We are hardwired physiologically to be on alert. This is a necessary protection for the physical vehicle. When we are in a dark alley and we sense someone following us, our nervous system is highly attuned to the possibility of fighting the stalker or running away. Or when we are walking across the road and a car doesn’t slow down, we are primed to react quickly to get out of the way. But we need to differentiate this functional alertness from psychological reactivity — which is an emotional response that has nothing to do with biological survival.
If something irritates us or frustrates us or agitates us or presses our buttons in some way, we’re very quick to believe the righteousness of our feelings. Often we very quickly follow that up with feeling that we shouldn’t feel so triggered by the situation; we berate ourselves for being reactive, and then we feel righteous about that! It’s a never-ending cycle that hardens the shell of ego-self. It’s a mental stance, a position the mind takes, flipping from “I’m right” to “I’m wrong” at the push of a button.
Gentleness means there is no avoidance of what is felt — the full depth and breadth of your inner experience comes into consciousness. You are fully aware of the feeling, but it doesn’t stick to you as a sense of righteousness. Righteousness comes when a mental narrative wraps itself around the feeling: you argue, you fight, you reject, you tighten, you withdraw. But without the narrative, the feeling passes through your field of consciousness. It is simply experienced as an energy, a “felt-sense” without your commentary. There is no mental position in this, you have no place to land. Of course, without a landing place you are open and you feel vulnerable.
As you come to know yourself as this openness more and more, this sense of vulnerability dissolves. As you fall into your innermost nature as openness, you come to see that there’s no real boundary between you and your experience. You come to realize that there’s no “separate self” that needs to identify itself as vulnerable or not vulnerable — there’s no “separate self” that needs to be protected. So there’s no need to push away the truth of your inner experience.
As you come to know yourself as openness, love — not fear — becomes the primary driver of your life. When the mental posturing falls away, all that is left is the openness of love. Love is the only thing that is real, everything else is imagined.
This love is an unbounded inner dimension of being-ness. When you come to know your true nature as this being-ness, and come to rest in this always — because it is always here — you can stop doing any spiritual practice. There is nothing that can be added to this openness, nothing you can do that will improve this openness, nothing that can take you anywhere else than where you are now. This openness is the perfection that includes everything — and this includes the imperfection of your human experience.
Awakening is nothing other than this openness.