posted May 15, 2005 08:50 AM         

Mid-life brings an urgency to become ourselves in capital letters. What we have ignored inside ourselves now demands integration. For many of us that includes vulnerability. Just as sex was the dirty word of the Victorian age, vulnerability now is despised. It seems that people would rather tolerate abuse and rationalize that it really isn't abuse ("that's just the way she is") than to acknowledge that they are hurt by another's words. Feeling hurt is more fearsome than being physically injured. A football player will charge a line of oversized men but will not sit with his tears alone or in the company of his best friend. A business woman will work 14 hours a day without complaining or acknowledging her need for play. Anything to stay In Control.

Our years until mid-life have been devoted to augmenting our armamentarium of resources to distinguish ourselves as valuable, desirable, and worthy. At mid-life, however, we must BE ourselves and that implies owning those unintegrated aspects. We realize that true power is not about dismissing what our minds fear but about owning the fear. We can't escape the traits we don't want to see and at mid-life we don't even want to escape because it's only ourselves we leave behind.

So we move into that vulnerability that has scared us so. We feel touched by a scene in a movie and we cry and then keep crying. We're offended by a mean-spirited comment and we don't pretend that we're not. How others see us isn't as important as being true to ourselves. Integrity becomes the overarching value. And with that commitment to our integrity, we allow ourselves to experience intense feelings when they come rather than trying to "understand" them.

Earlier in our lives sobbing for five hours alone on the floor would have terrified us. "What if I never stop crying?" we may have thought. Holding onto Control for what seemed like our very survival was the first priority. All that has shifted now as living large compels us undeniably. So what if a tidal wave of emotion threatens to drown us? We've lived through our worst fears. We can live through whatever today brings, too. Suddenly Control is not only irrelevant, it impedes our aliveness.

So we invite today to bring its challenges. We want to face everything. We want to confront our fears. We want to experience what has scared us. And we know we can handle it, not because we have erected a giant ego but because we have learned the lesson and promise of surrender. We know that when we surrender to Life, we are carried through the storm to peaks we haven't before seen. We are shown vistas our eyes can't perceive when we hug the ground in avoidance of our feelings. Surrender carries us higher than we could manage by our own efforts. We experience power that moves through us. We don't control it or even use it. We open to it and accept it and let it carry us. We realize that it isn't interpersonal. In fact, we feel humbled experiencing the roar of Life. And that's when we own our power–when we let Life happen and say Thank You no matter what. We have no enemies and no need to dominate or submit to another person. We see Life acting through others and realize we're all here to learn our lessons. Power is accepting our humble stance, speaking when spoken through, and knowing that staying in rapport with Source energy (as Wayne Dyer says) is our only job.

Only by moving deeply into our vulnerability and trusting it to carry us, do we realize what power truly is. We align with that Life force greater than our minds and subject our minds to it. When that force is clearly the one moving and directing us without input from our minds, we realize power. Paradoxically, power isn't about doing but about allowing. We allow Life to happen. We allow our reactions to occur and we don't act on them. We allow our feelings to arise and we accept them. We do less than we ever have and feel more ourselves–because we experience power moving through us, not coming from us. And that is the magic of mid-life–we grow into the fullness of our power through surrender and acceptance.

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