Friendlies

Watching Sophia today on our walk I wondered about inhibition and what stops humans from joining the fun like my little dog. She sees other dogs, other humans for that matter, and runs right up to them, wags her tail — hey, I’m friendly, are you? And the games begin.

She is particularly fond of four dogs that walk where we do nearly every morning. I’m the pocket with treats and they are all used to their sweet sit being rewarded with a yummy bite. Sophia sits too but you can see her readiness for the treat deal to be done so the chase can begin.

She and Chi Chi are great friends and he can match her nearly step for step. That’s pretty rare since she’s super fast. Watching them play, all-out, in total abandon reminds me of very young children before their conditioning kicks in.

What’s up with conditioning? It totally sucks and seems, when looked at closely, to have no value at all. It teaches you to hang back, to test the water before tucking your knees in a juicy cannonball. It makes you doubt yourself and makes strangers of those who might just be friendlies. Why would you do that to yourself?

Somewhere along the line someone experienced something that made them fear life, made them want something other than what life offered in that moment and in a cosmic domino effect knocked out our birthright: raw enthusiasm, utter engagement, a sacred love affair with life.

Separation is not natural, is not built right in. It is not even needed for this gig of a lifetime. 

You live at the effect of the misperception of reality — what has been called the fall from grace, being kicked out of the garden with the gate slammed shut. It wasn’t Adam and Eve, it wasn’t even a person in history that did this to you. It is an idea run wild, molded into personhood, a thought of self-protection that protects you not.

Unless you become like little children … you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

There are so many misinterpretations of those words. The kingdom is at hand — it is here right now — there is nowhere else for it to be.  Sophia and Chi Chi know it. It is here for anyone who sees through the conditioning to what they really are — the pure raw engagement, life as simple basic experiencing, experiencing without the experiencer.

As long as the experiencer is deemed real, the protection racket is on alert. See through the ruse and it all falls apart, leaving what has always been, will always be, you, you precious child of the universe, you, you twinkling starlight pretending to be form.