PE10: Ultimate Vulnerability: An Open Letter to a Friend
“Ultimate Vulnerability: An Open Letter to a Friend”
I first wrote
this letter almost ten years ago. I wrote it to myself and to a few other
people I was thinking of at the time. Have you ever written yourself a
letter before? Maybe after reading this, you'll write something to your
own heart that you need to hear.
It is my
fervent prayer that this letter speaks to you in some way.
---
My dear friend…
To discover who you are and what you’re about requires great humility and
genuineness. It requires you to look at who you are without pretense or
artificiality. Learning to live congruently (basically, in accordance
with who you are and with what you’re about) also requires great humility and
genuineness. Beyond that, it requires
vulnerability, because it necessitates that you empty yourself of anything
that’s not you or that doesn’t belong. In doing this, voids (of a sort)
are created, or, rather, are revealed. And they must be filled. But
they can’t be filled by you through an act of applied force of will—even though
you may possess such agency. The reason you can't self-fill a void within
you is the fact that, a hundred out of a hundred times, you'll self-inflict
yourself with some created (and, largely, abstract) notion that isn’t you and
that doesn’t belong in you.
Our neediness is not a condition we can understand rightly, readily, or
completely. It’s like trying to talk
about something we don’t know much about but have little clue concerning the
full extent of our ignorance. Written another way, it’s a lot like a
blind man holding a mirror to his face in the hopes of recognizing a familiar
image, only to be reminded once again (1) that he’s blind, and (2) that he has
no tangible concept of what he looks like or, even, what it means to be blind (in
terms of its comparison to seeing). And so, we face a dilemma:
We’re in need of something in our personhood that’s impossible to meet by
adding something to us. And that creates stress within us and makes us
feel uncomfortable... and vulnerable. We’re lacking in something, know it
deeply, and yet have little clue about what it is we’re missing or how to get
it.
To fill the voids, we can’t look to others either, for they, too, are blind and
will add only that which isn’t us and that which doesn’t belong. And so
again, we feel the perplexity of our vaguely experienced deficiencies. We
don’t know what it is we’re missing; yet, deep inside, each of us knows we’re
missing something really, really important. Coming to such a realization
(and admitting to it out loud) is the first step toward illumination and,
ultimately, our salvation (that is, the true salvaging of our life). The
second step is refraining from trying to add to us anything we think will
alleviate the deficiency (or, rather, alleviate or anesthetize the feelings of
deficiency that intrude upon the seeming calm undercurrents of our current
psycho-physical existence).
What’s needed, my friend, is an awakening—not the adding of something to us but
rather the awakening OF that which we already have or,
in some instances, our awakening TO that which we
already have. The voids we feel are those parts within us that are
asleep. But they're not really voids; they’re just the vacuous spaces
created by the deflated energies of our personhood. That's why turning
toward God and asking Him to awaken and inflate—via His Spirit-breath—His image
within us is so critical. God’s energizing Presence—The Eternal Breath of
I AM—is The Key that unlocks the mysterious depths of who we are and what we’re
about and, apophatically, reveals who we’re not and what we’re not about. God—and God alone—is The Source of our wisdom—the
ability to live congruently from a place of deep self-knowing and
self-sensing. To be “filled with the Spirit” is to be completely inflated
with God and awakened to who we are in Him.
To be “being filled,” as Paul urges each of us in Ep 5:18, is the progressive
surrendering to God's inflating processes until, at long last, we each rise up
to our full height and stature as An Image-bearer and Blood-related Son or Daughter
of the Most High [Our Papa]. The process begins with coming to the end of
ourselves and continues with our turning toward God (again and again and again)
to experience the reviving, renovating, repatriating, and life-salvaging work
of His Spirit.
Once the surrendering process begins, eliminating those things that aren’t you
and that don’t belong (basically, the echoes and residuals of your crucified—and,
thus, annihilated—fallen nature) will need to take center stage for a while...
maybe even for a few years. While the process of completely rethinking
your life will take the rest of your life, significant progress can be made
within a relatively short time (perhaps, even, within a year or two), so long
as you look to God repeatedly and let Him help you learn to think and feel the
way He does about things, the people around you (Himself included), and, of course,
your own life.
