I'm feeling stronger in some ways, stronger in myself, but at the same time
I feel vulnerable, weaker than other people, and I'm very frightened.

            That's how it is: when you are really vulnerable you feel
stronger, not weaker. If you are stronger, you will feel vulnerable. Only a
weak person remains closed, out of fear. A strong person is open, open to
all: open to death, open to all kinds of winds, open to light and darkness,
to the friend and to the foe. A strong man is open, vulnerable, and a
vulnerable man is strong. If vulnerability brings the idea of weakness, then
it is not vulnerability; you are thinking of weakness as vulnerability. They
look alike but they are not. A weak person cannot be vulnerable, that is
impossible: the weak cannot afford it. It is a great luxury to be
vulnerable.

            So you are absolutely on the right track. As your strength grows
so will your vulnerability; as your vulnerability grows so will your
strength. At the highest peak of strength one is like a child...delicate,
like a rose flower. It looks paradoxical but that is how it is. That's what
Lao Tzu means when he says to become waterlike, not rocklike, because water
is strong yet vulnerable. The rock looks strong but is weak, that's why it
is closed. It is not fluid. It is afraid: it cannot afford that much risk.
So when water and rock come in conflict, logic would say that water will be
defeated, but life decides just the opposite.


            So just accept it and go with it. It will come to a peak and
that peak will be a great experience.


            You are not afraid because you are feeling delicate and
vulnerable, you are afraid because you are feeling strong - let me point it
out to you. This will look strange when I say that you are feeling afraid
because you are feeling strong. But when you feel strong, fear arises
because now you feel power, and you never know what you will do with the
power. You can destroy: you can destroy others, you can destroy yourself.
Power is dangerous, it is risky.


            People decide to live at the minimum so there is no risk. When
you have power there is every risk that you will use it. When you have a
sports car which can go two hundred miles per hour, there is risk: one day
you will decide to go that fast. The very thing that's possible becomes a
challenge. So people live at a low key because if they know how much they
can rise in power, how powerful they can be, then it will be difficult to
resist, the temptation will be too much; they would like to go the whole
way. Then one does not know what will happen: if you go two hundred miles an
hour in a car you never know; hence the fear.


            Your fear is not of vulnerability; your fear is of the strength
that you are feeling arising. The snake is uncoiling and you don't know what
to do with such power.



            Patanjali has written a whole chapter in his Yoga sutras about
power, just to help every seeker to walk very carefully in this area,
because great power will be available and there will be great danger. Just
to warn people, to make them alert, he has written that chapter; it is one
fourth of his Yoga Sutras. He has taken great care to describe every
possible aspect of power. Why? - because the seeker could be lost; it is
better to warn him beforehand.


            But with me it is totally different. If the vulnerability grows
together with power, there is no fear; if power grows alone without
vulnerability, then there is fear, then something can go wrong.


            That's what Patanjali is afraid of, because his Yoga methodology
is such that it is against vulnerability. It gives you power but no
vulnerability. It makes you stronger and stronger, like steel, but not
strong like a rose flower. That is where I differ: my whole work consists in
making you strong on one hand and vulnerable on the other hand. They go
together; they keep balance, and one need not be afraid. When the balance is
lost there is danger, then there is fear.



            Believing the Impossible Before Breakfast




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