On Vibrational Vulnerability: Why We All Feel Edgy Right Now

Ego and Soul -- Eye to Eye | Art by Taylor Swank

Vibrational vulnerability is embodied curiosity. It feels like being excited and scared at the same time, aware you are standing in something uncertain and having to trust you will be okay in the end. It is the subtle sensing of something more than we can prove, leaving us feeling both expanded and exposed.

My ORM business partner, Quan Tracy Cherry, and I were exploring the meaning of that phrase in the weeks before he died last fall. The timing of his death was unexpected in physical terms, but debatable from an energetic view. We had been studying the space between physical and energetic awareness, so his transition was a shock, but not incomprehensible.

If I look back now, I can see that he had been saying for some time that he was moving toward something beyond the physical, and I was quick to dismiss it. I know in my heart that the moment he understood, energetically, how to “pop out of his body” (just describing what it felt like), he seized the opportunity to prove that he could. There is a full choir full of people who can echo this chorus by stopping to feel the way he moved in his last few years.

Part of me will never get over missing his voice in daily life, but the rest of me learned that losing his physical presence didn’t mean I would no longer hear from him. Sometimes his echo is loud enough to feel real, and I cherish those moments by pausing to notice whatever I was thinking about when he “dropped in.” It’s most likely to happen when I am meditative and reflective, but sometimes it feels more like a direct hit. One I will gladly take on the chin with a wink and a smile.

Over the years, Quan and I tackled some serious mental tangles that took decades to fully explore. We came to enjoy revisiting the same handful of themes from different perspectives, marveling as our awareness grew. We shared a quest to elevate the human experience and a hare-brained belief that we actually could do just that. We held fundamental differences in opinion, but learning each other’s raw material gave us access to a doorway we could stand in together, moving between ego and soul with ease and interest.

Our pact was to communicate from the base of a concept, at least as far as we understood it, and that was where we began any discussion. Our shared trust rested on cultivated ground: neither of us believed the other was trying to harm or belittle, even when reactions didn’t land as hoped. We listened for tone and meaning without dissecting words, unless it was clearly a joke, and most stream-of-consciousness questions were understood as rhetorical. We were rarely telling each other something new, but we were intentionally reinforcing the core beliefs we both recognized as shared resources.

This is where human communication begins to crack. If a person is bothered, talking will almost always precede true communication. 

Talking can be different from communicating, and it requires a more nuanced kind of listening. Talking may or may not carry clear intention because the words are driven by emotion in the moment. Only the speaker truly knows what they are projecting, becoming a de facto translator of their internal state. Without shared grounding, distortion for the listener is almost inevitable. 

The web of stories that make up human experience grows out of these miscommunications. The crossed wires, mixed signals, and sometimes straight-up lies we all recognize, but still allow. Talking is really a rush of blustery words that convey a fleeting feeling, but more frequently get turned into an opinion that was never truly held. Just stated in the storm. This is where nuanced listening makes for better communication.

Example: Quan might launch into a long complaint about a grocery store trip and make sweeping observations that could sound like irritation or outrage depending on the day, but by the time he finished, he would be laughing at his own reaction.

Whatever assumptions he had projected were not fixed beliefs. They were fleeting feelings moving through him. Our communication kept the freedom of spontaneous expression front and center. Where nothing reactive was held as permanent truth. And that became aspirational to me. There are very few people with whom I feel safe sharing that kind of stream-of-consciousness talk without needing to clarify anything.

In the last years of Quan’s life, we shared beliefs about how the world works. That doesn’t mean we were right, but our theories were starting to hold water. The communication I receive from him since he passed has kept my feet on the path we were walking together, and I remain confident in the material. Still tending the simple practice we shaped, and the living magic that continues to move through it.

Vibrational vulnerability lives somewhere between trust and belief. Where the best of intentions are held to the light and the rest fall away without judgment. It is that exposed place between what we know for sure and what we can only feel, the hum underneath our certainty. Faith is what is asked of us here. When experts themselves cannot reach consensus, how are we supposed to move through life expecting stable answers about what anything ultimately means?

It requires stepping beyond what we can prove into what we sense is possible. Most of us, myself included, remain tightly identified with our physical bodies and our most rigid beliefs, and letting go enough to move in that space is uncomfortable. We can’t just intellectualize this if we want it to work. Knowing and being are not the same thing. We are all healers, but few of us have been standing in the doorway of ego and soul long enough to make that claim.

Without Quan’s feedback, I now have to maintain my own vibrational vulnerability in new ways. Ways that draw me toward deeper aspects of trying to help us all recognize that we are physical beings, yes, but also that our energetic connection to everything else is where the shaping of our collective beliefs lives.

If you're feeling this edge of something in your own mind-body experience, consider it an Energetic Call to Action.

Yes, it feels like we are standing at the edge of a cliff, unsure what happens if we step forward and unable to feel fully confident making the jump. Humanity is energy meeting the unknown. Quantum thinking (and yes, I still hear Quan smiling at the word) that playful nod to the unseen forces shaping our reality keeps us tethered to that uncertainty while we learn to live inside a world that is clearly uncomfortable in many ways.

Our individual beliefs seem to be shifting in ways I don’t fully understand, but I can feel them moving from a place that remains sacred to humanity, if partly hidden from view. Distortions in communication, intention, and understanding have led us here quite naturally. The answers are available whenever we are ready for them, but first we must trust the voice within us that holds those threads, vibrating the chords of energy into conscious remembrance.

Does anyone else feel like we are on the verge of remembering something both ancient and modern about ourselves? I would love to hear how this conversation moves beyond what Quan and I were saying just before he left, during the Aries full moon and the first day of ORM Food Week. Whatever that means, vibrationally...