Quotes About Vulnerability

If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so it can hold evermore wonders. -Andrew Harvey

There weren't many people in this world who would let you be vulnerable and still believe you were strong.

Anyone who'd spent a childhood waiting for the other foot—or the other fist—to fall knew how to sense danger.

When we lose faith in our officers of the law, it harms all of as. It cripples our criminal justice system. It threatens the most vulnerable parts of our community. It allows money and power to subvert justice.

I had taken a partner once before-but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.

Time was when I was immune to emotional shocks. But as I get older, I don't get tougher; I get softer.

There wasn't any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal, in the end.

Until a person, man or woman, has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of minds linked as closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he has never copulated.

Can a machine be so frightened and hurt that it will go into catatonia and refuse to respond? While ego crouches inside, aware but never willing to risk it? No, can't be that; Mike was unafraid – as gaily unafraid as Prof.

We lived here a while. No annex then, had to have an armed guard just to pee.

Go ahead and cry. Tears are lubricant for the soul. Males would be better off if they cried as easily as women

You tickle trout by gaining their confidence, and then abusing it.

no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.

If it has an impact, it means there is a war inside me. You set it off, but what you set off is my business. Anything that can burn in a person should burn. Only the things that are fireproof are worth keeping. If you can hurt my feelings, they are better off hurt, because it's an error in me.

When we're in love, we put our gold—our expectations—on the other person, and this obliterates her. There is no relatedness.

Being overwhelmed by something other than one's true self. This is weakness and incompetence in a man.

On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him.

Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, "ordeals," "rites of passage," etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic "raising," etc.

The difference between a great writer and a minor one is fundamentally this: that the minor writer always has answers—glib answers, slick answers, memorably-worded answers, resounding and pretentious answers. The great writer dares to stand before you naked, armed only with his questions.

The mechanical nature of the bio-survival circuit is of key importance in brainwashing. To create a new imprint, reduce the victim to an infantile state, i.e., first-circuit vulnerability.

Experiments in isolation by the U.S. Marine Corps, Dr. John Lilly and others — and the records of shipwrecked sailors, as summarized by Lilly in Simulations of God — show that only a few hours of pure isolation may be necessary before hallucinations begin. These hallucinations, like those of psychedelic drugs, indicate the breaking down of previous imprints and the onset of vulnerability to new imprints.

So let's consider other factors or qualities that ought to—but generally don't—count for much in making a male a "real" man, factors that many men keep in the shadows: vulnerability, empathy, emotional transparency and literacy, the capacity for relational intimacy—all qualities more commonly associated with being female than male.

Turning toward our pain is about bringing into our heart all that we have rejected in ourselves, all that we have ostracized, disowned, neglected, bypassed, shunned, excommunicated, or otherwise deemed as unworthy in ourselves. Our heart somehow has room for it all.

Shame is probably our most hidden and misunderstood emotion. It's also the one most likely to motivate men to stay away from the help they need—and need to admit they need—which can range from psychotherapy to addiction programs. Performance anxiety is driven by shame; so is the drive to overachieve; so is the pressure to man up. Shame is behind the scenes much more often than you might think.