Everyone is Innocent

 

 

This can be hard to believe at times, can it not? So let’s not use belief here, as that is always problematical; one person believes something utterly and the next says it is ridiculous. Belief is not a worthy confirmation nor a steady standard of authenticity.

Let’s look instead at how life is actually showing up, in the moment. Right here, right now, are you innocent or guilty? Are you worthy, valuable or (probably because of believing [there it is again] in the badness/wrongness of some of your previous behaviors) are you less-than, perhaps even bad and not at all good? My experience is that many feel that way about themselves.

And I, too, struggled mightily with these very questions all my life. Truly believed (smile) that Lisa was not good and never could be. Then awakening… and still the questions went on, which was a surprise as my belief (another smile) was that I would instantly be absolved, instantly become pure. That doesn’t happen when we wake up. More on that in another post.

For me the ticket was to genuinely realize that behavior is never caused by anything such as heredity, previous behaviors, thought, emotion, sensation; and it is never an effect (of my rightness or wrongness or even choice, volition or control, but that it can seem to be). Behavior is always a spontaneous showing-up; zero cause. Once that was gut-clear the rest came into focus.

What does this mean, how does it work that behavior is not caused by me, that somehow I am not actually “doing” it and thusly innocent? It happens because life is spontaneous, appearing fresh and new in each nano-moment and then again, over and over. No past, no future, just that tiny point of appearance that explodes into the wholeness of everything. There is never a cause of what shows up because nothing previously happened, it just seems that way. Life absolutely looks solid and objective with time sequentially separating everything, but that’s really not at all how it is. Handy, though.

And the apparent causes of behavior also seem solid and objective due in part to the mind-function labeled “memory”, which assists in creating the illusion that life is constantly flowing from past to future. This allows a “cause” to appear as being the trigger or creator of an “effect”. But this is how the dreamstream only seems to actually be. Time is the word we give to this, but as it does not exist as a thing, only a concept or label we put to our apparent experience of “before, now, after”, it can give no objective reality to anything. This is the unseen trick of it: none of that is actual, it’s just the way it appears in order that it can be experienced as… well, as the way it is experienced. A magnificent and wondrous dream embraced, lived.

Yet if there is no “previous”, then there can be no actual cause for what we say and do. This attaching of responsibility is a mis-perception, a misunderstanding, rather than the abdication that some might imagine it to be. Each word we say, each move we make, each action taken is fresh, new and never caused by the non-existent past and never effecting an always-unreal future. It’s just what it is, right now; a kind of instant pop-up that then vanishes and the next pop-up appears. It is the moment, the now; the only time we’ll ever have.

This does not mean we should not hold ourselves and others accountable, because that can show up also. We don’t have to stay in situations or with people that we find unpleasant, imagining we must because they are innocent, nor do we have to assign wrongness, moving from seeing authentic accountability to pointing the blame finger. We can simply say to ourselves or another that this is not what is desired or appreciated, give feedback if that feels right to do, and move on. Meanwhile, life continues as the automatic becoming of the next nano-moment and things change or don’t.

So this might come down to whether or not we genuinely see that in a way we are puppets only… but in a nice way, as life is lived not through us (as separate selves) but as us. Nowhere can there be found a separate self to be held responsible; nowhere causes and effects. In this, as in all things, we are no different than the clouds in the sky, the trees in the earth, the water in the ocean. We are life: natural, spontaneous; never bad and never good. Not even genuine innocence to be found, as there is nothing other with which it can be contrasted; and no guiltiness except when felt and believed like so much other that is falsely embraced. Bottom line: We just are.

And that’s something to celebrate, I think. All labels, all judgments resolved and the playing field seen as absolutely equal for all, as the field is all; all of us and all of everything. Everyone is valuable and innocent because everyone is life itself. Denigrating one is the denigrating of the other because there is no “other”; all is the same exact seamless thing.

It’s life. It’s all we’ve got and it’s just so beautiful, painful, chaotic, joyful; a mystery to the googleplex power. And we the innocents who play in it, as it. Perfect.

And as always… look for yourself. Explore these words in your own interior. True? Nonsense? How is any of this known? Via belief (smile again) or gut intuitive knowing? Just look. Lots to find.