The Return to Innocence

[Aaron]

I haven't started a topic like this in awhile, so I thought it might be nice, seeing as how the new year is about to begin, to talk about a topic that's dear to me (yes I am attached to this topic.) That topic, if you missed the heading, is returning to innocence and what it means. This is perhaps the most universal of concepts, in fact every religion and philosophy that I know of speaks about it, yet it seems to be overlooked so often. With that said, I'd like to post some quotes from different religions that have to do with this topic, so that as a community we can discuss what this means to each of us.

 

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"You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child." -Dogen

 

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle." -Thich Nhat Hanh

 

"The paramahamsa is like a five year old child. He sees everything filled with Consciousness.. The paramahamsa is like a child. He cannot distinguish between a stranger and a relative... the paramahamsa is like a child. He doesn't keep any track of his whereabouts. He sees everything as Brahman." - Sri Ramakrishna

 

Jesus saw some little ones nursing. He said to his disciples, "These little ones who are nursing resemble those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "So shall we enter the kingdom by being little ones?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one and make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below, and that you might make the male and the female be one and the same, so that the male might not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye and a hand in place of a hand and a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image - then you will enter.- Saying 22 from the Gospel of Thomas

 

"'Did you have a happy childhood?' is a false question. As a child I did not know what happiness was, and whether I was happy or not. I was too busy being." -Alistair Reed

 

"The Sage has no interests of his own,

But takes the interests of the people as his own.

He is kind to the kind;

He is also kind to the unkind:

For Virtue is kind.

He is faithful to the faithful;

He is also faithful to the unfaithful:

For Virtue is faithful.

 

In the midst of the world, the Sage is shy and

self-effacing.

For the sake of the world he keeps his heart in its

nebulous state.

All the people strain their ears and eyes:

The Sage only smiles like an amused infant." - Tao Teh Ching tr. John C. H. Wu

 

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That's just a few of the quotes I came across, but I'm sure there are more. Actually, to be honest, I'm not as interested in the quotes, so much as how people view this universal principle and how they try to practice it in their own lives. I look forward to hearing what others think.

 

Aaron

Edited December 31, 2011 by Twinner

[Marblehead]

Well, I do let my child out to play quite frequently. But then, as a home owner, I do have the adult responsibilities as well.

 

No, we can't be the child all our life. But we can, as adults, learn to enjoy life as much as we did when we were a child.

[C T]

Wow, what an awesome synchronicity! Was just watching these two vids yesterday..

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leJmPpD-Tp8

 

[Aaron]

Hello TC,

John Denver is one of my favorite singers, period. I had a hard time listening to his music after he died. He really was a great songwriter and singer. Thanks for sharing.

 

Aaron

[Jetsun]

All children like to pretend they are adults, young girls like to play as mothers and you often see young boys imitating their fathers by doing things like pretending to read the paper, but they live essentially through their being and realise that imitation is a game. The only difference with adults is that they start to believe this pretend game of imitation is actually who they are, they start to believe in that image as a serious thing which needs defending but really it is only a form of imagination. So to become like a child again would mean to see this imagination for what it is and to let go of it as your identity to live through your essential being once more, which is quite a simple place of being centred in your heart rather than the head where you cry when you are sad and smile when you are happy.

[三江源]

This is from Caroline Myss on archetypes

 

Child, Divine

The Divine Child is closely related to both the Innocent and Magical Child, but is distinguished from them both by its redemptive mission. The Divine Child also has a historical resonance all its own. At the beginning of the Piscean Age 2,000 years ago, the archetype of the Divine Family was introduced. That structure of the Father, Mother, and Divine Child (God the Father, Mary, and Jesus) was somewhat prefigured in ancient Egyptian mythology by Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus, but they do not share the warm-hearted union of love and divinity that the Christian motif developed. The Divine Child is associated with innocence, purity, and redemption, god-like qualities that suggest that the Child enjoys a special union with the Divine itself. Few people are inclined to choose the Divine Child as their dominant Child archetype, however, because they have difficulty acknowledging that they could live continually in divine innocence. And yet, divinity is also a reference point of your inner spirit that you can turn to when you are in a conscious process of choice.

 

You may also assume that anything divine cannot have a shadow aspect, but that's not realistic. The shadow of this archetype manifests as an inability to defend itself against negative forces. Even the mythic gods and most spiritual masters -- including Jesus, who is the template of the Divine Child for the Christian tradition -- simultaneously expressed anger and divine strength when confronting those who claimed to represent heaven while manifesting injustice, arrogance, or other negative qualities (think of Jesus' wrath at the money-changers in the Temple). Assess your involvement with this archetype by asking whether you see life through the eyes of a benevolent, trusting God/Goddess, or whether you tend to respond initially with fear of being hurt or with a desire to hurt others first.

