.

And if a condition is rearranged and your trust falls apart,

Then your trust wasn't as big and as complete as it could be,

Right?

So take that same outer circumstance of trying to trust in a person or God or a teaching or a philosophy,

And now apply it to your inner state in the same way as we were just talking.

The way in which we try to trust certain states of our being or certain experiences within us and the way we try to rely on those.

And all of this becomes relevant.

In recent weeks I've been talking about we're a lot like Swiss cheese,

Right?

A couple of times I've mentioned we're a lot like Swiss cheese.

We're full of holes.

Or maybe we're more like a wiffle ball,

Right?

We've got a lot of holes in us.

And on the inside also empty,

Spacious.

And what we normally are doing is we're trying to plug our holes.

We're trying to put something in the hole so that it doesn't seem,

The absence that's there in that hole doesn't seem so big,

So it doesn't seem so intimidating or so hard or so difficult.

And normally we trust a great deal in this process of plugging our holes,

You know?

Just like if someone tells you,

Hey,

You're pretty awesome,

You're going to trust that person,

Right?

If someone tells you you're an idiot,

You're not going to trust that person.

Why not?

Well,

One plugs your holes successfully and one reveals your holes successfully.

And so we tend to seek friends and companions and teachings and whatever else,

A God that plugs our holes.

And we can see though that over time that the more we get our holes plugged,

The more we have someone or something that is going to make us temporarily feel better about ourselves or our experience,

That it's always a fleeting experience.

And that at some point whatever we've lodged into that hole comes popping out only to reveal that hole again,

Right?

The hole here is much like what I was speaking about earlier of the things we're trying to get rid of.

We're trying to get rid of our holes,

Right?

Every fear,

Doubt,

Insecurity,

Confusion,

Sense of lack,

Every single one of those in us is the existence of some kind of hole,

Right?

That when we touch it,

It feels scary or intimidating or painful.

Often it's connected to a sense of inadequacy in us,

Of some kind of inadequacy.

I'm not strong enough.

I'm not big enough.

I'm not smart enough.

I'm not intelligent enough.

I'm not successful enough.

I'm not capable enough.

I'm not peaceful enough,

Whatever.

And those are painful things to look at,

Those painful experiences.

And the importance of working with them,

The importance of seeing these holes is ultimately I hesitate to say this because as soon as I say it,

It's going to be a hopeful message that's going to be another hole plugger.

The importance of seeing these holes is to recognize that they don't exist.

The importance of understanding the things that we're trying to get rid of is so that we can see that they actually don't exist.

The fear we're busy running from only exists because we're running from it.

The self-doubt we have only exists because we're avoiding it,

Right?

And so what we start to see about our experience is that the complications that we experience,

The difficulties,

The pain,

The turmoil is not because there's actually some fear there inside of you or some doubt or some confusion.

It's your relationship to it.

And as we get onto that,

We start to see that these things we call our obstacles are a lot less like what we think they are and a lot more like things that we didn't even know we had within us.

I don't know if I said that clearly.

In other words,

These holes that we find in ourselves,

These places that we're pushing away and trying to avoid become portals,

Doorways,

Openings into parts of ourselves that we've lost contact with.

The relevance of space is that any time that we face some kind of inadequacy in ourselves,

Where we don't feel strong enough or smart enough or intelligent enough or whatever it may be,

It will always include an experience of space because there will be the absence of what you think you don't have.

If I don't have enough strength when it comes to a task that feels that where I sense that I need to be strong for that moment or that task,

I'll feel that there's an absence of that in me.

So it will feel to me as though I have a hole inside of myself where strength should be but isn't.

Instead,

It's replaced by strength's opposite,

Which is weakness.

So when a circumstance calls for my strength,

I'll feel weak.

And I don't want to touch that weakness.

I don't want to go near that weakness because it's uncomfortable and scary not only to think of myself as weak but to feel that I'm weak.

And so there's a hole.

I'll just go online.

I'll find a quote that tells me I'm strong.

I'll plug it in that hole and get on with things.

Then I'll just have enough to get me through this experience onto the next thing.

But then,

Damn it,

There's tomorrow.

That sense of weakness will arise again.

You're weak.

You're pathetic.

You're not enough.

You're not strong enough.

You're not capable enough.

And so normally what we're looking for is a good,

Strong plug for that hole,

Something that we can push in that hole and just never worry about it again,

Something that will make us feel so strong that we will never encounter a moment of weakness again.

