In our old world, people think that innocence is a vulnerability, and vulnerability is a disadvantage. But the opposite is true. Vulnerability is the gift of our humanity, and innocence—the absence of guilt and deceit—is the marker of our divinity.

Vulnerability is meant to be challenging. If it was easy, why would we need to exist? We could have stayed unmanifested in the love of universal oneness or manifest on Earth as another animal species that is more aligned with its natural state of beingness. So, why would the cosmos need humans?

It is through being human that the spirit of the universe can experience the poignant beauty and humility of surrendering to the intense fear of wholly being seen and unconditionally loved in a self-aware and conscious form. To reach this state, we need to accept our vulnerability to pain. We are at a time in humanity’s evolution when the stories we’ve created about who we are—our identities—can no longer hide our world pain. Some people will want to desperately hold onto the old world through more identification to greater elaborate stories. Some will numb themselves with distractions, while others will resort to manipulating other people’s truths. But all of this is merely the ego’s attempt at self-preservation.

Can we still find the sacred souls beneath the self-denial, the lies, the stories, and the illusions? If we peel back the layers and see through the lies, what is left is the tenderness of our human vulnerability. Our ability to feel pain can kill us, but it is also pain that can save us. So, when we come up against an enemy, someone so cruel whom we think we can never forgive, look past their facade and find that vulnerable human inside of them. The one who is so afraid of their own pain that they cannot even bear to recognize its sacred beauty. They may never recognize our truth, but our vulnerable hearts will recognize the one that they have abandoned and ours will grow even stronger.

Have you ever wondered if other people are real? I once saw a YouTube video of someone trying to convince NPCs (non-player characters) in a video game, unsuccessfully, that they were characters in a simulation. Oftentimes, I feel like I’m doing the same thing in “real” life.

In my book Poignant Landscapes, I included an excerpt, from my diary when I was a teenager, reflecting on whether people and our so-called reality are real. My adult self then responded that I believed people are real because I can sense their existence in my body. After some additionally healing and contemplation, I feel that this answer isn’t completely accurate.

My new insight is that I feel the realness, the existence, and the humanness of another person because I have the empathic ability to “read” people’s insecurities. Even when they try to hide it, I know their vulnerabilities. I know that they are naturally raw and tender, capable of being hurt, and so, equally capable of being loved. To me, this vulnerability towards love is my evidence that they are real and not just programmed characters in this existential matrix.