The cumulative weight of responsibilities, disappointments and failed dreams often interrupts our ability to freely explore the world around us with a childlike freshness. Even though our experiences are tainted by preexisting notions, distorted expectations and rigid requirements, we still have access to an inner innocence in every single moment. Simply by tapping into the basic truth that we don’t know what’s really going on in the big picture, we can consciously approach every moment like a child who’s experiencing it all for the first time because, in reality…
We are.
Jarl and Steve
In the past, my analytical mind has often been a great burden to me, despite all the entertainment it has furnished me. The most helpful single thing that lets me pay attention fearlessly (sometimes) is the clear dichotomy between the fresh inner child, my Inner Presence, my original divine core; and my distracted, fearful, neurotic, socialized overlay. That single fork in this path through this overwhelming forest makes my heart leap for joy.
I began to recognize the dichotomy in AA with the image of the compulsive, selfish monkey on my back accustomed to succeeding in ordering me around in counterproductive directions. Now, with your help, I see the thing in greatly expanded, generalized form as my socialized shell that carries all my fears, my mental incapacities, and all my training, some of which can be useful and helpful used consciously. On the inside of that I find my Inner Person with its direct line to the Cosmos, my ultimate refuge, that serenity I have tried all these years to understand, that stillness and sanctuary in which I can be myself (from Hermann Hesse).
There is no expressing my gratitude to you for showing me this discovery. I try to share daily gratitudes with others, but most people I know are too disoriented to get it. Once in a while someone seems to see a glimmer of fascination, but seems to be too unused to pondering consciousness to recognize their Inner Person in what they are seeing.
I think your idea of starting with children is a natural. It is a sad occurrence that our school curriculum as been chock full of mostly socialized poison certainly for the time of my life. We just keep carrying on with the social molding of plastic toy children which results in the very high incidence of anxiety and depression seen now especially in even “the top” high school kids. I think you mentioned that your children’s course couldn’t fit into the curriculum. No surprise to me, since I have watched the Orwellian plaster of bandaids created by mass-production education over more than a century. Pre-school daycare is mainly a holding pattern, so parents can work, and might be the opening, with the caveat that American parents are terrified of someone else explaining to their children how to think. If parents were really willing to learn from their two-year-olds, we would have a toehold.
I see society rushing into greater discomfort with increasing rapidity, which I take as the necessary path to future sustainability. That thought model helps me remember that I have an inner sanctuary having nothing to do with society or socialization, and that is the same sanctuary seen by mystics and indigenous Shamans everywhere and always. That is how I am learning to survive “the shell shock” people everywhere are enduring.
Thanks, folks! I see there is nothing to grieve.
Larry