To be where we are means having an awareness that embraces whatever is - whatever our perceptions are, at whatever level, in whatever condition or state we are in. That awareness embraces our experience completely, with immediate feeling, with as much understanding as possible. The awareness contacts the experience, holds it, embraces it - just by being there, by being with it, in it, around it.
And when I say 'being with it', I don't mean that the awareness is necessarily being with something separate from itself. For example, if I say that I am being with my hand now, does this mean that there have to be two things - me and my hand? I can be with my hand and yet my hand is mine, it is part of me. It is the same with your thoughts. You can be with your thoughts and see that they are separate from you, or you can be with them and see they are not separate from you. Either way is valid; what's important is that you see whatever it is that you are experiencing.
The human soul, when it is in touch with its nature, is open. In that openness, it is vulnerable. But being vulnerable only means being open in relation to danger. If there is no danger, open doesn't feel vulnerable. It just feels carefree and easy. But if danger is present when you are open, you feel scared, a little shaky, and vulnerable.
As children, we were open and delicate and gentle, which meant that we lacked hardness, we lacked defenses, and we lacked a shield around us. But when we felt exposed and afraid, we learned to build those shields to protect ourselves, to defend ourselves from the environment around us. So now, as adults, we continue to put up walls and shields to stop the environment from affecting us. In order to protect ourselves from outside dangers, we stop ourselves from feeling vulnerable by closing down our feelings, our own sensations, our own imagination.
I am not saying that physical self-protection is unimportant or unnecessary. But hardening ourselves internally is not truly helpful in accomplishing this. It is an illusionary protection because it does not affect the outside danger at all; it only diminishes our internal awareness and aliveness. It was only helpful when we had no way as children to protect ourselves externally, and we used our internal defenses to diminish the impact of overwhelming feelings when the external cause could not be stopped.
That is why it is not easy to learn really being ourselves. It is simple, but it is complicated by the fact that to be ourselves means being open.
- A.H. Almaas