As you (in partnership with God) begin to eliminate that which isn’t you and
that which doesn’t belong, you’ll experience times that may feel like an
embarrassing nakedness. That’s normal. While you may feel naked,
you won’t be naked; you’ll just be feeling the freedom that comes with being
extricated from that which was smothering you. As more and more
monstrous-like attachments and accoutrements—the echoes and residuals of your
crucified (and, thus, annihilated) fallen nature—are removed, space will be
created within your soul, into which God can be invited to give you what you’ve
always wanted: More of Him, and more of you truly found in Him. Did
you know that your life really is just Lovingkindess—that is, God Himself—giving
Himself away to you? He truly is the Wind in Your Life-sails.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, receive it or not, Lovingkindness is
constantly giving Himself away to you—continually and continuously,
without end. God cannot help but give Himself away to you. God is
Love, and, outside the Trinity, you are the principal object of His love.
Full wakefulness, a conditioned state we all desire, is nothing less than
intimate and Divine union, oneness, connectedness, integratedness, and
congruency-of-being with the Trinity. While you’ll still be you (and 100%
you), you’ll be the unique expression of God’s image living for, in, with,
through, and (mysteriously) as you. As you start to surrender more of
your life to God, your purpose and mission, as well as your dream of what God’s
life expressed through you is supposed to look like, will begin to find its
congruent and progressive expression for, in, with, though, and (mysteriously)
as you. In time and over time, as you surrender more and more to God and
to “the dream (God’s Dream)” more fully, you’ll be brought, over and over
again, to a place of ever-increasing vulnerability, and brought just one step
closer to that place I like to call “ultimate (or absolute)
vulnerability.” THAT place is a place where
there's no separateness between you and God. While, paradoxically, you
can never be more one with God than you are right now, your experienced oneness
can always be expanded. Since God is infinite, your experienced oneness
with God can and will continue to expand throughout all eternity, never quite
reaching a true finality. How cool is it that God created each one of us
with the capacity (and space) to grow forever into the person He created each
of us to be? In a way, because God's infinite, we need the time afforded
by eternal, never-ending life to become like Him. And because we'll never
be fully like Him, that means life for us has to be without end. Without
eternity on our side, the finality of God's will being accomplished has no
possible chance.
God, through His deep love for you and His deep respect for the freedom He’s
woven into the fabric of your personhood, has made Himself vulnerable—ultimately
vulnerable—to you. He loves you, and He’ll always love you. Even if
you never love Him back. (This is a risk He takes with each one of us individually.)
In beginning to live out God’s Dream for you, you’ll begin to respond to life
more the way He does. In becoming more like God, you’ll start loving
others without ever having to be loved by them in return. Love—true and
genuine love—loves purely for the sake of loving the beloved, and nothing
more. Be not dismayed by this. Loved in return or not, you as the
Surrendered Lover (that is, you as Jesus living for, in, with, through, and—mysteriously—as
you) will always benefit, because inherent to loving another is the simple joy
and self-transcendence that arises as one begins to become love organically by
doing and finally being that which is loving. This is love in its purest
expression, its most vulnerable and generative offering.
Go, and discover more of who you are and of what you’re about. Partner
with God to eliminate that which isn’t you and that which doesn’t belong; and
ask Him to awaken His Divine image within you. This is life, my friend,
with a capital L... life that’s lived in the ever-drawing
Life, Light, and Love of Ultimate Vulnerability. Don’t settle for
anything less.
In all this, I wish you Godspeed...
Daver
Today's MRL Call-to-action: Write yourself a letter.
Dave out…
Beyond being an imager, lover, imitator, and follower of Jesus Christ, Dave Brown is nothing more than a contemplative artist of life in desperate need of His Master: The Triune God. His greatest desire is to experience loving and Divine intimacy with God Almighty (the Trinity). After that, it’s to walk before Them—in and with great holiness, humility, and revelliousness of heart—all the days of his life. To meet his needs, Dave works as an ecological engineer, inventor, writer, life- and business-coach, and personal trainer (in mixed martial arts, holistic life-discipline, and meditative prayer). If you’re interested in engaging with Dave in conversation or through personal one-on-one training in living revelliously, you can connect with him through MyRevelLife.com and The Revellious Podcast. If you’re interested in his engineering and inventiveness sides, please visit his other website here.
Comments
Post a Comment