Your Weakness is Your Strength

For the past week or so, I've been watching and listening to programs and podcasts about NXIUM, the infamous so-called "sex cult" of the 2020s. Yes, I'm behind the curve. I vaguely remember hearing about it at the time, but chalked it up to, "one more crazy, oppressive, male-dominated quasi-religious barrel of nuts." Concurrently, I'm also reading a book about the spread of Buddhism from India throughout Asia and the world (The Golden Road by William Dalyrimple). It occurs to me that both events are motivated by a similar impulse. We're all seeking to be better, to find the "secret" that gives life more meaning, to conquer our fears and desires and become something greater than we currently are. People scoff at cults - NXIUM, Scientology, Falun Dafa, the Unification Church (Moonies) - we say we would never be taken in, but I'm not so sure that's true. I think we all feel the same impulse to be free from fear and doubt, but that desire may be misplaced. Fear is legit - if you're staring down a tiger, fear is absolutely necessary, appropriate, and useful. The women of NXIUM got into trouble by hoping their leader, Keith Ranierie, would release them from their fears and doubts. They ignored the little niggling feelings in the pit of their stomach, telling them that something was wrong - "Oh, it's just my weaknesses talking." But sometimes, things we think of as weaknesses are really our greatest strengths. Our fears, our doubts, our caution, our insecurities. Yes, sometimes they hold us back, but they also keep us safe and make us who we are, give us our personality, our friends, and partners, our snarkiness, humour, and insights. We don't really want to be released from them, we want to be released from feeling bad about them. So maybe just refuse to. Refuse to feel bad about your fears and weaknesses. Embrace them, love them. Yeah, if you're too afraid to venture outside, you probably need some help, but if you are functioning in the world, maybe your fears are helping you survive. Radical acceptance means embracing the "bad" parts, too. Maybe flip a switch and think of them as "good" in the way that anything that helps you survive is good. You don't want to be ruled by them, but you don't want to be free of them either. Just like there's a balance between being obese and being anorexic, between mania and catatonia. We are our loves and our fears and our desires and our pain and our joy. Maybe that's just life; no guru required.