The next workshop in our present series about making choices is on Saturday 14th March.
With reference to Peter Pan, Pinocchio and the Selfish Giant - and other stories - we will talk about innocence and illusion, the fear of growing up, and our own child selves, past and present.
The difference between being childish and being childlike has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with truth and love. We are sentimental about childhood, and remain childishly fearful and self-preoccupied as adults. Yet we allow ourselves to lose touch with the essentially childlike qualities of vitality, trust and innocence that give our lives integrity and meaning. Spiritually speaking, we repeatedly throw out the shining baby and keep the grimy bathwater, until we learn to know the difference and to make another choice.
This world you seem to
live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is
true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called
you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the
voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all
unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile
here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other
times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind
again.
No one but knows
whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to
occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they
are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain
that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet
who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he
understands the words we speak? (W182)
Inquiries and bookings: anna@unlearningschool.com
