DERICK WAS GUILTY OF MURDER!  WAS HE, IN ANOTHER SENSE, INNOCENT?

‘Through our own recovered innocence, we discern the innocence of our neighbours.’

Henry David Thoreau

Derick died as he lived – unaware of his inner world of Possibility.

His mother was an alcoholic, depressed, angry and saw herself as a victim.

His father worked hard, smoked pot during the week and wiped himself out with alcohol on weekends.

Fights, injuries and visits to the hospital emergency were commonplace for the parents.

Physically and mentally, Derick and his siblings suffered abuse from their mother and father.

The fostering of the children was a regular event in the children’s lives. This intervention happened when the violence and anger spilled onto the street, resulting in the police attending or when the children’s teachers saw evidence of physical abuse.

However, as is the practice, the children were home with their parents as soon as the government agency saw ‘that things had settled down’.

It was a vicious cycle.

Delinquency, detention and banishment were rife during Derick’s school years.

He left school when he was fourteen, ran away from home, and lived very rough.

Prostitution and petty crime were his means of feeding his growing drug habit.

Derick, mired in his self-destructive thinking, had little chance. Barely out of his teens, he bashed a punter to death in a public toilet over a payment dispute.

He died of self-inflicted injuries while in detention, awaiting trial.

Is this ‘story’ uncommon?

Not really!

DERICK WAS BOTH GUILTY AND INNOCENT

Was he responsible for his actions? Of course he was! Each of us is.

But try putting yourself in his life – into his short, tormented life of hell.

Derick was guilty on all counts.

And he remained innocent.

He was in the sense that he didn’t see beyond his heavily conditioned and increasingly addicted thinking.

IS MY CLAIM OF DERICK’S INNOCENCE A WHITEWASH?

This is not an excuse for what he did.

Nor am I saying those responsible for behaviour that damages another are not guilty of their crimes.

They are!

And, I’m not implying that you and I are equally not guilty of our less-than-loving acts against others – even the petty, rude or unkind behaviours we commit. We are!

The point here is to explain why we do what we do – for good or ill.

The more profound point is how we can transform from being a victim of conditioning, transcending our past, and becoming our true selves – where our innate kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense guide our life.

THE WAY FORWARD – FOR YOU, FOR ME, FOR HUMANITY

The instant we encounter our inner world of Possibility, we understand where evil, cruelty, hatred, unkindness – even our simple lack of civility – emanates.

The Realm of Possibility is the source of our innate kindness, deeper understanding, true wisdom and uncommon common sense.

It is our core state – our true self.

In that state, we see to the heart of the matter – how we create our reality – for better or worse.

Experiencing The Realm of Possibility is the elixir for what ails humanity.

Seeing Possibility is the answer to getting a fresh start – for you and me.

Equally, it is the answer for those – like Derick – conditioned with an overload of violent, punishing, impossibility thinking that most of us cannot begin to understand.

The moment we see through the veil of impossibility, we see our core innocence and experience our transformation from seeing life through the illusion of our past to seeing what is.

In those moments of enlightenment, we see that same innate potential for transformation existing within our fellow humans – within all humanity – with no exceptions. We understand that we are all equally innocent.

While dying on the cross, Jesus is to have said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’. Luke 23:34.

Consider that quote in the light of reading this essay and seeing each other’s innocence.

WAKING UP

In our moments of awakening, we start our life afresh, influenced by Possibility rather than our conditioned mind – our state of impossibility.

In waking up, we understand this: we all act according to our present awareness.

We are experiencing our lives from a point on the continuum between love and fear, reflecting our present level of awareness. Our degree of consciousness is our point along that continuum.

Do we understand that our states of Possibility or impossibility are the invisible forces influencing us at each moment?

Understanding how we create our reality, detailed through the chapters of this guide, has been the catalyst for the transformation of individuals from all walks of life and strata of society.

We are all doing the best we see to do when lost in our conditioned thinking. There are no exceptions to this.

WHY ARE WE INNOCENT, EVEN WHEN WE TRANSGRESS?

The answer is as simple as it is profound.

If we could have seen a better option when committing an unloving act, antisocial behaviour, or even an act of evil, we would have taken it.

If our thinking had been healthier – if we were aware of how we create our reality at that moment – we would have acted in accord with that more conscious thinking.

If we had had the prior experience of seeing Possibility and woken up to our inner world of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense, we would not have done whatever we did in that poorer – or worse – psychologically or worse still pathologically ill state of mind.

Only by a shift in our awareness to seeing how we create our reality in each moment will we understand the way forward for ourselves as individuals and humanity as a collective.

Seeing Possibility is the shift in understanding that humanity desperately needs; it is the point and purpose of this guide and The Realm of Possibility Project.

In awakening to what is at the cause within each of us to act in healthy or unhealthy ways, we will create an environment that fosters a global shift in health and healing.

We can then live in a world – our world – that draws upon the power of Possibility rather than on our unconscious conditioned mind – our state of impossibility.

We see life from a mind influenced by having seen Possibility rather than obscured by the illusion of our impossibility thinking.

And when enough of us see what is at the cause – the invisible-till-it-becomes-visible source of our reality, our conditioned thinking – we will see a world transformed.

