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What is Innocence?
First a couple of questions. What is innocence? A connection to our inner self. Purity. The second being, who is innocent? I think everyone is innocent from one perspective. I am totally innocent of all the above and all of the below, however … About that monkey in the middle, I am taking the Fifth. The…
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Seeing the World as Children
How do we see the world as children? An adventure. I never did see the world. I simply lived in and with it. Ah, indeed. Children see the world as a friend. Other things in it as potential friends, something to live with, get along with. Do they define the world in any other way?…
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Natural Sense of Well-being
Children go through a stage authorities call individuation. We have an instinct that tells us that we should be free to connect with new things as well as familiar things. Well, for myself, that individuation stage was my entire early childhood. What I intuited, even then, was that as strange or “alien” as the world…
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Accepting the Necessary
We went on an expedition to find an old temple, lost in jungle and bushes, etc. I was disabled, unable to move as fast as the rest. The leader, kumu, did not let the class go any faster than I could. There was a lesson in this. Instead, when I took hiking breaks, she had…
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Matter of Life or Death: Hawaiian Legend
There is a [Hawaiian] legend about a teacher. So powerful she had power over life and death of her students. Her helper was a lizard. Both could change shapes and sizes. A lesson of that legend is what you teach the young is of such importance it is a matter of life or death. Ah…
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Shrug Off the Burden of Guilt
How do we shrug off the burden of guilt? This is the binding that warps and twists our spiritual trees. The people of India have an ancient saying, “The slayer who thinks he slays is slain.” Some cultures have this burden of guilt, some others have a burden of shame. Same poison either way though. Oh gosh…
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Stop Wanting to Fix Things
How much do most people do just because they like or love it? If they only like doing it, why don’t they love it? Because some things to do are more likeable than others? Oh, indeed. I like to do the dishes. Sorry, not in love with that. I wouldn’t try to claim that everyone…
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No One Has Done Anything
I am innocent, I tell ya. Innocent. I didn’t do it. Actually, that’s an interesting point. What if I said that no one has ever done anything? What would that mean? We’re all innocent. Everything that everyone has ever done is only interpreted by other people. To one person what you did helped, to another…
Category: Innocence
We start teaching children early that they can do bad things, that they can fail, and that when they fail they have to fix it, make it better. What is left of life when we live with these ideas? Telling a child to wake up is natural, and appropriate, directing their attention to what they should notice and pay attention to is useful, but after a time adults grow strong in whatever way they were raised. The thing is, like a tree, that strength can turn into something other than an asset.
What is difficult is that innocence is hard to think about, because you actually can’t think about it. It’s what happens in those brief moments when you aren’t caught up in your own thinking, like meditation, or going for a casual stroll.
“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” William Shakespeare
“Innocence dwells with wisdom, but never with ignorance” William Blake