 

Films: Terence Stamp in Billy Budd; character of the young Dalai Lama in Kundun; character of the young Pu Yi in The Last Emperor; Alex Wiesendanger in Little Buddha.

 

Religion/Myth: Horus (in Egyptian myth, divine son of Isis and Osiris); Siddartha Gautama (according to legend, the future Buddha was born proclaiming that his cycle of rebirths was about to end); Infant of Prague (statue of Jesus as a child dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, originating in 17th-century Czechoslovakia); Demophon (in Greek myth, the son of Metanira, queen of Eleusis, who was raised as a divine being by Demeter); 18. Balakrisna (the child form of Krishna in Hindu myth); Suitengu (Japanese child god of the sea).

 

 

Of course innocence nowadays is often equated with naievete, and abused as such.

[Aaron]

Thanks for all the comments, some really interesting stuff there to think about. Something else that came to mind was the idea of innocence and what that means and how it relates to becoming like a child and what I was thinking about was the idea of right and wrong, good and evil, and all those other subjective beliefs we learn as we grow older. For a young child, good and evil, right and wrong, and moral relativism don't exist. Instead they tend to think along the lines of consequences and benefits. This is one of the reasons we punish children when they do something wrong, because they lack the ability to understand on intrinsic level that something is wrong. For instance stealing a cookie isn't bad because it's wrong, but because you get a spanking, put in the corner, or Jesus (or Buddha) doesn't love you anymore if you steal it. We use manipulation to teach children how to behave, so in essence what we should aspire to, is get rid of all the BS and begin to see the world as we did when we were children. Stop allowing people to define things as right and wrong and instead look at the action and judge it by your heart's compass or conscience, whichever idea makes you feel better. For myself, I tend to view the consequences of an action in regards to whether or not I will do it. Now the hard part comes from looking at the consequences and omitting all the academic and sociological programming that's associated with it.

 

If we can reach this state though, a state where we no longer allow good and evil or the notion of right and wrong to influence our decisions, then we have also reached a state of innocence, because we are no longer bound by the abstract notion of sin.

 

Just a thought. I'd love to hear other peoples opinions regarding it.

 

Aaron

Edited January 3, 2012 by Twinner

[suninmyeyes]

Innocence rules, it is most comfortable way of being.

But being like a child ,I dont know, I quite like to be able to take care of myself and enoy being an adult. That feels so good not to have the need for protection.

 

Cat said:

'You may also assume that anything divine cannot have a shadow aspect, but that's not realistic. '

This is a very important point IMO as this is where a lot of seekers get so lost and disorinteated.

Edited January 3, 2012 by suninmyeyes

[Informer]

mp

Edited January 3, 2012 by Informer

[Marblehead]

Innocence rules, it is most comfortable way of being.

But being like a child ,I dont know, I quite like to be able to take care of myself and enoy being an adult. That feels so good not to have the need for protection.

 

Yeah, that is the trick, I think. To be able to be both at different times throughout our life. When we can be as the child whenever we wish and not care about what others think because we are totally secure with our life.

[Aaron]

Innocence rules, it is most comfortable way of being.

But being like a child ,I dont know, I quite like to be able to take care of myself and enoy being an adult. That feels so good not to have the need for protection.

 

Cat said:

'You may also assume that anything divine cannot have a shadow aspect, but that's not realistic. '

This is a very important point IMO as this is where a lot of seekers get so lost and disorinteated.

 

I think you may be misunderstanding what I meant. For me being like a child doesn't mean that we actually become children again, but return to the state of a child, a state where we cease to allow social constructs to define who we are and instead rely on our innate feelings about situations. We don't look at things as right and wrong, but rather as an action with consequences and make our decision about that action based on those consequences. I also believe this kind of perception releases us from much of the guilt and self-loathing that we accumulate in life, because it allows me to view myself, not as good Aaron or bad Aaron, but simply Aaron. If I can do that, then I can truly begin to live my life without the chains of academia, religion, or philosophy subjectively analyzing what has and will happen, but rather live in the moment (which is something children excel at doing.)

 

Also, in becoming like a child, we do not forsake our responsibilities as adults (since we are not actually children), but rather allow ourselves to live free, curious, and compassionate lives where our attachment to others does not derive from what we've been taught about others, but rather our experience with others. In other words we remember our original state and return to it. At first this takes work, but over time it can become quite natural, and this natural state will allow us to reach heights of spirituality that we could never experience without it.