Wouldn't that be nice?

But there it is again,

Tomorrow or next week or the week after.

This feeling of weakness arises.

And we keep thinking,

Damn it,

Why can I not get rid of this weakness?

I guess I'm not reading the right teaching.

I guess I'm not meditating hard enough.

I guess I'm not whatever.

And so we usually look for some new strategy to plug in the hole.

But what we don't usually do is go right into that hole of weakness with our whole consciousness,

With our whole being,

To examine it,

To explore it,

To actually face it,

Meet it.

Welcome it.

Befriend it even.

And what we can see when we do,

When we are willing to go and meet the weakness or the fear or the doubt,

Is that it never turns out to be the thing we think it is.

Inside your weakness is your strength hidden.

But if you don't ever look at your weakness and experience it all the way,

You'll never find that out.

And guess what it takes to encounter your weakness?

To face it.

Strength.

It takes strength and courage to meet your weakness.

So guess what has to happen for you to actually have that moment of facing your weakness?

You've got to have the very thing that you think you don't have.

And this is how brilliant our inner being is designed.

That by facing the very absence,

The very thing you think you don't have,

You reinstate the thing you want.

You reinstate the missing link.

You reinstate the missing thing.

We can't find that out if we're busy pushing away and trying to get rid of certain things.

It's an interesting paradox that exists within us.

It's an interesting paradox in inner work that we recover all that we are and all that we have lost contact with through facing the opposites,

Through facing what seems to be an absence of courage,

An absence of intelligence,

An absence of guidance,

An absence of peace.

But that's the last place we want to look.

We don't want to look there because if you look there it all just seems like a dark abyss.

I don't see any peace in there.

I don't see any joy in there.

Why would I go there?

I see joy over there on that person.

That person over there looks like joy to me,

Not that deep bottomless well where I don't see anything.

And yet we're dared in a way to go and look right into the abyss,

To look right into the very place where peace seems to be the least.

It's like you can look around at all of existence and there will at least be some glimmer of peace.

And if you look into that bottomless well,

There's nothing there.

There's no possible way peace is existing there.

And so it takes a somewhat crazy soul,

Somewhat courageous and crazy soul to go about looking in all the holes,

To go about exploring every dark cave,

Every bottomless pit,

To bring about,

To reinstate all that we are truly intended to be.

And of course along the way we will face innumerable complications,

Innumerable ways of misunderstanding our experience.

Reviews

Perfect way to see it.

Enlightening, soul-soothing, and true. A talk worth returning to again and again.

Hope to find a guided mediation to support the teaching

I love the Swiss cheese analogy. It really helped me understand the concept of needing to face your "weaknesses" and not just plug the hole with a band-aid.
Glad I found your talk.

Thanks 🙂

Thank you so much.. I feel I want to listen to mooooorrrreeee

Thanks, I will peep through those holes with love and curiosity 💕

A great eye opener and encouragement to go exploring down the personal rabbit holes..👌🏼😊🐰✨

Very inspiring and clear explanation. For me it induces a feeling of gratitude and a sense of humility towards life. Thank you for sharing your insights.

So great. I loved how he flipped the perspective on what we run from, as though we end up turning the coin over and seeing that we live within this dualistic nature and really the joy of living is being within the experience of what we have in this moment and within us.

Pure and simple enlightenment. Thank you 🙏🏼

I just can’t yet see how it is that this weakness will turn into a strength. All the teachings and examples are marvelous, thank u. But this final part really gets to me and I can’t figure it out or understand it. I get everything else and I agree so deeply. But how and when is it that looking into this abiss turns into a strenght? It might be important... for life. But turned into a strenght? Still thank u so much 🙏🏻💛

Very clear description and such an interesting analogy of comparing ourselves with swiss cheese. I enjoyed the talk.

Mind blowing, you are awesome! Thank you!

That was very profound. Thank you for helping me open my mind to see our "holes" differently 💜

Have taken a lot from this talk. resonates a lot with me
thank you 🙏🏼 🙏🏼

Truth, spoken clearly & pointing in the direction of awakening.

I already have that which I seek... thank you 🙏🏽

such an awesome insight! a paradox....one I can now work with-being a courageous and crazy soul!
namaste 🙏🏽

I
was resistant to what I was hearing. I will need to listen again

I loved this talk. Profoundly simple reminder for true transformation. One of my teachers said that true letting go happens spontaneously, not when we put efforts toward it, but when we (often suddenly) don’t have to hold on any longer.