Naked and Quiet

Wake-Up Cal #43

What if the only thing standing between you and what you want is…you…but you have no idea it’s true?

Ash: I know I’m smart, I’m a good person, I work insanely hard and, yet, I feel stuck. Like I’ve stalled. My projects, my career, my life, they’re just not growing. I know I can’t see my own blind spots. Don’t know my next move. Or how to get back in motion. Can you help me? Please, I’ll do anything.

Mentor: That depends. Are you open to receiving?

Ash: I just asked for your help. Of course I am.

Mentor: Then, let’s begin.

+++ A month passes +++

Ash: Why isn’t anything changing? You said you’d help. But everything’s the same. I don’t understand.

Mentor: You came to me seeking help. You need it deeply. I was and still am open to giving it. You shared you were open to receiving it.

But your actions belie your words.

Your biggest blind spot is not what you know or lack, it’s not resources, ideas, or strategies. It is your own unwillingness to be vulnerable. To own the fact that, though you’ve gotten yourself here, at this moment in time, you don’t know what you’re doing or how to move forward. Until this changes, nobody can help you.

Ash: But I asked you for help. How can you say I’m not vulnerable, open to receiving?

Mentor: What you ask for and what you’re open to are not the same.

I have shared ideas. I have brought others into your orbit far smarter and accomplished than I, willing and able to help. But every time we talk—you, me and them—you stop listening and instead talk over us, our ideas and offers of help. Instead of receiving, you posture. You armor. You defend. And it’s become so automatic, you have no idea you’re doing it.

Understand, you do not do this because you are rude. Not because you’re ignorant. Nor incapable. You are, in fact, immensely bright, kind, and capable.

You do this because what you are being offered is not coming from you.

You’ve been conditioned to believe, through no fault of your own, that you need to be the ONE who figures it all out. That if it doesn’t come from you, you will be perceived as weak. Unknowing. Incapable. This thought destroys you. You need others to feel you’re “on parity” with them.

So, instead of listening, learning and receiving, you talk. You posit. You rebuff. You revert to the illusion of strength and retreat to the blockade of false-confidence. You refuse to acknowledge the “new-ness,” validity, or value of any proffer. Unless it comes from you.

And, in doing so, you push all those who would line up to help you away without even realizing you’re doing it. You punish their arrival by raising your shield. Leaving them to bang their heads against an invisible shield that protects you from the very thing you claim to seek.

It’s incredibly frustrating to be asked for help, then refused a way to give it.

Ash: So, are you saying all those people who have offered to help me over the years, but then abandoned me…that wasn’t about them, it was about me?

Mentor: I can’t speak for all people. But I can tell you that, for me, and the people I gathered to help you who, most of whom have, using your words “abandoned” you, yes, they have all shared this deep frustration, and how it led them to back away.

When you first came to me, you acted in a moment of deep pain, you allowed yourself to be vulnerable and that led to a temporary openness to receiving help. Yet the moment it arrived, the fact that you needed it and the reality that accepting it would require you to own your own unknowing in the eyes of others terrified you. So you shut back down and defaulted to a show of bravado.

But maybe the most dangerous part is this. You don’t see it. You’re not even aware you’re doing it. So you keep asking for help. Wondering why nothing changes. And why people keep saying they’ll help, then walking away from you.

Asking and receiving are two very different things.

I know this dynamic so well. Because…

I have been you.

I am you.

I will be you again.

I am drawn to create. I am both burdened and gifted with ego. I am immensely human and sensitive. I struggle with my need to feel strong, to have all the answers and not be seen by others as “lesser.” I, too, have armor.

But I have also learned, very much the hard way…

There comes a time when we need to stand naked and quiet in the presence of those whose help we seek.

Not literally naked. Metaphorically. We need to drop the chain mail. To lower the shields, and keep them down. To expose ourselves, without weapons of mass defense at the ready, to the value and truth of other peoples’ ideas and efforts. To not discount them simply because they’re not coming from us. To stand in a place of deep vulnerability, not as a show of weakness, but of strength.

This is the brutal, beautiful, and profoundly brave place from which change begins to blossom.

Ash: So, I need to come clean to the world about where I am, how little I know, how helpless I feel right now? Really? That’s just not happening.

Mentor: No. Start with a single person—yourself. Stand naked and quiet in the mirror of your own mind. Begin by accepting a hard, but important truth. You are not the ultimate, or only, source of your own revelation or salvation. Needing, accepting help, is not weakness, it is a stunningly brave show of integrity, and power.

Then, if you feel brave, step into this same light, naked and quiet in the presence of someone you trust. Or, a small group of people who are there for the right reasons. Who love you, respect you, and want to help.

It is often brutally painful to remain in this raw, exposed place long enough for true sight, and genuine growth to take root. It is profoundly uncomfortable to be seen not just for who you are, what you know, and have accomplished, but also for who you are not, what you do not know, and have not made real.

Still, this is where change begins.

Naked and quiet.

It’s where the light of liberation, growth, and transformation endeavors to shine through.

So, I ask you again.

Are you open to receiving? To standing naked and quiet? Not to all, nor forever. But to the right people, long enough for a deeper truth, an awakening, to emerge?

If so, the real work begins.

If not, I wish you well.

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Wake-Up Call #43 | Naked & Quiet

Ask yourself, is there anywhere in my life where I would love a little help, where I’ve even asked for it, but still have my shields up? Where I’m not entirely open to receiving, unless in the form of validation of what I believe myself to already know?

If so, how’s that working out?

Think about work. About relationships. About health. About life.

Where do you not know everything you’d love to know? Where would you benefit, deeply, from the counsel of others? Where have you asked and rejected, or been afraid to ask, in the name of preserving a sense of self-reliance that, at this point, is causing more harm than good?

Now, what might happen, if you not only asked for help, but then stood, in your version of naked and quiet, open to receiving it, too?

Think on it, walk with it, find your person, the one who abides with wisdom, kindness, and nonjudgment. Ask what you need to ask, then hold yourself open to receving.

And, if you’re inclined, share your thoughts in the comments, and support others along the way.

That’s how, together, we feel more alive, and less alone.

Big love,

Jonathan