The Heart of Innocence

"The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. A concept of self is made by you. It bears no likeness to your Self at all. It is made to serve two purposes. The first presents the face of innocence. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions and it believes that it is good within an evil world. This face is often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good. No one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side, the other purpose, he does not want to see. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement: "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what I am." Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what you are has now become his sin." -- A Course in Miracles

The heart of innocence and the face of innocence are not the same. The face of innocence is what I want to show the world. It is the 'good' me, the one that wants everyone to see what a good person I am and to think well of me. Or it is the martyr me, the one that does what is good and right, who gives above and beyond what is reasonable and asks nothing in return. It has lots of different versions, but I know we all recognize ourselves in the above passage from ACIM. I know I do.

So what is this face of innocence we wear in the world? ACIM says that this faux innocence we present the world is actually deadly, because it is simply a disguise for all the anger and vindictiveness we feel for what the world and other people have done or are doing. We want what we want, and when we don't get it this faux innocence is the ego's passive aggressive way of dealing with it.

So what is true innocence? The heart of true innocence is that it doesn't need to be seen. It doesn't need to possess. It doesn't need to continually do things for others in order to be seen. It has no needs at all, because it knows its own Wholeness. It doesn't need a story of love or hate. It doesn't need to be a victim or an accuser. It doesn't need to know anything one way or the other. It is the absence of the story of self we have woven all our lives.

ACIM says that this concept of self must be undone, if we are to find any peace in this world. One of my favorite ACIM passages is this one: "The Holy Spirit's lesson plans are arranged in easy steps, that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence in its behalf."

I am so ready for re-translation. Every day in every detail of my life. I am ready for the Awareness of my own heart of innocence to dawn, clean and free. And the Course tells us that we need only return to this state: "I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or myself." It assures us that in this learning is salvation born, as What We Really Are then speaks to us from the very Heart of Innocence.

"Not-knowing is true knowledge." -- The Tao te Ching