So I'm continuing a series this morning,
Sacred Intimacy,
About getting closer with our life,
About a more intimate relationship with God,
About closer relationships with ourselves and with one another.
And the topic today is mindful vulnerability,
Aka how not to be a doormat.
I at least want to stop being a welcome doormat.
You're gonna have to work damn hard if you're gonna walk on me.
I had a powerful graduation in personal growth recently.
I woke up early and went into the living room to sit in my chair and meditate.
And about 15 minutes in,
The alarm in my room started to go off.
You idiot,
I said to myself.
You forgot to turn off your alarm.
And immediately another voice,
Not angry but very firm,
Said do not talk to him like that.
You have no idea what he's been through.
Now this voice that calls me an idiot,
Its intentions are good.
Its intention has always been to keep me from doing what I believe I am unfit to be able to do.
It's trying to protect me.
If it had a moniker,
It'd be that great statement from Mark Twain,
It is better to let people think you're dumb than to speak and remove all doubt.
But this other voice,
This other voice I had never heard before,
This voice knew who I was.
It was even aware of what I've been through.
And it had compassion.
It had compassion for me.
And it helped me realize that I had graduated to a new level of personal growth.
No longer do I need to rely on a voice to tell me to restrict bringing forth who I am into this world.
What I do need is a voice that recognizes that I have put myself into this world and deserve compassion and respect for doing so.
No longer do I need to rely on a voice that tells me the risk of expressing and sharing who I am.
What I do need is a voice that tells me of the risk of not expressing and bringing forth who I am.
No longer do I need a voice to remind me of my limitations,
But a voice to remind myself of what my limitations are and that I'm worthy anyways.
I am life worthy.
I am love worthy.
No longer do I need a voice to tell me of the futile practice of trying to control every aspect of my life out of fear that it's going to fall apart.
What I do need is a voice that tells me that there is an intelligence greater than I am and that it's okay to live in trust.
Trust.
I graduated into a new level of mindful vulnerability that allows me to live a more dignified life with compassion for myself.
Elizabeth Gilbert,
The Eat Pray Love Lady,
Wrote a wonderful book on creativity called Big Magic,
Where she talks about not disassociating the many voices of ourselves,
But recognizing where they're coming from and how we can integrate them together.
And she has this beautiful letter that she addresses to fear.
And I thought it'd be cooler to have one of our teens read it than for me to share it with you today.
Her name is Rose,
And thank you so much,
Rose,
For taking the time to read this to us today.
Let's hear it for her.
Dearest fear,
Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together.
I understand you'll be joining us because you always do.
I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life and that you take your job seriously.
Apparently,
Your job is to induce complete panic whenever I'm about to do anything interesting.
And may I say,
You are superb at your job.
So by all means,
Keep doing your job if you feel you must.
But I will also be doing my job on this road trip,
Which is to work hard and stay focused.
And creativity will be doing its job,
Which is to remain stimulating and inspiring.
There is plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us,
So make yourself at home.
But understand this,
Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making decisions along the way.
I recognize and respect that you are part of the family,
And so I will never exclude you from our activities.
But still,
Your suggestions will never be followed.
You're allowed to have a seat and you're allowed to have a voice,
But you are not allowed to have a vote.
You're not allowed to touch the roadmaps.
You're not allowed to suggest detours.
But above all else,
My dear all-familiar friend,
You are absolutely forbidden to drive.
Thank you,
Rose.
So much better coming from her.
There's nothing wrong with having all sorts of voices in your head.
It's the ones that you're listening to that steers you wrong or steers you upwards.
At Mile High Church,
We are a positive-thinking people.
We are hopeful people and optimistic people.
The world needs us,
Right?
And yet,
Without discernment,
And maybe some of you have noticed this,
Some people can easily take advantage of those of us with a very positive disposition.
One might think to themselves that they can get away with being negative because we're going to focus on the good.
Some of us have maybe even discovered in this teaching that because we seek to be so grounded in love and seek to be so forgiving,
That there are some people that are perhaps even very close to us that might express more anger than appropriate because they know we're going to love them anyway.
