Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Steve Beckow - Life as Kindergarten

Posted by Steve Beckow On November 27, 2012

I just had a wonderful chat with a friend in which we discussed what we hoped were Fifth-Dimensional ways of handling conflict and in the midst of it she observed that we were in kindergarten with conflict. I agree.

And it also occurs to me that the Third Dimension itself, or duality, is in fact a kind of kindergarten.

But I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way. Only when kindergarten kids hit each other or don’t play fair is it negative. When we do play nice and fair, it’s still kindergarten but it can be a very positive experience.

I remember what Robert Fulghum said in his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a book by the way which he subtitled A Guide for Global Leadership.
  • Share everything.
  • Play fair.
  • Don’t hit people.
  • Put things back where you found them.
  • Clean up your own mess.
  • Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
  • Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. 
  • Wash your hands before you eat.
  • Flush.
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
  • Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
  • Take a nap every afternoon.
  • When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
  • Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
  • Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we. (1)
I honestly don’t think life is more complicated than that but our desire to skew life and make it be “about me” can make it complicated.

Another way of saying that is that love makes life simple. It undoes all knots, dissolves all conflict, smooths the way, and makes the journey fun.

And almost all kindergarten children know love very well. Love comes easily to kids in kindergarten.
In a way, perhaps, maybe Fifth Dimensionality is also kindergarten in the sense that people become like children again to enter (or, in our case, having entered) the Kingdom of Heaven. (The Mental Plane or Fifth Dimension was traditionally called “heaven” by early Christians.)

Some of the most wonderful times I had were in kindergarten. I think I shall never forget finger painting, for instance.

So maybe becoming like children again and playing fair and playing nice is exactly what the doctor ordered. Maybe kindergarten is not such a bad place to be and a very good place to start.

Maybe becoming like children again, while taking with us all we learned, becoming loving after having learned the lessons of duality, as salutary reminders of what life becomes when we don’t play fair and nice is not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s a very good thing.

I want to become like a child again and I want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And I want to play and I want to love and I want to be carefree.

And I want to take all that and fold it into my wanting to serve and wanting to share all this love and caring with other people and have others in my “children’s garden” (kindergarten) be as happy as me.
I want this world to work more than anything else and if I have to be as simple as I was in kindergarten, then so let it be.

Footnotes

(1) “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN (a guide for Global Leadership) at http://www.peace.ca/kindergarten.htm

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