Down by the Cypress Trees

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

Lately, I have been reading a lot of books about self-discovery and how to live more authentically. Books by the great spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, books about ancient Toltec wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz, and even a book about how to be more creative by the great music producer Rick Rubin.

One thing all of these books had in common was the suggestion that in order to live more authentically, or to be more creative, we must strip ourselves of all our conditioning we’ve gone through in our lives, all the limits that have been placed upon us, and that we, in turn, place upon ourselves. In a sense, we must return to that time when we were 4 or 5 years old and truly had that “child-like wonder” for the world.

Think about it. It was a time filled with innocence and an innate curiosity about everything around us. This was the time when we were living most authentically as ourselves. We weren’t thinking about what mom and dad would say before doing something, we weren’t analyzing a look somebody gave us, and we weren’t criticizing ourselves with an intrusive inner monologue.

Once I started being compassionately curious about myself and where some of these intrusive thoughts come from, and compassionately curious toward others, the healing started happening. I stopped judging myself. And little by little, I have been able to let go of things I had needlessly held onto for years.

I’ve got a long way to go, as we all do, but learning to harness my inner child again and looking at the world and myself through a lens of innocence has made a world of difference on this journey.