A Pile Of Welcoming Pillows

I recently received, Heart Advice, a weekly excerpt from Pema Chodron’s

 new book, Comfortable With Uncertainty.

I am a great admirer of the work of well-known Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron.  As a writer and teacher, she is articulate, funny and wise.

In this piece, Taking your Armor Off, Chodron urges us to remove “all the armor that covers this awakeness” of ours. She urges us to spend our lives taking this armor off in order to reconnect with who we really are, to “undo all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality.”

I’m with her all the way on this business of removing our armor, allowing our defenses to soften and permitting our vulnerability to become more transparent. It is in so doing that we humanize ourselves and find ourselves able to make deeper connections with other people.

Chodron goes on to say that no one else can help us remove this armor because no one knows where are the “little locks” are. We have to “do it alone.”

And with that I disagree. It may be true that not many people know where those “little locks” are hidden, but some do. Close friends, friends to whom we are willing to reveal ourselves even in bits and pieces, they know. A good friend, a partner whom we trust, or even a small group with whom we have shared much, can be comforting facilitators of our release of those fearful tight places within us.

It’s true that we have to take the risk; we have to chance a revelation that may make us uncomfortable, but God willing, we have chosen our partners, friend or friends well and having done so, it could be that instead of drowning in embarrassment, that precious moment will feel like a free fall into a pile of welcoming pillows.

 And healing will happen.