The PATH of Innocence

As life takes us on our twists and turns, we walk a path. We design our life with our professional goals interwoven with family ideals and our spiritual thoughts pop in as we allow them. We seldom think back to a time when we were the epitome of innocence…just enjoying LIFE, allowing our hearts to carry us to new heights. When did life become so complicated?

How easy it was this past week for me to get caught up in the frustrations of technology, disappointments that threaded through my day unwanted, and YET deep inside…I knew insights light up my world! Through the gift of other people in my life for various reasons, I settled back into feeling my purpose receiving  gifts as I offered my own gifts with no thought of return!

Choosing the moment to stop and reflect on my blessings in the midst of turmoil allows me to simply REMEMBER that silent innocent place within me. It is a GIFT. Meditation takes me there, but so does a simple thought in my awareness that at ANY given moment I can chose to go there. Sometimes that is very significant…because then I can go right back to the business of doing something FUN, laugh and enjoy something totally out of the ordinary.  Meaningful times…in the innocence of simple enjoyment.

I think back on my early childhood…with that innocence slipping away gradually, but never giving it a thought. I began to think that all of the answers about life had to be found outside of me through other people, my education, family members, friends, and “church” learning that began to direct my life.  Each different church claiming “truths” quickly became very confusing when I thought about it logically.

I came across the following words through an article Marj sent to me. The words in this quote simply jumped out at me. It is a very deep and thoughtful quote by a man named Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I had never heard of the man, so I looked him up. He was born in 1956 and I think of our younger brother who was born in the same year and seven years younger than myself!

Ravi Shankar is an Indian yoga guru, a spiritual leader. In the 70’s, Transcendental Meditation was considered THE “correct” form of meditation and it was founded by a man named Mahesh Yogi. Ravi Shankar worked as an apprentice under Mahesh Yogi. But, it is the following words I’d like to have you contemplate with me.

“We all came into this world gifted with innocence, but gradually, as we became more intelligent, we lost our innocence.  We were born with silence, and as we grew up, we lost the silence and were filled with words. We lived in our hearts, and as time passed, we moved into our heads. Now the reversal of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from head back to the heart, from words, back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence. Although very simple, this is a great achievement. Knowledge should lead you to that beautiful point of  “I don’t know…The whole evolution of man is from being somebody to being nobody and from being nobody to being everybody.”  ~ Ravi Shankar

The words, “being everybody” is significant in this quote. That is the ONENESS that we know and experience through enlightened thought.

“The reversal of this journey is enlightenment.” Those words help me realize that the intelligence that is inherent in us is not always gained through knowledge. We like to think of ourselves as educated and becoming wiser as we put that education to use in our lives. But, are we any more intelligent now than we were when we were young and innocent? I don’t know.

I don’t know. I love his words that help me realize that our knowledge should lead us to realize there will be things that we simply do not know…and it’s perfectly OKAY!

I would love to allow you can go back and read that beautiful quote, it is powerful when we take in the words. We think of miracles as something that “happens” to us. Try changing the thought. It is in the giving and receiving that miracles are simply part of life! This is a concept that is taught in great detail when we are trained in Reconnective Healing!

In the course of Miracles, Lesson 159 states

I give the miracles I have received.

You understand that you are healing when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. There is no miracle you cannot give for all are given to you. “Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away!” ~

~Course of Miracles Lesson 159