Can you remember when you were a child? The innocence, the freedom, the beingness of it; what divine beauty the world was to our little minds. Consciousness was the wonder of being aware of this exquisite miracle called creation.
Whether you’re relate to the Christian message or not you can surely understand Jesus when he said “You must become as little children if you would enter the kingdom of God.”
And it was Jesus again who said, as the Logos or Word of God “suffer these little ones to come unto me, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them”.
But as adults we seem to have lost the magic of that childhood innocence, that beingness and pure consciousness. Why did we give up “I amness”? What happened to our experience of the kingdom of God? Is it not that we moved back and forth in the playground of creation and at some point tried to reach out and grasp it? Do you not recall the first time you desired an object? You surely remember telling your brother or sister some thing was “Mine!” Life is so amazing we want to keep it all for ourselves.
Is this yearning to hold onto the world not the root of our suffering? Is it not possible that we can again enjoy the beauty of existence as we did as young children? Without trying to hold onto it? Stop everything you’re doing for a moment and look deep within your heart. What is that desire that wells up in you? Do you not feel a sense of anxiety that you must be missing out on something? That it’s not the way it used to be? This doesn’t feel like home does it? Where’s the childlike joy I once had?
Home is not “I am a man” “I am a mother” “I am bad” “I am happy” “I am depressed” “I want to feel peace” “I want more money” “I wish I were skinny” “I am different” “I am not you!” “I am incomplete” “I am lacking that one thing that will make me content”.
That’s not home. That’s not the innocence of childhood. What if you could simply drop all the predicts of those statements? Can you for a moment simply be aware of “I am”? You can’t not be “I am”. Whether you think, feel, or believe you exist…you do! This “I am” is just the acknowledgement within you that declares “I exist!” Has there ever been a time when you haven’t felt it? If I tell you you’re not real will you not shout back “Yes I am, I’m right here in front of you!”
Somewhere along the way as we grew up we began to believe the language we learned. You can’t have a sentence without a verb and an object. “I am” doesn’t make much of an adventure story! So we fabricated a tale about our sense of beingness. We began to tell ourselves “I am this” or “I am that”. When it sounded believable we told everyone else, or more precisely they helped us discover our personal story. We left the freedom of pure beingness behind to be some thing.
We became identified with the objects we predicated upon our sense of being. The subjective nature of our awareness continually reached out into the world and sought bigger and better sense objects. But as we’ve become adults we’ve realized that these objects never really make us happy. They don’t really complete the story of “I am”.
This is where the desire to grasp the things of the world begins to feel rather futile and hopeless. Actually this is where we have the opportunity to respond to grace. The world has systematically thrown object after object at us and the end result is the suffering that brings the deep insight into the unsatisfactory nature of objects: the insight is grace, true mercy. Creation isn’t worthless, rather it’s unfulfilling to try and hold onto it as if it was ours. It will always slip through our fingers. Objects never ultimately satisfy us, they only leave us desiring more objects, hence the futility.
But as grace brings the reality of our suffering into focus we have the opportunity to respond by investigating our tendency to grasp the world. Do you have the time to turn your attention within? Can you take time today to investigate your “I amness”? What if it were possible to regain your childlike innocence by simply inquiring into your undeniable sense that you exist?
The old saying says that you can be old but a child at heart. Why can’t that be a reality for you? In fact it already is! How could you say “I am unhappy” without first being “I am”? You’ve just spent so much time going out, out, out that in order to reclaim your childhood you have to turn the light of inquiry in, in, in. Start by taking time each day looking into the nature of “I am”. Consider that anything you can add to that sense of beingness is not it, it’s added to what’s always there. If you take away any predicate of “I am” are you still here? Does anything change? Are you still you? If it doesn’t affect you…why continue to grasp it and identify with it? Inquire in this way with all your heart. Done earnestly and honestly your mileage will not vary! Inquiry will remove the ignorance of who you truly are.
I write to you not as someone in front of a computer screen reaching out to you on the other side of the internet trying to entertain you with spiritual vomit. I write to you as your-Self because in the last analysis we are not different. The truth is when I exclaim “I am”, when I feel it in my soul, that reality is in no way separate or unlike the same sense of “I amness” within you. I am writing a love story from my-Self to your-Self, it’s the same Self.
The paradox of life is that in order to have it all you’ve got to give it all up. Happiness is not in this or that, it’s in you…it is you. It is “I amness”. Focus on that sense, go beyond the mind, and abide in your true nature which is the kingdom of God. Only children may enter through the gate of “I am”.
Shivoham,
Hanuman Dass
