The Mode of Child Awareness

I came upon a picture of a futuristic park in midjourney, and it reminded me of a dream that I had forgotten long ago. I remembered with my body. There is a bodily feeling that goes with the imagery, like the feeling a child gets when anticipating the arrival of something very good. I remembered that I have had this bodily sensation many times, but have always dismissed it as a quirky and peripheral experience instead recognising it as a core experience.

I was reminded of the obvious: you can’t participate in a groovy reality without grooving yourself. You must resonate with it to stay in it. It isn’t about understanding or believing; it’s about grooving.

Heaven isn’t for those who have earned the right to be there, it is for those who say yes to it. I have been researching the topic of saying ‘yes’ for years, and have discovered that it has so many nooks and crannies, it requires so much presence of mind and clarity of intent — it is essentially its own religion.

Wow. As I write this, I can really feel it like a drug event. Life circumstances that seemed to me shabby only an hour ago, seem now to be a dream I would have actually wanted as a child. I would have loved to have access to its opportunities and to have the adult wherewithal to deal with its challenges. I am on a much wanted side-quest. If I only said yes to it.

This experience has also reminded me of another obvious thing: childlike awareness is a mode of awareness. In waking life, one progresses from child awareness to adult awareness in a more or less straight line — usually less — and that’s it. The advantage of adulthood is that adults are experts in managing things that are going wrong, or about to go wrong. The problem of adulthood is that adults are experts in managing things that are going wrong, or about to go wrong. In the dreaming world, one needs needs to slide along that scale between child awareness and adult awareness, back and forth, constantly. It’s how you retain access to all parts of the dream world; it’s how you get around.