Let them colour outside the lines....

How can we teach our children to be mindful and still, to explore and enjoy, to listen to the sounds of nature within them and around them and to live in the present just 'being' the perfect creations they are, knowing they are the universe, not just part of it. This is what's been bothering me...


We don't have to.
They already know.
They are born with this 'skill',  this level of understanding, the truth of what we all are and what we all know collectively in our very beating heart and in the nucleus of every cell.

Watching little ones play is proof.. babies and toddlers waking up ridiculously excited for a new day. Reading a book is a total experience, they want to eat it, touch it, look at it in every way they can.
Transfixed by the sight and sounds around them..looking at things we can't see. Laughing with every muscle in their body.. Sleeping exactly when their body needs to, even if that is halfway through lunch and headfirst into a bowl of spaghetti.
Making colours happen on a piece of paper.  Paints and pencils create joy for them as they create splodges and swirls apparently without form but in fact with every form there is.

And then we do it.
We teach them to colour in-between the lines.  To look at the book the 'right' way round not upside down! ( How is there an upside down in the universe?) We tell them to sit still.. to stand in rows and lines. We make them wear identical clothes when they really would prefer to wear wellies and a poncho for the entire Summer ( Rosalindo), if anything at all. We tell them about time and then that we don't have any. We call it the terrible two's because that's how early it starts, because that is when we start.
When we start.. Un -teaching them.
We're not just clipping their wings we're telling them they can't fly. We tell them how messy they are when they have rolled in the mud yet put them in baths full of chemicals. We tell them they don't know, that they don't understand, that the real world isn't like that.
They are born knowing the real world and then we take that away from them.
We're all troubled and say that's life. Well it isn't.
We're all suppressing the pure joy and love and understanding of the world around us that we were all born with.
That's crazy.
I can carry on and speak about the reasons why. It wasn't always like this and I could explain how this has happened. But every single one of us knows this..we are born with a deep understanding and love for everything and every one.
Let them read a book upside down and let them colour outside the lines.
Most importantly re-learn from them what you already know.