Regaining Our Innocence

The confidence of innocence, “the confidence of a child who is so completely innocent he will try anything.” Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, in Think on These Things,

After seeing the dark heart of this virus and of our own as we rail against being curtailed, how do we return to innocence after all this is through? 

We are all confused with the conspiracy theories and political jabber, with those not willing to accept that take care of self is more important than listening to non-factual blather.  We have moved into a global initiation back to survival.  It is painful for most. 

 We have a choice whether to be logical and reasonable or to sink into macro-considerations of whys, hows, wheres, whens, that we have no control over.  We have to simply get through this and survive the onset.  WE have become ancient fore bearers in knowing how to protect ourselves through all this.  It is painful and frightening, at best.  We are frightened and want to blame everything and everyone rather than focusing on learning new lessons.  We are babies stumbling and gaining ground through crawling, through standing up, falling, and trying again and again to regain our footing.

It takes getting over the fear, all fears, and this is difficult for a pampered world of having everything available to us to continue to succeed, or not, the way we used to.  We are generations of those people who expect life to become easier and easier and it is not.  We have, once, been concerned how to regain our youth in any way possible, and there were many ways possible.  We have tried to defeat aging and death.  As we live in this precarious, global, dangerous time, we have had to face the fears of our lack of control over our own lives.  We fear so we react in fearful ways.  Acknowledging our fear helps us not project blame, guilt, shame, on to others.  Some of us are making peace with this new way of living.  We are dealing with the unpredictability that is in our lives.  We try to find ways to alleviate our fears and get on with living a life that we can. We can only be responsible for ourselves and for keeping others safe.  We need to combat the fears in order to accept the conditions under which we live, and learn to enjoy this more relaxed, less busy way of living, and trying to find ways to have control.  Controlling ourselves, never mind controlling the fear, is very difficult for some of us.  But we cannot let fear and all its projections control us or we will never enjoy life as it is.

We have been conditioned to  react and act to things way out in the far reaches of where we are and we do this because we want to control what we cnanot except in our own little space in this world.  We have time, now, to pause and think of how we can control our physical body, our intellectual thoughts and learning, our emotional balance to be gained, and a real chance to develop our spirits/soul so we seek ways of balance in all areas of our own lives.  We can use this time as a space for growth and maturity.  We have space and time to consider each of these areas in our lives, with mindfulness, and new awareness's.  

This is the time we can develop more compassion.  I know it is easy to fall into envy, jealousy, anger and suspicion.  We can find ways to show compassion, caring, joy, and hope with one another more than we have ever been before this quiet pause in busy life.  It is time to spend on relationships.  We can find ways to alleviate others’ fears and uncertainties, the suffering that all must feel somewhere deep inside.  No child walks if they do not take that first step.  We are like children in this new world and we have the opportunity to learn to run.

We awaken and see that we are so interconnected with all things on Mother Earth.  We are not separate and we see this more than ever now.  Our survival depends on each of us doing our part for all our survival.  We have not faced such since the great wars, famines, dirty thirties, and other world wide dangerous times.  We are one in this pandemic.  The honor of one is the honor of all.  We are made responsible for the all.

Those of us who have been open-minded and have researched and studied and learned to begin to become more awake, are being given the chance to display what we have learned.  We can see and develop our spiritual life.  We can reflect where we were and where we are.  We can learn to be grateful for things we had not had time to consider before now.  We can learn to love , more deeply, Mother Nature, Mother Earth, and all its inhabitants.  We can seek awe, adventure, childlike faith and hope and beliefs.  Yes, we are concerned, yes we fear, but now we get an opportunity to seek the peace and love and joy of children of the pandemic that know there is something they need to do, like rising to learn to walk and the joy of accomplishing that.

As I considered this, I turned to a wooden block to do this painting of a child.  My original drawing is done in white china marker. I used yellow ocher, burnt sienna, orange spice, pure pumpkin, and cream on my palette. 

I, then, used raw sienna and cocoa bean to do some heavier shadowing.

Layer by layer, I worked on skin tone, on lights and darks and it became ugly and I wanted to redo it all, but I left it overnight and came back to it.  I spent another day , off and on, to try to get to a place where I was at best a little successful.

She became angry-looking, and I did not want that.  I wanted her contemplative. After several days, I knew I was at a place where I needed to walk away from it.  She became what she was.

 

 

 

I wish you the joy, the adventurous spirit, the setting aside of fear and an ability to find that childhood joy of life as something new and something to explore, as we deal with the repercussions of this strange new way of living.

©Carol Desjarlais 4. 15.20