Simultaneously I Am Myself, The Child I

Soon The Child’s Clear Eye Is Clouded Over By Ideas And Opinions, Preconceptions, And Abstractions. Simple Free Being Becomes Encrusted With The Burdensome Armor Of The Ego. Not Until Years Later Does An Instinct Come That A Vital Sense Of Mystery Has Been Withdrawn. The Sun Glints Through The Pines And The Heart Is Pierced In A Moment Of Beauty And Strange Pain, Like A Memory Of Paradise. After That Day, We Become Seekers.

In The Clearness Of This Himalayan Air, Mountains Draw Near, And In Such Splendor, Tears Come Quietly To My Eyes And Cool On My Sunburned Cheeks. This Is Not Mere Soft-mindedness, Nor Am I All That Silly With The Altitude. My Head Has Cleared In These Weeks Free Of Intrusions- Mail, Telephones, People And Their Needs- And I Respond To Things Spontaneously, Without Defensive Or Self-conscious Screens. Still, All This Feeling Is Astonishing: Not So Long Ago I Could Say Truthfully That I Had Not Shed A Tear In Twenty Years.

In This Very Breath That We Take Now Lies The Secret That All Great Teachers Try To Tell Us.

You See ... A Man Like Me, A Cautious Man, Has His Life All Figured Out According To A Pattern, And Then The Pattern Flies Apart. You Run Around For Quite A While Trying To Repair It, Until One Day You Straighten Up Again With An Armful Of Broken Pieces, And You See That The World Has Gone On Without You And You Can Never Catch Up With Your Old Life, And You Must Begin All Over Again.

You Do Your Best Work When You're Not Conscious Of Yourself.