Who may do something wrong more intentionally because they're certain we're going to forgive them.
Am I the only one who's ever had that experience?
Our philosophy is very important,
But in order to be effective,
We need this quality of mindful vulnerability.
This quality of mindful vulnerability,
The first aspect of it that I want to talk about today,
Is it's centered in love.
Mindful vulnerability is centered in love.
We believe here as an article of faith that there is such a thing as a presence of love in this universe that has no opposite.
That there is a dominant power of love in this universe that has no opposite.
Is there a love at a level of awareness that's opposite is hate?
Okay.
Or a love with a level of understanding that's opposite is fear?
Okay.
But there's also this this totality of love that has no opposite.
And when we center ourselves in it,
It speaks through us.
It guides us.
When we put love at the center,
It centers everything.
And we see clearly and can become a transparent presence for that love within us.
Rilke said,
Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance.
And have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
When I initially wrote this talking point,
I wrote stay centered in love.
And I'm glad I caught that and removed that.
Because love is not about staying centered.
It's not about how long you stay centered in love.
It's about how quick you get back there when you get thrown off center.
The consequences of loving fiercely,
Fully loving,
Is that you're gonna live closer to fear.
You're gonna live closer to anger.
You're gonna live closer to grief and to loss.
Perhaps even closer to jealousy.
The trick is to not set up camp in these.
It's when love leads us in the direction of even a negative experience,
That anger,
That fear,
That grief,
Is just a call to get back to love.
To get back to that center.
And when we can love from that center,
Life has a way of moving forward for us.
Of bringing forth healing where we didn't think it was possible.
Of bringing forth the possible when we only saw limitations.
I have someone who I love deeply who was addicted to heroin.
And I think we live in a time and era now where there's no such thing as a family that isn't touched by addiction.
And working so many years with so many families hurting because of addiction,
There's no right answers.
That's what I've learned.
There's no right answers on what to do or how to always respond.
But with this particular loved one,
I had to make the choice that was right for me,
Which was the best way I could love that person,
Was to cut them out of my life.
I was watching them lie.
I was watching them steal from people who were trusting them.
And I was beginning,
You see,
To lose the belief that they were capable of getting better.
And so I had to cut this person out of my life because if I was going to be the last person on earth to know that they could heal and survive this terrible allergy to heroin,
That they could get better.
And I'm so thankful not because of my change,
But because of so many different circumstances that this person is still alive and active and that we have a harmonious relationship.
The point I want to make is that being centered in love sometimes means making really tough and courageous decisions.
It's not about just being warm and fuzzy.
It's about having the courage to stand in the truth of who you are without allowing anyone to walk on you.
Mindful vulnerability is about being centered in love,
And it's also about compassionate self-awareness.
Mindful vulnerability is all about compassionate self-awareness.
Those of us who've been walked on before,
It's not that there's bad people out there.
It's just there's people who have an awareness that's a little off.
They have a story that isn't serving them,
And so they can show up as toxic in our lives.
And maybe we've had a relationship.
It could be a romantic relationship.
It could be with a member of our family,
A co-worker,
A friend.
Do you ever have that relationship where there are problems and issues are so big there's no room for yours?
And if we're not careful,
We'll allow them to walk all over us by chasing them wherever they go.
Here's the drama.
Here's the upset.
Here's the thing that they're doing that's making me so angry,
And we chase them and chase them and don't realize that the more we're chasing,
The more we're abandoning ourselves.
And so it's time.
Part of mindful vulnerability is the saying,
When I'm caught up thinking about you,
I'm going to pivot right back to me.
My problems and issues may have not contributed to where this relationship is,
But I want to be in relationships better,
Stronger,
More transparent.
So whenever I think of you,
I'm going to get back to me.
Compassionate self-awareness.
Now I'm guessing that none of us here want to be doormat,
Right?
But for the one or two that may still be interested,
Here are three things you can do to ensure that you'll be a doormat.
The first is to surrender the validity of your own experience for the perception of reality of the other person.
It's to buy into their story about you without recognizing the validity of your own experience.
