03
What's so bad about your life? What don't you like about your life? What is good about your life? What do you like about your life? What is it in your life that brings you alive? How often do you go there, do that? What is deadening about your life-- what drains the life out of you? How often do you go there, do that? How much of your heart is in the life you are living? What has to change to get more heart in your life? What control do you have over your life? How much of that control do you exercise? How might you better manage the control you have over your perspective? Over your reactivity? Over your attitude? Over your relationship with yourself? If you were to improve your relationship with yourself, what would you do? What is keeping you from doing it?
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02
Our Community of Innocence
is comprised of the people
around whom it is safe
to be who we are.
They are the people who receive us well,
who regard us kindly--
with compassion and without judgment.
Who listen to us to the point
of enabling us to hear
what we are saying.
They love us as we are
and as we are becoming--
and have nothing at stake,
nothing to gain
and nothing to lose,
in our being who we are
beyond wanting us to be
as aware of ourselves
and of our situation in life--
in our umwelt
("The world as we perceive it to be")--
as we can possibly be
at every point in our life.
They believe that seeing is being is doing,
and live to enable everyone to see
what they look at,
and see beyond what they look at
into what needs to be done
in response to it,
which is basically,
enabling the situation
to take itself into account
and adjust what needs to be adjusted
to be what it needs to be.
They are mirrors reflecting us to ourselves,
so that we might see ourselves
as though for the first time
and do what needs to be done about it
to better incarnate/exhibit/express
who we are and who we need to become.
It is our place to seek out the people
who allow us to be who we are
and enable us to become
who we are capable of being.
Too many people want us to be
who they want us to be,
and will not permit us to be
different from their idea
of who we ought to be.
"That isn't YOU!"
"Get back in line!"
"Be who you are supposed to be!"
They want us to wear the costume
and play the role
assigned to us by our place in their life,
toeing the line
and exemplifying their ideal
of who we need to be.
"No variation allowed!
Recite the creed!
Embrace the dogma!
Project the image!
Be who we expect you to be!"
Communities of Innocence
simply want us to be
who we are capable of being
in each moment of our living,
moment-by-moment,
responding to what is called for
here and now
with what we have offer
from the gifts/daemon/virtues/
character/spirit/vitality/life
that comes with us from the womb
as our original nature--
sincerely and spontaneously,
without contriving
to arrange a particular outcome,
just doing what needs us to do it
as best we can
in the right way,
at the right time.
All our life long.
In this way,
Communities of Innocence
enable us to live in accord with the Tao
and exhibit the face that was ours
before we were born
out of the balance and harmony
that envelop those
who are at one with the way
day-by-day.
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01
The people you run with are your enablers and your guards, guaranteeing that you don't grow beyond where you are. They are the status quo keepers, holding you in place, ruling out any possibility of your seeing things other than you do, or being different than you are. They limit your choices and your chances, and maintaining your present umwelt exactly as it is forever. If you want things to change about your life, your "friends" are the first things that have to go. What we all need is a Community of Innocence whose place in our life is that of a sounding board, enabling us to say what needs to be said and to hear what we are saying to the point of understanding what the implications are and what we need to do about it in making the changes necessary to grow into who we are. A Community of Innocence is innocent in the sense that it has no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas, nothing it wants from us, or needs of us, or each other, beyond sincerity, authenticity, and non-contrivance, so that everyone in the Community is Thus Come, is just who they are and who they are becoming, and all are supporting one another in the quest to grow in all phases of human development, so that all are maximize their individual potential on all levels of life-- becoming who they are throughout the time left for living. And they may do this unknowingly. They may exist as a community only in your recognition of their place in your life. They may never know one another, but they are Your People in the best sense of the term. The process for helping us come forth is that of simply reflecting us to us so that we see/know who we are and who we need to be, and live to narrow the gap, even as it expands in all directions and calls us ever beyond where we are to all that we are capable of being. In that there is always "more to us than meets the eye," we are always at the point of becoming who we are by being who we are. In seeing/saying/incarnating/ expressing/exhibiting who we are, we move beyond who we are into who we are yet to be. There is no static way of being. There is no rigid, firm and final form of US. Our identity is being shaped by our potential all our life long. We never stop growing, and that means we never stop growing up. That can only happen within a Community of Innocence that has nothing at stake in who we are, and is only interested in reflecting us to us, and thereby helping us to become who we are becoming. I don't know you, but I know you do not have 3 to 5 people in your life who are assisting you in the process of your own birthing in this way. It is up to you to find them and let them be for you your Community of Innocence, even though they may never meet one another, or come together for group gatherings, they are what you need to be who you are becoming who you are, and are your sources of life, and light, and being.
