Excruciating Innocence

By Sri Kala

*Please play this music while you take in the words.

Excruciating innocence….

Not soft innocence.
Not polished innocence.
Not the innocence that makes a good quote over a pastel background.

I mean the innocence that hurts.

The innocence of being here in your real body.
Tight. Gripping. Tender.
Wanting love. Resisting love.
Wanting to open. Not knowing how.

In Human Design and Gene Keys, Gate 25. Innocence. Constriction. Acceptance. Universal love

And I was sitting with the question of how those words mean anything real in a world where people are still bombing each other, still calling violence righteous, still confusing domination for truth. How do we speak of universal love while living inside so much distortion? How do we arrive at acceptance without becoming numb?

For me, it keeps coming back to the same place.

The shadow.

Not as the thing to get rid of.
Not as the ugly little cousin of the gift.
Not as the part we hide so we can look evolved.

The shadow as the doorway.

In Unravel we keep remembering this over and over again. We do not get to love by pretending the constriction is not there. We do not get to freedom by performing freedom. We get there by letting the shadow move. Letting it paint. Letting it sound. Letting it breathe. Letting it interrupt whatever polished identity we were trying to maintain.

Constriction.

Constriction is the gripping we forgot we were doing.

It is so much of what it means to be human. We grip and then forget. We tighten and then call it personality. We brace and then call it normal. We live around the tightness for so long that it becomes the wallpaper of self.

Constriction in the body.
Constriction in the voice.
Constriction in the creative process.
Constriction as the gatekeeper sitting right at the threshold.

And still, even that is welcome.

Come as you are.

Not as a nice idea.
As a real demand.

Come as you are means come with your block.
Come with your tissue in your nose.
Come with your three beverages.
Come spinning.
Come lying on the floor.
Come painting in the kitchen.
Come gripping for dear life.
Come with the part of you that wants to turn the whole thing off.

Even that part is welcome.

Especially that part.

Because love, to me, is a verb.

And when I cannot love through the front door, I go through the back door.

The back door is sensation.
The back door is honesty.
The back door is feeling where I am tight instead of pretending I am already open.

If I cannot access love directly, I can feel my constriction.
I can hear the speed of my breath.
I can notice the clutch in my throat, the bind in my shoulder, the place in me holding on for dear life.

And then the question becomes:

What does your constriction sound like?

Not what do you think about it.
Not what is your philosophy about it.
Not how do you explain it beautifully.

What does it sound like?

That question changes the room.

Because now the body gets to speak.

A hum that cannot quite complete itself.
A silence that sets the stage for a roar.
A weird whistle.
Heavy boots walking on potato chips.
A shoulder that has been ignored and is suddenly hungry for attention.
A body saying, finally, you are here. Give me more.

This is what I love about creative expression. It reveals what the mind edits out.

The sound comes.
Then the metaphor.
Then the truth.

And once the constriction is allowed to speak, something else becomes possible.

Love can enter.

As we move our constriction, we let ourselves be loved.

That is the line I keep returning to.

Because so much of the time love is already here, but we are too braced to receive it. The support is here. The witnessing is here. The breath is here. The touch is here. But the body is still defending against something old.

So we do not start by forcing ourselves open.

We start by honoring the grip.

At one point in the session, constriction stopped feeling like just a problem and started feeling like devotion.

That opened something.

Constriction as sacred containment.
Constriction as the inhale.
Expansion as the exhale.
Constriction as cocoon.
Constriction as swaddling.
Constriction as the season before the bloom tears through.

That does not mean every constriction should stay. It does not mean we worship trauma or make a home in suppression. It means we stop being so quick to attack the places that are trying, however imperfectly, to hold something tender.

In bhakti there is union and separation. Most people think union is the point. But separation has its own holiness. Separation intensifies longing. Separation deepens devotion. Separation makes the return alive.

That is what constriction can feel like too.

A temporary separation from love.
A temporary separation from our own life force.
Not the end of the story.
The material of the song.

We came here to feel separate enough to make the journey back.

To sing the journey back.
To paint the journey back.
To dance the journey back.

And this is why “open under construction” feels so true.

Most creatives are waiting for the construction to finish. Waiting for the block to go away. Waiting to feel clear. Waiting to feel worthy. Waiting to stop trembling. Waiting for the polished version of self to finally arrive.

But that is not how the pulse works.

The pulse is alive now.
The art is alive now.
The construction is happening now.

Open under construction.

That is the practice.

Not open once healed.
Not open once confident.
Not open once resolved.

Open while becoming.

That is excruciating innocence.

To be seen before you are ready.
To be loved before you feel finished.
To let the trembling thing come forward, not just the polished thing.
To admit that your constriction is not proof of failure. It may be the exact place where love is trying to enter.

This is the path I trust.

Not looking free.
Relating to what is tight until it starts to sing.

Not transcending the shadow.
Giving it somewhere to move.

Not waiting until the construction is done.
Staying open while the walls are still coming down.

Excruciating innocence.

Maybe that is what it takes to touch something true.

Not the absence of constriction.
The willingness to listen to it.

Not a perfect heart.
A revealed one.

Learn more about Unravel Sessions @ UnravelSessions.com

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