In an increasingly hostile world, what can we gain by living a heart-led life?

Many years ago, during a Priestess training in Glastonbury, Kathy Jones, my spiritual teacher at the time, said something that stayed with me. We were talking about personal defences, and I argued that it was necessary to protect yourself from people who didn’t have your best interests at heart. Kathy agreed in principle, but added, “eventually, you might reach a stage where you remain open and vulnerable and speak your truth, no matter what the other person does.”

At the time, this idea felt revolutionary. Almost absurd. But a few decades later, I have come to appreciate and embody it in my own life.

When I started the Glastonbury training, I had just closed down a very successful Black Metal record label, working with some of the toughest guys around at the time. Defence was my middle name, especially in a male-dominated industry. When I first arrived at the training, I was aghast at the “bunch of hippies” I encountered there. I had signed up to learn about ritual and Goddesses, and here they were, sharing endlessly about their emotions, crying in public, and hugging each other at every opportunity. I wanted to run away.

Back then, Kathy said, “This course will transform you in ways that you can’t even fathom yet.” Again, she was right. Over the years, we all softened and shed layers of old identities. Suppressed emotions and memories surfaced. Creativity emerged in new ways.

Yet somewhere along the way, I shed one identity and stepped into another, trading the “Black Metal Queen” for the “spiritual woman”. The one who worked in prisons with the worst criminals and had great success in reaching their hearts. The one who travelled the world alone, unafraid, resilient, and still tough. The one who lived alone in the Himalayas to advance her spiritual practice. My achiever mentality didn’t disappear; it simply transferred itself to spirituality.

Sure, there were cracks in the armour at times, mostly during intense and often unsuitable relationships. But even then, I continued to be tough by going deeply into my own healing, sitting with discomfort, trauma, and my own shadows.

It took a long time before I asked myself the perhaps obvious question. What was I actually running away from? What was I trying to prove with my toughness and independence, and who was I trying to prove it to?

And the answer, quite honestly, was that I was afraid of my own vulnerability. I was hiding a sensitivity so deep that I believed I needed layers of armour to keep myself safe from a world that often feels too loud, too hostile, and too fast.

Much of this was unconscious, of course. I had outsourced my own sensitivity by working with, and being with, men whose pain I could feel as if it were my own. Armoured men who, deep down, were highly sensitive, too, but had learned to cover it up in destructive ways.

So, what changed me? I don’t think it can be condensed into a single moment of insight, but rather into a slow, cumulative process. An understanding of what we lose when we relate from defence rather than from authenticity.

Much of what I did back then, and continue to do, contributed to the gradual dismantling of those defences. The Priestess training. The years in India, where yoga began to remove the physical armour and meditation brought unconscious material and memories to the surface. Somatic bodywork and therapy, which helped me listen to what my body had been holding for decades. Spending several years with a spiritual teacher whose essence was pure love, and in whose presence I felt seen and loved unconditionally for the first time in my life.

And perhaps, most poignantly, the death of my father in 2024.

Again, I remember something Kathy once told me. She said that when her own father died, many of her unhealthy patterns with men began to die as well. And this is what started happening to me, too.

For much of my life, I had unconsciously tried to get the love I never felt from my deeply sensitive, yet emotionally unavailable father from the equally defended and unavailable men I connected with.

That pattern dissolved last year. And with it, my defences around vulnerability began to soften as well. I started to feel how liberating it can be to simply be yourself. To say exactly how you feel, even when it is scary. To be undefended in your heart, and still strong.

I learned that you don’t die when your openness is met with defence. And that having an open heart in a defended world is the bravest thing of all. Because an open heart allows us to love and feel everything, and that in itself makes us free.

Being undefended does not mean having no boundaries or being weak. It means choosing openness without abandoning yourself, and remaining true to yourself even when others can’t meet you there.

And this, unconditional love with boundaries, is the beautiful balance between being armoured and being unguarded. It keeps your heart soft and your discernment sharp at the same time. You begin to understand that it is possible to separate a person from their behaviour, and that much of human behaviour is shaped by experience and unmet needs.

I now believe that being emotionally undefended is the ultimate act of growing up and of inner freedom, because you no longer act from your wounds. You allow yourself to be seen as you are, without trying to gain love by being a certain way that is ultimately inauthentic. You express your love because that is what’s true for you, not because you want anything in return.

And that is a beautiful way to be.

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You might also enjoy my recent article Breaking the Cycle: Why trauma healing is the most effective (and perhaps only) path to world peace