When a child is playing and totally engrossed in the moment, she is not trying to conceptualize about that play. She is not trying to call it Oneness, enlightenment, spirituality, or presence. She is not trying to understand what that play means for her life or whether she is enlightened or on the right path to a fully liberated life. She is not comparing a previous moment to the current moment of play in some attempt to measure how liberated she is now to how liberated she was then. She is not looking to the next moment in some hope to be more liberated then. She is simply, effortlessly, and naturally here. Right here. In this moment totally engrossed in the present play of life, perhaps with a doll or a flower from the backyard. Even when the child engages in role play with her friends, she is not lost in the role. Unlike adults, who really believe they are doctors, lawyers, secretaries, and housewives, children know that roles are make believe. They are not locked in those roles.
Spiritual liberation means to be like a child. It does not mean to project some idea of how a child plays and then try to behave that way. It is much simpler, much more effortless than that. It is seeing that life is living itself through your body and mind. The "person" you take yourself to be is just one big avoidance of that surrender. Liberation is living in a sense of wonder, not having any idea about what is going to happen next or even caring about what is going to happen next. The truth is, no one knows what is going to happen next. So liberation is about living in that truth. The mind might recoil when it reads that last sentence, believing that thought must be engaged in order to know what is going to happen next. The mind says, “How will I function if I don’t think about the future?” But the absolutely shocking thing about true spiritual liberation is that functioning happens perfectly when the sense of a separate self falls away and life is living itself through you. The mind may resist this entire message, believing that it is pointing to some sort of regression into childhood. No, not at all. This message is pointing to the tapping into a natural intelligence that is here and that is in control of us. You are not in control of life. You only think you are. The dream self, which is a thought-based story, is trying desperately to hold onto control. It is telling a story that it took action in the past and that it is going to take action in the future. It does not realize that action arises spontaneously. Thought arises spontaneously. Emotion arises spontaneously. Everything arises spontaneously. In the absence of that dream self that believes it is bringing about thought and action, control is seen to be an illusion.
In many spiritual teachings, include some on this site and in my book, you may hear the pointer that you are pure awareness or you may be invited to notice thoughts and emotions that are arising. If those pointers appear to loosen up the heaviness of the dream self, allow that to happen. But liberation is something else entirely. Liberation is not deliberately telling a story that there is something here called awareness that is separate from and aware of something else here called thought, emotion, or reactions. Liberation is much simpler and more spontaneous. It is the recognition that life is happening in whatever way it is happening. We are not bringing it about. We are not making it happen. It is happening to us. In that freedom, childlike wonder arises. Liberation is realized.
The childlike wonder that is being pointed to here is the recognition that the source of life (call it God if you want) moves freely through us. This source is not separate from who we are. The dream self is nothing more than resistance to that source. Thought will never grasp this message. Thought gets stuck in the notion of internal control, in the idea of an internal self that must take action according to thought. In the alternative, thought gets stuck in the notion of external control, in the concept of a source (a God) that is somehow separate "out there" somewhere, pulling our strings and talking to us through our thoughts. This is insane. The source is right here. It is not separate from you. It is living itself through you. When God is made into a separate entity out there, he is reduced to a lifeless concept in the mind. When thought stops telling the story of internal control (ego) and external control (the God "out there" somewhere controlling us), life is simply lived freely.
To Be Like a Child . . .
