I was pondering about why children and teenagers love to just ‘hang out’, ‘chill out’ and just generally get together with no particular purpose per se. It occurred to me that these were just modern day expressions of what is actually quite natural for us all…
- To just simply ‘BE’
- No agenda
- No ‘to-do’ lists
- Simply BEING and connecting with others
Children often amaze and inspire me because when they are just being themselves they connect to people with such openness, ease, presence and playfulness. The innocence in their eyes and their body just melts any hardness that comes their way.
Children are so inspiring and we have much to learn from them, for when they are just left to simply be themselves, the sparkle in their eyes is bright, the expression is full and they know in their hearts what true love is and what it is not.
So what happens to us when we get older? Where does that sparkle go? Do we forget how to just ‘hang out’ and ‘be’ with each other? We all were once a child with that sweet innocence and honest connection with ourselves.
As adults, how often do we truly connect to this? Yes, we catch up with friends and spend time with family, but are we truly allowing ourselves to ‘BE’ and connect with each other – heart to heart? Are our accumulated protections, hurts and mistrusts stopping us from truly meeting and connecting with each other? Have achievements, goals, and recognition become more important than true connection – leading us to always be ‘doing’ something?
These are the questions I have been pondering on lately as I appreciate and observe the sweet innocence of a child – an innocence that is naturally within us all, should we choose to re-connect to it.
The innocence and openness I re-connected to within myself recently felt so heavenly and natural; in the past this had felt very raw and ‘naked’ to me, which is why I would rarely allow myself to go there as an adult. But there was nothing ‘weak’ about being in my innocence, quite the opposite. The more I allowed myself to stay open to this, the more I could feel the power of my expression that came from this connection of deep presence and stillness.
I then took myself for a walk with my openness and innocence. My chest and heart felt so different – I felt so open to people and the world and my chest and heart felt like it was 1 metre in front of me. This was definitely new to me!
I realised that what I was experiencing was what it would feel like to let people in, to let the world in, to not put up a guard to protect, to allow myself to be fully seen in my sweet natural innocence.
Gosh the world felt so different!
All I had to do was surrender and ‘JUST BE ME’.
In our innocence we are so open and precious and truly divine.
Forever inspired by Serge Benhayon who inspires me to JUST BE ME.
By Marika Cominos, Melbourne
Further Reading:
Serge Benhayon: The Natural Philosopher
Inspired by Universal Medicine… Just Being Me
The Natural Love Of A Child
845 Comments
I love what you bring here Marika, as makes me appreciate even more the easyness of children in their encounters… the openness and immediacy (without judgement or any filtering) in their expression. Something indeed very natural and completely available in all of us regardless of our age.
I met a child recently that was full of love and innocence; I could not take my eyes off this child as I was fascinated by their presence. I could feel that when I was young I felt the same but the intervening years had changed the openness to harness protection. I cannot abide that we take away the one precious thing we are born with our connection to God and the Universe and we have made life so intense that even young children are feeling the stress of living in the unsettlement that not being with God brings. We collectively have a responsibility to allow all Children to grow up nurturing their connection to God and not crushing it as we currently are.
“Children are so inspiring and we have much to learn from them, for when they are just left to simply be themselves, the sparkle in their eyes is bright, the expression is full and they know in their hearts what true love is and what it is not”
We could all learn lots from children the way they so innocently see life is so very inspiring.
Children are so much more aware then what we care to realise.
Thank you Marika, definitely our awareness of how play-full we can be as an adult certainly changes many thing in our life and turns our strengths or True power towards being delicate, precious, tender, fragility and sacredness all of these becoming Loving attributes that deepen our sensitivities or clairsentience, which is our ability to feel and read life.
Lovely to hear about your walk with openess and innocence, ‘I realised that what I was experiencing was what it would feel like to let people in, to let the world in, to not put up a guard to protect, to allow myself to be fully seen in my sweet natural innocence.’
I’ve been dating recently and found that the best way to get to know someone is to walk together. No focus on an outside activity or getting to a certain location.
There is an illusion that we connect more when we drink alcohol or do drugs but what and who are we actually connecting to?
“Where does that sparkle go?” That sparkle is still there within us but we tend to draw the curtains so that no one can see it.
Children are very inspiring, and incredibly wise, there is much we can learn from them, ‘Children are so inspiring and we have much to learn from them, for when they are just left to simply be themselves, the sparkle in their eyes is bright, the expression is full and they know in their hearts what true love is and what it is not.’
I agree Elizabeth, we can learn so much from children, and yes, they have a gorgeous natural spontaneity, alive-ness and playfulness, that many of us have replaced with being serious.
I find it ironic that we are in many ways modelled by how society is today to close ourselves up and be protective and guarded, yet it is this very behaviour which makes us focus so much on what we do because in closing our hearts we disconnect from our true self too.
You ask: “Do we forget how to just ‘hang out’ and ‘be’ with each other?” – in many cases we choose all sorts of distractions, so we are not very good at just “being” with ourselves. The more we are connected to ourselves the more we will naturally be connected with others. It does not even need hanging out, it is a vibration or state of being that can be present in everything we do or don’t do.
I feel I have confused seriousness with responsibility in the past and lost my spontaneity which I am now rediscovering supported by the reflections of children around me who have no such inhibitions.
Hanging out allows the space for connections that so often get crowded out in our ‘outcome’ obsessed world.
I feel a big part of the losing of the sparkle comes from a lack of fostering of a development of understanding energy, it’s various qualities and the underlying forces at play in life especially between spirit and soul. It not only allows us to de-personalise life and our experience which allows us to detach from it (no investment in outcomes means no hurt) but more importantly it allows us to feel empowered within ourselves by knowing who we truly are and what is truly going on around us and how to handle it.
Gorgeous blog Marika, I too adore the way children are so open, honest and not shy to simply be themselves. They constantly remind us and invite us to also be ourselves.
What I have also noticed is that today, very few children are in the space of such settlement. They are often needing constant stimulation, experiencing lots of different moods and there seems to be growing numbers of children who struggle to connect with others. There is something we need to come back to as it seems we have lost our way and our children are reflecting that.
Thank you – we have often forgotten the true meanings of life and all in it. This blog brings us back to the naturalness of being ourselves without any doing.
Innocence is such a key word here…it is such a beautiful word, and it is possible to have this quality with clarity, strength and natural authority as well.
We often make our way through life using a guard of knowing it all and having it all figured out. When we approach life with innocence everything is new and there is an absence of judgement or expectation.
The time we have with ourselves is precious beyond words, and something that is fast disappearing in this new world of technology. Time to reclaim the simple art of being.
Isn’t it amazing how when we open up and change the whole world appears to change. Now imagine what the world would be like if everyone opened up!
Children are a great reflection of this. The joy to be had in being oneself and sharing that with another with no other agenda than that.
I have the joy of working with children of all ages on two days a week and doing so I can feel the innocence that I naturally had as a child beginning to reawaken. I have decided to really observe the children, especially the younger ones as they play and interact with others and am continually delighted with what I see. The ease with which they flow from one thing to another is inspiring but at the same time often frustrating for the adults who want them to stay with what they are doing; but trying to stop their natural flow is like trying to contain mercury.
I love what you’ve shared Ingrid and we can learn so much from observing children play. Their natural flow and the quality in how they move is very inspiring and they remind us that we are able to move with the same delicateness, purpose, joy, and playfulness too.
You share of an innocence that children naturally hold – and that we were all once children – so it is about reconnecting to what we naturally know. I can learn so much from just observing children and how they are in their bodies, and as is shared here – by changing our movement we also support our bodies to deepen our natural connection.