Innocence.

TRANSCRIPTION:
Hi. This video is about innocence. I meditated on that word, innocence... honestly, because I miss it! I miss seeing it in the world. There's a lot that is showing itself. Presenting itself. And innocence seems to be one of the things in deficiency. 

Obviously babies, infants, and kittens and puppies and animals -- all animals -- those are things that evoke (a sense of) innocence. What comes to mind when you think about the word 'innocence'? Perhaps virginity. Maybe a white dress. Maybe, a fair amount of naievte?

The reason I'm bringing it up, is because my understanding of it expanded, and I would like to share that with others. Innocence is defined as having been kept free of injury.

So, in this sense, innocence isn't necessarily a moral matter. It isn't about, necessarily, one's choices or behavior, or the way they dress, or they way they carry themselves... or how promiscuous they are, or are not.

It actually has to do with whether or not you have experienced harm and injury. And the interesting thing about that is... my understanding was always that it would be a reflection of how a person chooses to conduct themselves.

But it actually is something far more vulnerable than that. It almost even has to do with luck and fortune -- (I meant to say 'chance.') -- as to whether or not you were a victim of crime. Whether or not you have experienced abuse, or abandonment, or poverty. These are things that are injuries. Whether you've experienced poor health -- poor physical health, or poor mental health.

These are injuries. This is harm. And there is a state of being before one experiences great injury and harm. And there's a difference of being after injury or harm have been experienced.

So after one has received an injury or harm,  that's when wounded behavior shows up.
It's hurting people, that hurt other people. When you have an (entire) WORLD that has been injured, harmed and traumatized -- that has lost its innocence, and acts from woundedness -- what happens?

I wanted to bring this loop to light.

It's something that's really subtle, but I hope by teasing it out (as I tried to), that you would be more compassionate with yourself. That you'd be more patient, kind, and gentle with yourself first... SO THAT that can later be reflected in your treatment of others.​ But if you don't give that tenderness to yourself first, it won't be available for others.

​One way to regain and restore our innocence -- to be resilient after injury, harm and trauma -- is to acknowledge the fact that it is so. (Acknowledge the revelations, rather than deny them.)

The awakenings are rude. These awakenings are painful, and disorienting, and hard! To wake up to the fact that, you name it, X, Y, and Z was not at all what you were led to believe. The betrayal that humanity has undergone, and is undergoing... it's going to take time for us to even get vocabulary for the grief, and the fall-out that comes.

Background Song: Inspiring Space
Looping GIFs:  giphy.com