CHILDLIKE APPROACH TO LIFE
Most of us are caught in the small part of life and miss seeing the whole. Without leaving our room, we want to see the vastness of the sky. We live a part of the whole and that part is our pattern, our positionality, our ego. Thus, we limit our brain to our patterns. To drop our shallow way of seeing and to see the whole is managing our life effectively. To take that leap, we have to have a childlike perceptive and not a childish perceptive.
Life is a thrilling mystery vast and limitless. Hence, it cannot be limited to shallow thinking. We get limited to our concepts, ideas, limited beliefs, but life is vaster than our limited concepts, ideas and limited beliefs. We have not learnt to observe our life, and hence lost in our limitations. There is a difference between being childish and childlike. To be childish is ignorant like a child and to be childlike is innocent like a child.
We have to learn how to perceive, how to look, how to see. A child sees innocently. To be innocent is to be open. Can we be open in our perception? When we look at a flower, we don’t actually see the flower. The perceiver pollutes the perception. With strong likes and dislikes, the person looks at a flower. When that happens, the emphasis is on one’s likes and dislikes and not actually on the flower. As one grows, one’s mind has rigid frames of like and dislike, opinions, dogmas, fears, conflicts, greed etc. When one sees in this backdrop, one’s “seeing” is influenced by one’s background. So one’s experience of the external world is a product of one’s internal mind.
Understand how we learn. We learn through books. We go to school and college and learn. We collect a lot of concepts, words and then we get prisoned to what we know. Then, when we “see and know” something in the outer world, there is a struggle. The struggle is to see and know in the light of what I know in my past. The present should fit into my past. So what I know, from my past is more valuable than what I see in the present? One is bound by what one knows. So one’s perception is not free. What I know and learn is dictated by the background of my knowledge, from the background of one’s past. A child like perception is freeing oneself from that background and hence inwardly be free and from that freedom to see.
Apply this in the field of relationships, at the office or home. We have an image of our wife, husband or boss. This image is a product of our conclusions, opinions, and with that mental image one relates to one’s wife, husband or boss. We don’t connect to the other and instead connect through the image of the other. So our struggle is to see the other fits into our image of our partner or of ourself. This is a complicated way of living. A child like perception has no image and then its innocence comes in touch with the object. The struggle for seeing that our image is validated is not there and hence no pain. By this we can relate better and not be a victim of being bitter.
Be like a child, open, innocent and then with that perception you will see something new. The ability to see something new is a product of one’s inner being, free from one’s past. Past will exist but will not limit a free perception. Then you will look at your projects, freely, openly, and something new happens in the way you look at the problem in the office or work or any situations.
