Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
TRIP: Speaking of giving people intangible things, instead of
material things, your landlord said he wanted to live in your space,
and asked you to leave. You asked him how soon, and he said as
soon as possible, so you said a prayer and walked out the door
[Laughs]. That's amazing. Later you had to comfort people that
remained in the building. Throughout the ensuing years you never
slept on the street because the people that helped you always felt
you were giving them more than they gave you, even though you
had nothing material to give them. What intangible something did
you give those people that took you in from the street, do you
think?
JERRY WENNSTROM: Well I think I lived into my own
vulnerability, not like a victim, but again like a prayer, not poor
me, but I think there's something about our big fear around not
having and not being, that vulnerability, . We don't like to be seen
as that empty, not having. I think my relationship again was with
that Mystery, if I didn't have anything, I would trust that not
having.
It's like a child in a certain way; it's like a conscious innocence. I
mean, what is it about a child that makes us want to take care of
them? What makes us want to give to them? What it is, it's their
sincere honest being and vulnerability. It's not that their
manipulating us, it's not that they're even expecting anything from
us, it's that there's an inherent trust that the universe is there.
And I think I lived, I had to find that space, because I gave all my
money away, and I was simply there for people. And I did a lot of
people, I mean I would do whatever I was wherever I was, I was a
good cook, I would clean the bathroom, I would shine their shoes,
I would just do whatever I saw needed doing and I would do it
joyfully, lovingly, I would do it because it made me happy. And
there was something about living your own joyful presence that
opens people's hearts. And I don't know what else to say about it,
I don't think I'm anything special about that, I think we all know
that space, but most of us spend our lives buffering ourselves from
the vulnerability it would take to really live it out. That's what
291