INNOCENCE

Do you want to know what God looks like?
You don't have to climb Mt. Sinai, looking for a burning bush......
Relax, instead, into the shameless, unjudgmental gaze of a child
And experience for yourself
Ego-free "I-know-sense".

Innocence is simplicity.

We replaced our Innocence
With stubborn-arsed Attitude
When we sold out on having our own experience - -
Un-adult-erated.
We got separated from it
When we discovered things we had to be right about.
Once we take a position on anything,
We say "Goodbye" to innocence.
Riding pillion with that right-ness
Are Loss and Regret
That we are no longer child-like.

Innocence is stifled, generation after generation,
By those who love us
And want us to grow up,
In whatever ways that are meaningful for them.
The price of losing Innocence is too high
And not necessary.
While we may accumulate years and knowledge,
There is no true Maturity
Without Innocence.

The good news is that Innocence continues to exist,
At the core of all life,
Almost unnoticed,
Completely unrecognised,
Yet yearned for.
Watch the faces on a bus,
When a wide-eyed baby comes on board.

Innocence means living in unobstructed contact
With your complete self --
Higher and lower.

Fear may be characterised
As an inability to be innocent in the matter.
In Innocence, there is no fear.
(An opposite of Courage is Innocence. Both may produce similar fear-less action, but for very different reasons, and with very different consequences. Courage is the product of fear: Innocence is the natural state of being we were born with, before fear.)

In a discussion one time about the movie "Being There",

I was asked "How come Chance walked across the water?"

The answer that popped was "It never occurred to him that he couldn't."

In innocence, the human mind and heart simply assume
An infinite array of possibilities.
There is no question about it.
The Christian Church, for one, found the idea of Innocence so threatening
Its bishops concocted the Doctrine of Original Sin,
One of the most corrosive, evil ideas ever foisted on an innocent people.
It happened.
But dare to look, for yourself, into the eyes of a child
And tell me if you can see "original sin".

This consequently rare condition of Innocence,

Of being unscarred by pain and suffering

Allows a direct knowing of life itself,

Just as it really is --

Undistorted.

This is true in-tuition,

Connecting you to life itself --

Not stuck out on  a limb,

Trapped by someone else's idea about it.

Denial is where problems arise;

Intuition is the place where all problems are dis-solved.

At times, however,
I have found returning to child-likeness difficult.
My mind is highly reluctant to let me let go
Of something it thinks it needs
For its survival.
Layer after layer,
My mind resists surrendering its stuff.......
I have to be very patient.

When you're ready,
Give up being right about your resentments.
Say "Yes" to your Innocence:
Reclaim it.
The more you come into contact with your child-like being
The simpler things are,
Resistance is dropped,
And the easier living becomes.