Your Soul Workout Journal
Children are loose and free. They are silly and love to play. Children are easily delighted by the smallest wonders; they are enchanted by life. The natural happiness of a child is not foolishness; it is innocence and purity. Children are not born angry, sad, or jaded — these are coping mechanisms that we learn from the adults around us. Being jaded is not at all a sign of maturity; it is defensiveness. In fact, immature adults are often the most cynical and irritable people. A sign of emotional maturity is leading with your soul, rather than with your ego. The soul (AKA the inner child) is infinitely intelligent. It is also infinitely happy.
Picture yourself after a tense work day, sitting in traffic and late to your next engagement. Your shoulders are hunched, your jaw is locked, you’re ready to get out of the car and punch someone. Where is your inner child? He or she is buried deep inside you, covered up by layers of your adult stress. When stressed your best move it to step back and find your soul — you inner child. Your soul is reality, whereas your neuroses are a concoction of your intellect. Your innocent inner child is the natural you; anxiety is an acquired state. Your true, innocent self is the gateway to transcending life’s material difficulties.
The following exercise will reintroduce you to your inner child. Repeating the exercise on a daily basis (at least once a day, but ideally twice a day) will gradually rewire your brain and emotions to default to your inner child rather than to your adult stress.
Who is closer to the truth – adults or children? Ostensibly it would seem that a mature adult, whose mind and emotions are fully developed, would be able to access the truth more than an undeveloped child. Indeed, for many years, until just recently, secular psychology saw a child as a “dumb” adult in the making. Religious Puritans even saw children as “born in sin” and as little savages that needed strong measures to keep them in line!
The Baal Shem Tov – and Torah in general – sees things, shall we say, a bit different. Actually quite different; a perspective which is the exact opposite than the secular view: A child is the closest possible thing to the truth. The simplicity of the child touches – far more than any adult – the simplicity of the Essence of all existence! Indeed, it is the developed mind of the adult that conceals and blocks the experience of pure truth…
In this week’s insight, discover the moving way the Baal Shem Tov describes himself as a child… A powerful story captures the life-altering words of the Baal Shem Tov to a great scholar who was left confused in his ponderings on the existence G-d.
Above all, we will learn how to tap our single most powerful resource: Your inner child.
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