 

To paraphrase, "am I the man who dreams he is a boy, or the boy who dreams he is a man?"

 

 

 

Aaron

Edited January 4, 2012 by Twinner

[suninmyeyes]

Hello Twinner ,

Thanks for clarifying, know what you mean .

The post was about personal understanding of 'being like a child'. So here I go again ...

Even though term being like a child is widely accepted and commonly understood in a certain way, the words in general deliver a need for being parented and looked after together with the innocence bit. It goes hand in hand, these are our common human associations and prdominantley people are not aware enough to discriminate.

Now I am not saying that these are your personal implications at all and am not being asumptous in any sort of way . Just pointing to the origins of the saying and why and how it has become so widley accepted(IMO only ).

Becouse terms like this and similar and relating to them consciously and uncosciosly ,accepting them as a norm the world is in the state it is.

We are being constantly nannied. Nannied and sedated and allowing it to happen too.

This terms and sayings are backbone of our society , it is the building bricks of communal life as we know it.

Unfortunatley those bricks are a bit too crumbly and they smell too.

Stinky kakapoo bricks.

Edited January 4, 2012 by suninmyeyes

[Birch]

I think you may be misunderstanding what I meant. For me being like a child doesn't mean that we actually become children again, but return to the state of a child, a state where we cease to allow social constructs to define who we are and instead rely on our innate feelings about situations. We don't look at things as right and wrong, but rather as an action with consequences and make our decision about that action based on those consequences. I also believe this kind of perception releases us from much of the guilt and self-loathing that we accumulate in life, because it allows me to view myself, not as good Aaron or bad Aaron, but simply Aaron. If I can do that, then I can truly begin to live my life without the chains of academia, religion, or philosophy subjectively analyzing what has and will happen, but rather live in the moment (which is something children excel at doing.)

 

Also, in becoming like a child, we do not forsake our responsibilities as adults (since we are not actually children), but rather allow ourselves to live free, curious, and compassionate lives where our attachment to others does not derive from what we've been taught about others, but rather our experience with others. In other words we remember our original state and return to it. At first this takes work, but over time it can become quite natural, and this natural state will allow us to reach heights of spirituality that we could never experience without it.

 

To paraphrase, "am I the man who dreams he is a boy, or the boy who dreams he is a man?"

 

 

 

Aaron

 

 

I don't know what this means as I suspect many children were not considered 'like a child' in the first place.

There is a book about raising children in different cultures that you may like http://www.anthropologyofchildhood.usu.edu/

 

I haven't read it. But I heard a show about it that discussed different ways of 'raising' kids. 'Green' seemed to be a way that considered that children weren't really supposed to do anything before a certain age. And the other way (which I can't recall but which is 'ours') considers/ed that kids had to be cultivated (for want of a better word) from the very beginning. Lots of in-between room between them.

 

I was in a waiting room earlier today and one kid in there was singing and dancing and kissing her parents, who didn't tell her to stop really. It was pretty annoying. Cute, but annoying:-)

[3bob]

There is no return (per-se) to "innocence" as in the unexperienced, child like state - although through the hard fought attainment of wisdom along with grace that makes such possible, karma eventually drops and then one stands innocent before a samsara which can no longer reach them.

Edited January 5, 2012 by 3bob

[Aaron]

There is no return (per-se) to "innocence" as in the unexperienced, child like state - although through the hard fought attainment of wisdom along with grace that makes such possible, karma eventually drops and then one stands innocent before a samsara which can no longer reach them.

 

Hello 3bob,

 

Ask yourself, what is innocence? Not what is the definition, but what is innocence? It's a subjective description of a perceived state of being. It only exists within the mind, it's not real. Think of it like this, we cannot really hold evil, we can hold something we identify as evil, but not evil, because evil isn't a physical thing. We say you're evil, that's evil, but it's always an adjective, never a noun. In that sense, no we cannot return to innocence, because it really doesn't exist in a way that we can return to it, but we can escape the subjective mind set that causes us to believe in it in the first place. We can escape sin when we no longer believe in right or wrong, or good or bad, but identify those concepts also as social constructs with no real basis in physical reality.

 

So in reality we can only reach a state of innocence when we no longer acknowledge the concept of sin. When we give up right and wrong and analyze what happens within the world from a perspective based on our experience, rather than intellect, then we can begin to behave as we were intended and as a side effect, return to a state of innocence, although in this state innocence means absolutely nothing.

