Your vulnerability holds the key to real intimacy. But for most of us, a “ring of fire”–fear of vulnerability, embarrassment, and even shame–surrounds our most tender, authentic parts. In this episode, you’ll learn how to understand and transform your fear of vulnerability so that you can bear the heat of authentic love.
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The Target
I’m very excited to talk about this in this podcast episode because it’s a hugely important dynamic and it’s one we’re not trained to understand. That dynamic is, that as we move closer to the inner sanctum of our being and expressing that in a relationship, defenses come up. Old trauma comes up, fear comes up, shame comes up, and insecurity comes up and often can sabotage whatever the next steps are in intimacy.
So when we know this, it won’t seem like a bewildering and strange thing. We’ll understand what it is, where it comes from and what to do about it. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. This is how I want to start out. I want to start out using an image that I use a lot in my teaching, and it’s an image of a target. So you picture a target right? And that target is a kind of diagram of your zones of authenticity.
You know, they say intimacy is “into me see.” The closer you get to the center of the target, the bull’s eye, the more you see and feel your core, the core of your being. The more you let other people see that, people you trust, the more you let them see that as well. As you get closer to the center, to the bull’s eye of your being, to the place where you feel things the most deeply, most tenderly, most strongly, the place where your passion is greatest, but also where your tenderness is greatest, your authenticity, your creativity, your originality, your vulnerability, all those things get more vivid, get more real, get more true. And we become more and more beautiful. Yes. More and more vulnerable when we touch those parts of ourselves.
