To look with real innocence is to look, to perceive, with (and “as”) a pristine purity that is uncontaminated.  Looking with what is jaded, distorted, and fallacious, of course, certainly won’t cut it.  Many have assumed, with their preconceptions, that they observe correctly and rightly.  Many end up in conflict, worldwide, over what they consider is right… religiously, politically, economically, nationally, socially, and within the psychological realm… all this involving limited, sequential (learned) patterns.  Multitudes cling to their patterns, their traditions, their customs, their absorbed ways of seeing the world according to the programming which they were taught (from fragmentary groups).  The world ends up with conflict, friction, wars, and endless bickering (as is currently going on).

Some of our learned patterns have been useful medically and also somewhat within technological realms.  However, beyond that, psychologically and such, we have clung to traditions, beliefs, precepts, and patterns that tend to cause friction, separation, and conflict.  The question is:  Can one, without needing time, wash the slate (of the mind) clean so that one can look purely (without what one, psychologically, has accumulated)?  However, who is going to do the cleaning?  Is the “cleaner” actually separate from what is being cleaned?  If the cleaner is not really separate from the content of the rubbish (that needs purging) will the cleaner be cleaning according to the content that was previously implanted in (and “as”) his (or her) consciousness?  Can the conditioned mind perceive that the very images of self and of psychological control may be part of the content, part of the conditioning?  Since all (conditioned) beliefs, precepts, psychological traditions, and customs take time — including the supposition of a special internal center controlling thoughts from some kind of psychological distance — can the mind look without time (without depending on sequences of conditioned patterns)?  This would mean that the mind would look without functioning with (and “as”) past accumulations.  All accumulations from the past are “from time” and “involve time.”  To innocently perceive — without any fallacious center (that takes distance and time to look) and without any limited, accumulated, sequential patterns that were absorbed — does not require time… does not require practice.

One cannot practice meditation.  One cannot practice real love.  Both involve an intelligence beyond time and sequential conditioning.  It may be that real innocence exists when there is no psychological “me” put together by accumulated boundaries, separations, images, and traditions formulated of limited (symbolic and sequential) thoughts.   It has been accumulated boundaries, separations, and traditions that fabricated images of the “me.”  The limitless of eternity is never seen by any conditioning that is limited, bounded, fragmentary, and that is merely an accumulation within (and part of) a learned sequential movement through (and “as”) space/time.  Insight is beyond the accumulated.  Insight is beyond the limited.

On the River Bank … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018