Child-like Innocence

A couple of esoteric works I've read mention that the incipient student must have the same child-like quality mentioned by Jesus in the Bible.  There are three instances where Jesus makes reference to a child and the Kingdom of God. They are found in Matt 18:1-6, Matt 19:14 and Luke 18:16-17. There is also a similar reference in the Gospel of Thomas (obviously not included in the Bible), but I think the passage from Luke 18:16-17 sums it up best: "But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein (emphasis mine)." You may visit Wikipedia for the relevant passages.

There are many different ways that one can interpret the statement above. One way of looking at it is that children are easy to teach because their minds are not clouded with the prejudices and crystallized behavioral patterns most often associated with adults. On another level, children are more trusting and innocent, hence lessons and experiences are easily imprinted upon them. And on the next level, the Kingdom of God is pure and rejects anything impure (Law of Attraction again: like attracts like) therefore one should be as pure in thought and character as a child, in order to enter the Kingdom of God.

The importance of the above passage was brought home to me because of my wife's experience this morning. I usually wake up earlier than her in order to do my daily exercises and meditations. While I was lying down on the bed doing some stretching, my wife was beside me but half-awake. Then she saw a disembodied face of a woman looking down at me. The features were beautiful and of white complexion with long, black and kinky hair. But then my wife suddenly felt a stab of fear at the thought of seeing an apparition then the face shrank to about the size of the palm of the hand and changed into that of a child but dark-skinned with short kinky hair, like what an Aeta would look like (in the Philippines, the Aeta are an indigenous tribal people found in the mountains of Northern Luzon), although the features were still beautiful and harmless. My wife gave out a short cry and that's when I shook her awake.

Based on that experience, I just thought that when seeing things in the inner world, fear, misconceptions or prejudices can distort one's vision of a true, beautiful thing into a form that matches your preconceived notions of what you "should be" seeing. And that's how I remembered the parable of Jesus and how we should see with the eyes of a child, in order to properly perceive the inner world.