REMAIN OPEN AND VULNERABLE

In the end one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissue will seal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable -- open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, "Hour of God, Hour of Lead"

The spiritual experience is about trusting that when we stop protecting our self, Inherent Goodness will still be there, protecting us. Many of us call that God, but no one must. It is the trusting that is important.

My take on it goes back to my belief that we have two ways of experiencing life...materially or spiritually. I have chosen to live from the spiritual plane knowing full well that my reasoning mind will always be there whispering "Yes, but...."

Once we get a deeper understanding of the nature of love and suffering, we can more readily accept that personal pain is a necessity for our still more spiritual growth. Being neither stupid nor naïve, we can expect pain, like sin, will ever be with us, but expecting and accepting are two entirely different matters...expecting is on the material plane, accepting is spiritually based.

Which poses the challenge: Do we have whatever it takes to get out of self and into God when pain, an unknown quantity of pain, threatens?  That very challenge is what intuitively led me to Lindbergh's "Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead" some forty years ago. At that time I was trying my hardest to avoid the pain of my life (read, praying God would take it away, lift me over it, exempt me).

It was while I was reading the Lindbergh book, specifically the introduction to the "Hour of Lead," that I had the blinding flash of the obvious that pain is universal, necessary, and my very rough road to my new life with a God of my own understanding.

Again: In the end one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissue will seal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable -- open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.

Thank you.