Now,
Sometimes in an experience,
We're in story,
But that's okay.
It's not about always being right and true.
It's about honoring our own experience of our relationships and our circumstances.
And if those aren't honored,
Then we open ourselves up to being taken advantage of.
Where someone says,
Hey,
That bad thing I did to you,
It's because you did this.
That inappropriate thing that I did,
Well,
I wouldn't have done it if you didn't do this.
The person who's walking all over us does not want to take any accountability for their feet.
And so they blame the mat.
Don't put your mat out there by owning your experience.
Second thing,
Second way,
Is by pushing all of your needs and wants underneath the mat so that people can walk on those too.
By not taking the time to articulate our own needs,
Our own wants,
Not only do the people with lesser awareness walk all over us,
But the people who don't mean or intend to walk on us wind up walking on us then too because we haven't taken the time to find the courage to communicate our needs and wants.
And the person is trying to love us,
Trying to meet our needs,
But they don't know what it is.
And so it's just about getting their meets and then we're all feeling tired and trampled upon.
Compassionate self-awareness is about taking the time.
What do I need?
What do I want?
Not how can someone else give it to me,
But how can I meet that need for myself right here and right now?
The third way to ensure that others will walk all over you is to not understand your own hurts.
To not take the time to understand your own hurts.
It sounds kind of weird,
But maybe you can relate to this.
When I fail to understand a hurt that I own or have experienced,
I am bound to seek to create other experiences to try to understand it.
I've gotten into that place where I feel this pain and I haven't dug into it,
I haven't processed it,
And I unintentionally create other experiences to have it right here in my face to try to understand it,
To try to heal it,
To try to move through it.
And I think we all know hurts are hurts.
There are wounds and there are scars,
And our goal is to get to that place of scar where we can heal and be a presence for others because of the wounds that we've been given.
And for some of us,
We grew up with terrible wounds,
Traumas.
For many of us,
They may not be that traumatic,
But they're there.
Growing up with a good mother who wasn't emotionally intelligent or took things so personally that if you expressed negative emotions,
They were immediately dismissed.
Perhaps you had a great sense of security with your father,
But your father traveled for work all the time and he didn't quite realize that whenever he left to take a trip,
It left you feeling unsafe and hurt.
Perhaps your first serious relationship,
Your partner decided that the relationship wasn't right for them and instead of being honest about it,
They exited in an unhealthy and inappropriate way.
Perhaps you were that person who exited the relationship in an unhealthy or inappropriate way.
These hurts happen for us and in order for the wound to become scar,
We need to understand them.
We have to take that time to listen to them and we have to courageously communicate to help respond to how to care for ourselves when we're in those hurts.
If you do any of those three things,
You can create yourself into that victim of allowing others to walk on you,
But if you can limit those things,
If you can articulate those needs,
If you can understand your hurts,
If you can honor the validity of your own experience and be willing to change your mind,
You can strengthen yourself in such a way that you're a powerful presence not only for you,
But in helping to train those around you how to best love you and how to better love themselves.
And that leads me to this last point about mindful vulnerability is it's about courageous communication.
It's about courageous communication.
Mindful vulnerability is being centered in love because it allows us to be transparent to the best within ourselves.
Mindful vulnerability is about compassionate self-awareness because by being a safe sanctuary for ourselves,
We bring forth the best of who we are.
Courageous communication is mindful vulnerability because it's communicating how to best love us and it helps us know how to best love.
It's about boundaries.
Blockages are how we keep love out of our lives.
Boundaries is the fruit of self-awareness where we're able to communicate with others,
This is how you can love me best and please tell me how I can best love you best so that we can grow and be closer and more intimate with one another.
It takes that level of self-awareness and the courage to communicate it.
It's okay to need to feel safe before you share.
It's okay to want to know that you're loved before you share something difficult.
It's okay to want space to talk about an issue that's bothering you.
You deserve to be heard.
Are these unnecessary or inappropriate boundaries?
Come on.
No.
They're simple and yet so many of us abandon ourselves and allow these boundaries to be taken advantage of.
It can happen in big ways,
It can happen in in little ways.
