We were born in the receptive state of openness. We were open to everything, without the ability to stop anything. Our senses could easily have been bombarded with a constant flood of stimulation. In this openness, we were vulnerable. We would have died from exposure without someone else to feed we and protect us.

In being open, we experience life in an intense way. As children, our emotions flowed freely through us. We could be crying one moment and then suddenly happy the next. As adults, most of us have developed boundaries around what we experience, yet we still have the capacity to open ourselves as fully as we wish.

We associate our capacity for openness with the Lover archetype, in part because lovers are especially open to one another. When we love someone, we cherish the deep intimacy that comes from opening ourselves and letting our beloved truly see us, including our needs and our weaknesses. We let ourselves become vulnerable. Thus, the archetypal figure of a lover demonstrates the quality of openness.