The State of Wise Innocence
If you could lay your eyes upon the most fire-hardened, most cruel and unpitying person alive, during sleep and at the moment of waking, you would see in them for a moment the untainted child spirit, the pure innocent. In sleep we are once again brought back to a state of sweetness. In sleep we are remade. We are reassembled from the inside out, fresh and new as innocents.
This state of wise innocence is entered by shedding cynicism and protectionism, and by re-entering the state of wonder one sees in most humans who are very young and many who are very old. It is a practice of looking through the eyes of a knowing and loving spirit, instead of through those of the whipped dog, the hounded creature, the mouth atop a stomach, the angry wounded human. Innocence is a state that is renewed as one sleeps. Unfortunately, many throw it aside with the coverlet as they arise each day. It would be better to take an alert innocence with us and draw it close for warmth.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves
What context was she describing this in? I, being the fool that I am, was reminded of Jermaine and how he isn't always evil. *laugh* That is just the mood I am in as of late.
ReplyDeleteI guess it would be nice of me to shed my own cynical view of the world and think that something good could happen to me, just because, yeah? Maybe that is what she means. Good things do happen.
I forget what the exact context was, but I definitely took it as a message for how I'm relating to the world rather than a signal that Roi has his innocence too. For sure he does, but it doesn't do me any good to focus on it because I'll only be thrown from my own path which is where I need to stay focused.
ReplyDeleteThis is a mean world and being so, it is hard to maintain that innocence. St. Paul said that your innocence will not protect you. I have found this to be true. In this world the innocent are mistaken for fools and the naive. It is difficult lesson for them.
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