The Childish Approach
to Spirituality
adapted from Moving Beyond Childish and
Adolescent Approaches to Life and Truth, Breath and Name, by
Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj)
.....the child is always grasping
for permanent security in an undifferentiated, unborn
bliss.....Re-union through obedience is the way the child
learns....
"Experiences," high and low are
required by those who are still lingering in the conditions
of their childhood and adolescence. Everything a child does
is a manifestation of one underlying assumption:
dependence.
When you are a child, the
assumption of dependence is eminently realistic and useful.
But it should be a temporary stage of psycho-physical life,
in which one's functions are nurtured and developed in
conventional ways. However, there is commonly a lag in the
transition to manhood, because of the shocks experienced in
the immature attempts to function in the world. Thus, to
some degree, every man or woman lingers in the childhood
assumption of dependence. And insofar as men and women are
children, they seek to enlarge that personal assumption of
dependence into a universal conception in the form of the
God-Cosmos-Parent game, the game of dependence upon and
obedience to That upon which all depends. That childish
aspect in each of us seeks always to verify the condition of
dependence in forms of safety and relative unconsciousness.
The childish demand in every man and woman is the principal
of religion, which means "reunion", or, literally, "to bind
again". It is the search to be reunited, to experience the
vital and emotional re-establishment of some imagined or
felt Condition or State of life that is previous to
responsibility. It is the urge toward the parented, enclosed
condition. This urge always seeks experiences, beliefs, and
immunities as a consolation for the primitive cognition of
fear and vulnerability. And the "way" enacted by such a
motivation is principally a game of obedience to parent-like
enormities.
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