The Wisdom of Innocence
Usually when we consider innocence, we think of little children and how naive and trusting they are because they’ve not yet learned of the darkness and cruelty of our world. Most of us, when we witness innocence, our heart is touched in a beautiful place and our being resonates with one of the many, expansive qualities of love; we are moved and we feel protective; as if we have witnessed something unspoiled, something sacred. And indeed, perhaps we have.
Innocence is often associated with ignorance; ignorance of the world, ignorance of need and lack and ignorance of those who would harm us and take what we have. These little ones are foolish and they must be trained to recognize danger, evil and the potentially threatening other. And so, they are trained as we have been trained; raised as we have been raised. They must be trained to perceive separation, to recognize the dangers and to live as we have lived: taking everyone and everything to be as we have perceived it to be – all divided and reified as predator, ally or prey.
Our minds have been raised to experience and perceive separation, reification, polarized dualities and threat. It is all we have known, it seems real to us. And so, of course, it is what we have taught our young ones; we love them and want them to survive, we want to give them everything we believe they’ll need to navigate through their own lives. Many of us endeavor to instill values, qualities of character such as integrity, honesty, ethics and compassion in our children. That only goes so far. At some point we realize that has to be their choice, for themselves.
For most of us, our lives are so filled with the contents of our day-to-day that we rarely have a moment to reflect on what’s at the root of the crazy, busy, stressed out patterns our lives have taken on. Few of us seem to have the time or inclination to consider what has brought our human species of consciousness to give vast portions of our shared wealth to killing one another and destroying cultures and traditions which had sustained groups of us for centuries. We don’t have to scratch too deeply to recognize the wasteful insanity of how we are being together. How has this come about? What makes us imagine this is just “the way it is.”
I’d like to propose a fundamental change of perspective which is not only grounded in the latest, scientific understandings of our day but it is also pointed to and described by the most respected sages within all our religions.
Nothing is separate from anything; ever. Not only is everything interconnected and interrelated, but no thing is actually a “thing.” In truth everything our language reifies as a “thing,” is, in fact, a whole –in and of itself – and it is interdependent with every”thing” else, with which it co-arises. Further, all wholes or “holons” are both composed of discrete sub-systems or holons and they collectively compose larger holons of a higher order of integration and complexity.
Examples of holons collaborating within holons: nervous system, skeletal-muscular system, digestive system, cardio-respiratory system, immune system, etc. collaboratively create our embodied human being. We depend upon the environment for the air, the water, the food, which provides the energy and information for our organisms to be sustained; without the enveloping and infusing dynamics of this planet none of us would be alive. Without the radiant infusion from the Sun, the galaxy and the Universe there could be no life on Earth. All these biological systems mentioned above could not exist without their composing, specialized cells, which are composed of collaborations of molecules which are patterns of atoms which are clusters of sub-atomic particles which are energetic expressions of the singular zero-point field.
Recognizing this allow us to begin acknowledging the One that is All-That-Is, both in its transcendent inclusiveness and its underlying, energetic singularity. We can acknowledge It; we can sense It and recognize “It” as the source and substance of our being, of all being. But we cannot comprehend “It.” This is of a higher order than any idea or image our mind might formulate.
As we begin to consider that this One is and includes all of itself, including us, we can begin noticing a ground of being that precedes and supersedes all of our conditioned assumptions and beliefs. We can begin noticing that there is something here that is more fundamentally who and what we are than anything and everything we have come to take ourselves to be. It is profoundly useful to give this our attention.
So, how do we do that?
In order to notice this and to begin becoming familiar with it, we have to stop giving our attention to the conditioned mind-world that has been the streaming contents of our moments. In other words, for at least a moment, we have to stop thinking and experientially notice what is already here. When we choose to stop thinking for a moment and give our attention to the non-verbal, non-conceptual felt-sense of whatever we can notice, what we notice is an open, alert presence.
Usually, within seconds, we have given it a label or labels, developed descriptions and pretty quickly we’ve begun constructing a narrative about it or else we’ve just distracted into whatever has come foreground in our awareness. This is why, in the practice traditions, it is often said, “Short moments of re-recognition, repeated many times, is the fastest way to enlightenment.”
Let’s break this down a bit. The images, ideas and perceptions of our conditioned minds can only reveal the dualistic, reified world of separation that they have been entrained to perceive/create/experience. When we stop this habitual re-creation of the same old, same old, our conscious awareness is freed up for a moment and we can notice the underlying, actuality of our living, awake, being. It is incalculably useful to give our full attention to the, perhaps seemingly subtle, experience that emerges for us in these moments. What is revealed is unconditioned; it is unfabricated. Indeed, it is a direct experience of our natural state.
So. What’s the significance of that? As we, ever so briefly, release our conscious awareness from its conditioned mind-world/dream-body of separation, reification and polarized dualities, it is released into what has always, already been here as the living, actuality of our being. Each instant of realignment within the resonances of reality, retunes our nervous system a bit more; gradually, for most of us, the default settings of our nervous system become the open intelligence of our natural state and we recognize that this expansive, clear presence is innately everyone’s nature; we know our shared oneness.
However, each time we choose to stop thinking and merely notice what is already here, we must be willing to step beyond what we have believed we know and allow ourselves to be in the wide-open awareness of not-knowing in order for the non-verbal, non-conceptual reality underlying our mind-made realm to be revealed.
This openness, this humble willingness is what I am referring to as the wisdom of innocence.