There is such wisdom in Nature. Often it carries out its most miraculous work quietly under the veil of the ordinary. Sometimes we achieve the most wonderful things when we are not even aware of what we are doing. If we did know it, we might only paralyze ourselves and ruin the flow of natural creativity. If parents were fully aware of their effect, they could never act. If they could see the secret work of mind formation in the home and the harvest it will eventually bring, they could never achieve the neutrality that allows normal home life to happen in a natural way. Parents are generally wonderful people who give all their hearts and energy to the little people they have called into the universe. Parents must act in good faith—without excessive anxiety or self-rebuke. They must induct their children into the larger community.
To a child, the parents are gods. Children are totally vulnerable. They are still only at the threshold of themselves. During your life on earth, childhood is the time of most intense happening. Yet ironically, it is also the most silent time in your life. You are having immense experiences of wonder, discovery, and difficulty, but the words and thoughts to name them have not yet arrived. This time of fermentation and change will influence so much of your later life, yet you have so little access to the integrating power of thoughts and words. Consequently, the depths of your experience as a child remain opaque. Childhood is a forest we never recognize while we are in it. Our minds and imagination and dreams constantly return there to explore the roots of our personality and presence. We try to unravel from the forest of first feelings and first events the secret of the patterns which have now become our second nature.
Childhood is an absolute treasure house of imagination. It is the forest of first encounters to which we can never again return. We have become too used to the world; wonder no longer animates us as it did then. There is so much that we can find out about the magic of our souls by revisiting these memories of first acquaintance. Never again do we experienceso directly and powerfully the surprise and the fresh tang of novelty. The forest of childhood is also the territory where our dreams, imagination, and images were first seeded. So much happened to us there under the canopy of innocence. It was only later that we could notice that the shadows were present too. The memory of childhood is so rich that it takes a lifetime to unpack. Again and again, we remember certain scenes, not always the most dramatic, and gradually come to a kind of self-understanding and an understanding of our parents. When we are as old as they were when we first knew them, whose face do we see in the mirror—ours or theirs?
Innocence is precious and powerful. It is expected and acknowledged as a natural fact that a child is innocent. Yet innocence is more sophisticated than mere ignorance, lack of knowledge, or lack of experience. It is not accidental that the manner of our arrival in the universe is shrouded in innocence. This first innocence protects us from knowing the sinister negativity of life. It also immunizes us against recognition of how strange it is to be here, thrown into a world which is crowded with infinities of space, time, matter, and difference. It should be frightening to be a child in such a vast and unpredictable universe, but the little child never notices the danger directly. Innocence is a state of unknowing and the readiness to know. The wisdom of the human mind, especially in the child, ensures that knowing the world happens in stages. The innocence of childhood never breaks completely in one vast bright or dark epiphany. It only gives way gradually to new recognitions and experiences. Even when severe trauma occurs, it is somehow integrated; though it does deep damage, it still rarely extinguishes the flame of innocence. There is a poignant sense in which the child must keep its innocence alive in order to continue to grow and not allow the darkness to swamp its little mind. Innocence minds us. It only lets us become aware of what we are able to handle. Innocence permits the child to belong in the world. This is the secret of the child’s trust; it assumes that belonging is natural and sheltering. Experiments have shown that young children who have been thoroughly cautioned against the danger of strangers can still be coaxed and will walk off with a stranger in a public place while the parent is momentarily occupied. The innocence of childhood renews that of the parents and quickens their instinct to preserve it.