When we open ourselves to The Realm of Possibility, kindness, understanding, wisdom, and common sense flow through us to guide our daily lives in healthier ways.

That opening occurs when we see and understand that we think our moment-to-moment reality into existence.

The answer we seek is as simple and as elusive as that.

Yes, even terrorists, wife beaters, serial killers, paedophiles, psychopaths and sociopaths are not without their core innocence.

And we all do the best we can see or see to do at any point in time.

What you have just read may sound outrageous when considering the hatred expressed and fuelled by the many lost souls in the world today.

The behaviours of these people are abhorrent! But their innocence is explainable.

Waking up to how we create our reality – for or against ourselves and the common good – enables us to do much better ourselves.

It’s sometimes called ‘seeing the light’.

In doing so, we express kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense.

Many of us are opening our eyes as if for the first time. This awakening enables us to become part of the way forward for humanity – turning away from violence and hatred in all its forms.

Those who transition from living in the realm of impossibility to that of Possibility see heaven on Earth.

AT OUR CORE, EACH OF US IS ‘INNOCENT’

You may react to the term’ innocence’ in connection with Derick. Your reaction may be extreme when expressed in the context of evil acts.

However, let’s consider some less dramatic examples:

• Perhaps a workmate that undermines you with your boss.
• Your mother-in-law is saying and doing things that you deem mean-spirited and interfering.
• Someone commenting unkindly on one of your posts on social media.
• Your neighbour leaves his radio at high volume and refuses to turn it down even when asked nicely.

How could you see your workmate, mother-in-law, this random person and your neighbour as innocent?

The claim that everyone is innocent – from one end of the spectrum of simply behaving in antisocial or annoying ways to the other end of behaving in evil ways – flies in the face of what we have grown up to believe.

You and I will and can only act in accord with our thinking and feelings in each moment, reflecting our conditioning – our life experiences, cultural upbringing, and education.

All our experiences contribute to our conditioning and, as a result, how we think, feel and act. It’s the way we see or see the world.

And our conditioning – the way we see the world – can be turned upside down in the moment we see into The Realm of Possibility. In that moment, we transform – we become a new person.

Our conditioned mind is our reality – the only reality we can see – until we wake up and see another.

In our moment of awakening, we see into The Realm of Possibility.

That waking up becomes our new reality until we wake up further and see another.

That is why we are, in this sense, innocent.

I don’t want to whitewash what Derick did, gloss over evil, violent criminal acts, or even rude or unkind acts.

Let me be clear: we remain, black-and-white thinkers until we can see the core innocence in ourselves and others and understand that all human beings act in accord with their state of consciousness for better or worse (either from a condition of seeing Possibility or seeing impossibility).

We are individually and collectively part of the problem humanity faces or part of the solution humanity desperately needs.

Understanding what causes us to act in healthy and unhealthy ways creates an environment that fosters health and healing and a world that draws upon the innate health in each other.

‘Innocence’ is the most difficult of concepts for many to grasp. It is the one most questioned and baulked at.

Love, understanding, wisdom and common sense guide our daily lives when we open ourselves to the reality of Possibility. That opening occurs when we see ‘that we think up our moment-to-moment reality’. It’s as simple and as challenging to see as that.

There is no doing anything, no application of any technique. It is an involuntary waking up to the fact that we think up our personal reality – what we see in each moment – Possibility or impossibility.

Those who see beyond the habituated state of their mind and recognise and understand the conditions of other’s minds – see through the past, the stories, beliefs, opinions and judgments and, in doing so, come face to face with Possibility—those who don’t face a future that will closely resemble their past.

When lost in our conditioning, our past will keep repeating itself, modifying little as we age – closed to Life, we unquestioningly accept the facsimile we have constructed, believing it to be the genuine article.

In failing to see the simple but profound distinction between recycling our memories (our conditioned thinking) and original or fresh Thought (our inner world of Possibility and a new perspective), we remain among the blind and, by my definition, an innocent prisoner of our blindness.

We are blind because we don’t know what we don’t know. We are incarcerated in our mental prison, guarded and controlled by our self-reinforcing, recycled thinking – our self-created living illusion.

Derick was guilty of what he did but innocent because he could not see.

In To Althea, from Prison, Richard Lovelace wrote, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’.

Remember, our individual (and collective) level of consciousness is the degree to which we see and are awake to our creation – to our story about our life and the extent to which our life reflects Possibility or impossibility.

In what state of mind do you think we argue? From Possibility or impossibility?

Are we living our lives or our collective lives through the impossibility of our stories? The answer, I suggest, is all that ails the world.

When we see that, we are on our way to creating a new future, and if we continue to see that, we will create a sustainable future. In failing to see that, we continue to live in a world where we remain at war with ourselves and, consequently, each other.

Each of our many global challenges is simply a symptom of humanity living in collective impossibility thinking.

The moment we see that we – you and me – are at cause in creating the world we live in, for better or for worse, we can simultaneously see our past missteps and discover new solutions that address the common good. Or, at the very least, we recognise solutions offered by others that do.

To see Possibility is to understand our innocence and to see in stark relief our previous blindness and that of others still blinded by their concrete thinking.