WAS I A CHILD IN MY CHILDHOOD

Dear Balarishi,

In-recent week, you had spoken about children and their attitude towards life. Your spiritual life started in childhood itself. Was your childishness complimenting spirituality?

Well, the description of childhood is playfulness. Being playful is the nature of children. It is the utmost freedom they seek. If you are going to control them and suppress from playing, in later stages they get into so many psychological problems like depression and insecurity.  In broader sense, childhood is the most wonderful period in anyone`s life. Even though there are problems a child can be a child. If given a choice it comes out of agony and regains its playful  nature. This is not the same with an adult. If an adult is in pain he will become pain.

When I was a child I was very playful. When my spiritual traits came to light my parents as well as those who visited me found it to be a big problem. Because somewhere in common belief people assume that if at all you are in spirituality you have to look very serious. Whoever visited me were also very serious. It was in total contradiction to my nature. So, whenever I saw some serious people I was very uncomfortable. I remember avoiding a group of visitors as by seeing them I could know they were dead serious.

Now I was able to witness various emotions and intense feelings of human beings. This is because, those who visited me were so transparent and expressive to me. This is because of two reasons. One is they were seeking some solution for whatever problem they had. Secondly they had no inhibition in expressing themselves to me as i was a small child. So I was a silent and receptive witness to them. But this transparency vanished as i grew up. People became even more alert in my presence.

I retained my childishness though it was seen as a problem by many around me. But the childishness contributed a lot for my spirituality. Similarly what will happen if the childishness is suppressed in childhood?

There are two sides to this coin. People would either get depressed and dejected. On the other hand there is every chance for them to express this childishness in later stages of their life as this would be their longing. They would prove to be more and more childish and would be admired for this quality. As they get older they will become a complete child. Spirituality and child like mindset always goes together.