 

Aaron

[3bob]

Hello 3bob,

 

Ask yourself, what is innocence? Not what is the definition, but what is innocence? It's a subjective description of a perceived state of being. It only exists within the mind, it's not real. Think of it like this, we cannot really hold evil, we can hold something we identify as evil, but not evil, because evil isn't a physical thing. We say you're evil, that's evil, but it's always an adjective, never a noun. In that sense, no we cannot return to innocence, because it really doesn't exist in a way that we can return to it, but we can escape the subjective mind set that causes us to believe in it in the first place. We can escape sin when we no longer believe in right or wrong, or good or bad, but identify those concepts also as social constructs with no real basis in physical reality.

 

So in reality we can only reach a state of innocence when we no longer acknowledge the concept of sin. When we give up right and wrong and analyze what happens within the world from a perspective based on our experience, rather than intellect, then we can begin to behave as we were intended and as a side effect, return to a state of innocence, although in this state innocence means absolutely nothing.

 

Aaron

 

Nope, "Innocent" in the deepest meaning is not a state of mind, or related to subjective perspectives and such. Thus what such purity of truth is absolutely can not be delinated by mind. (as this or that or as nothing)

Edited January 5, 2012 by 3bob

[Aaron]

Nope, "Innocent" in the deepest meaning is not a state of mind, or related to subjective perspectives and such. Thus what such purity of truth is absolutely can not be delinated by mind. (as this or that or as nothing)

 

But you seem to be doing just that by saying that it can't be. That subjective, whether you realize it or not. In fact your definition doesn't even make sense to me. It seems like you're trying to say it has something to do with enlightenment and higher awareness, when it doesn't, in fact it's one of the key requirements to achieving those states, but it isn't enlightenment at all. At least that's what many spiritual paths seem to teach.

 

Aaron

Edited January 5, 2012 by Twinner

[3bob]

But you seem to be doing just that by saying that it can't be. That subjective, whether you realize it or not. In fact your definition doesn't even make sense to me. It seems like you're trying to say it has something to do with enlightenment and higher awareness, when it doesn't, in fact it's one of the key requirements to achieving those states, but it isn't enlightenment at all. At least that's what many spiritual paths seem to teach.

 

Aaron

 

"In fact your definition doesn't even make sense to me". That is ok.

 

no boxes doesn't always mean another box of no boxes...

Edited January 6, 2012 by 3bob

[Aaron]

"In fact your definition doesn't even make sense to me". That is ok.

 

no boxes doesn't always mean another box of no boxes...

 

Unless you're using no boxes to box those boxes.

 

Aaron

[三江源]

We come at this question from different angles.

 

Innocence to me is a quality of the shen. It's being untangled.

[Protector]

[Aaron]

I understand that people are misunderstanding exactly what I mean by becoming like a child, or returning to innocence, so I wanted to clarify, because I honestly believe this is one of most important things we as human beings should learn. First, returning to innocence is not about becoming naive or completely trusting people, or not being aware that things happen in the world that could harm you, it's about returning to a state where your actions are not dictated by philosophies, ideologies, or social mores, and instead by an innate understanding of how the world works.

 

We all have this ability, it's not something only the rare few can manage to recapture, and I say recapture, because this state of being existed within us at one time, but was slowly diminished by social indoctrination. What returning to innocence is, at it's most basic level, is learning to judge actions and thoughts, not by placing a moral value judgement on these things, but by the actual consequences of that action.

 

So if someone comes up to you and asks your for your car, no you don't give him your car, because being innocent doesn't mean that you don't understand the need of having a car, nor does it mean that you are supposed to give up things you need to those who want them, it means that you are aware of what's happening in the world and not making subjective decisions based on moral propaganda, but rather making reacting to what's happening based on your understanding of the actual situation.

 

If anyone needs examples, I'd be happy to provide them, but I really just wanted to clarify what I'm talking about here. In essence, you can still return to innocence if you agree with a religion or philosophy, so long as the religion or philosophy doesn't influence your decisions, but rather an understanding of the innate nature of what's occurring, without moral bias.

 

Aaron

 

 

[Aaron]

 

I like the pic, but man you have way too much time on your hands.

 

Aaron

[Protector]

I like the pic, but man you have way too much time on your hands.

 

Aaron

 

*boop*

 

[Jetsun]

It's about being childlike not childish because it is it not ideal for an adult to be childish because children are narcissists.

 

Some people confuse these ideas as an excuse to cling onto immaturity but humanity is meant to grow away from the womb and you can never go back to being a child because as an adult you have a torrent of sexual energy and power you didn't have when you were a child which you have a responsibility to deal with and embrace.

 

Essentially I think becoming childlike is about undoing your conditioning so you see the world with fresh open eyes once again rather than filtering everything through your past experiences, but you do it with awareness and knowledge. Also I expect you will see everything as a bit ridiculous and a joke like children do.