One of the things my spouse and I realized when we got married in this experience of cohabitating is we had different understandings of this thing called home.
And this is only my interpretation of my spouse but I believe that she grew up with home being a very communal experience where everything was shared.
You can take anything you want out of the refrigerator,
Borrow someone's outfit or blanket,
Eat somebody else's popcorn and home meant sharing and community.
I grew up in a big wild family and the central rule of that household was don't touch my stuff.
Home and safety meant privacy and meant what is mine belongs to me.
And maybe some of you are like this.
I'm one of those organized chaos people where everything's a little messy but I know exactly like Kathy Bates in Misery with the salt and pepper shakers where everything and how everything is and if it's changed it feels kind of like this little violation to me.
So what would happen is I would come home with my phone ready to plug it into my charger and it's not where I left it.
And immediately there's this trigger of not feeling safe,
Of not feeling home.
I walk into the living room where my spouse is comfortably resting with the phone charger in the wall and her phone charging next to it.
Oh hi,
Welcome home.
How was your day?
Just fine.
What's the matter?
Nothing.
I can't admit that I'm freaking out over just a wall charger.
But do you see how we do this in our lives sometimes with our closest relationships?
Did anyone do anything wrong?
Absolutely not.
Different understandings.
If anything,
It can endear us to one another when someone breaks our boundary in an innocent way.
But if there was anything wrong,
It was my inability to communicate my experience.
And so what was I going to do to create that safe space?
Not to say there's a problem with what you're doing or I don't like that you do that,
But to share hey can I share a way for you to love me better?
Think about that.
How can we help the people that love us the most love us better?
And how can we ask the people we love the most how we can love them better?
That's how we move out of the state of artificial harmony that prevents sacred intimacy to a place of transformational growth and closeness with the people we want to feel closest to in our lives.
Centered in love,
Compassionate self-awareness,
Courageous communication.
These are not only rules for living a great life,
But they're rules for becoming the best who we are.
I love something Parker Palmer said.
He said,
What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been.
How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own.
How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity.
The true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation.
A few questions to ask yourself before we close today.
The first,
Where in your life right now are you called to center yourself in love?
And how does that centering yourself in love in this particular circumstance help you to see clearly?
Question two,
Where is your attention going in a way that is not serving you any longer?
Towards a person or a circumstance and what they or it is doing wrong that you can now use to pivot,
To come back to your own self-awareness.
So instead of reacting to that which you are not,
You can respond with who and what you really are.
And lastly,
Where are you called to communicate courageously so that you can love better and be loved better?
Where are you called to communicate courageously so that you can love better and be loved better?
If you can answer these three questions,
You will have brought forth a sacred intimacy in your life,
A mindful vulnerability that will lead to meaningful transformation,
Inspiration,
And that consciousness of closeness with life that each of us in our hearts most aches for.
Moving into prayer,
I invite any of our incredible prayer practitioners to stand and join me in consciousness.
Oh,
You are so beautiful.
What a beautiful expression that we can sing to the divine or that we can allow the divine to sing to us.
Can I in this moment remember my sacred beauty,
That I am a beautiful expression and child of God,
That I am here not to toil,
Suffer,
Or hide in fear,
But to love and be loved more and more,
Deeper and deeper,
Higher and higher.
To live as that beautiful expression of the divinity that I am requires that I release any voice that tells me that I am not enough.
I give thanks for those voices about where they taught me discernment,
But I welcome in those true voices,
The voice of that divine presence and of those mentors and teachers and loved ones who know the truth of who I am,
Even when I've forgotten it.
May those voices lead me and lead each of us today into a greater sense of intimacy and closeness with every aspect of our lives,
Transparent to this transcendent presence we call God or Spirit.
I know it is the collective love of the universe,
Of everyone who has ever loved us and everyone who ever will,
Right here and right now,
That guiding presence of love.
We allow it to unfold us,
To enlighten us,
To guide us,
Fully ready not only to give of this incredible love within us,
But to receive it right here,
Right now,
In this day that the Spirit has made for each and every one of us.
Let us choose the path of love.
And so it is.
