A Sense of Wonder

by Jim Ivy

You are never too old to learn, and you are never too young to teach. Just ask my teacher, who just happens to be my three-year-old daughter, Miyo.

It’s one of those unbelievable pre-fall afternoons. You know what I’m talking about, a day when the sun shakes off the oppression of the summer’s heat with a breeze filled with optimism and excitement. I’m in the park watching my daughter playing and noticing her expressions. She is taking in the sky; it can appear enormous on days like this. And there it is. I know that look, the expression of pure wonder, the experience of being limitless.

Every so often I’ve tried to talk to my daughter about this experience she is feeling, but she doesn’t even attempt to describe it. “She’s just a kid,” I thought to myself, “She doesn’t know how to describe it.” Hmmm...let’s take another look at this.

Who’s to say that a child’s difficulty to find the right words to express what they are feeling must be a lack of sophistication or mental maturity. Maybe they can still experience things without the constraint of explanations. In other words, they don’t feel limited. They don’t feel it, because they don’t believe it.

Are they more directly the source of their own reality?

Of course, they are the source. They have not spent years building beliefs and creating identities to assume. They see things with an unfiltered clarity. Children feel limitless. All possibilities are open to them, and they, likewise, are open to all possibilities.

Maturity and age do not grant you wisdom. In actuality, they allow you more opportunity to create walls, to surround yourself in the belief that things are not possible.

My child doesn’t believe that.

As a parent, I may shrug it off as just her childish attitude that she thinks she is the center of the universe. Well, she is. In every moment, she is the creator of her universe. And as creator, she has no doubt that she has had something to do with everything.

When you are confronted with the vastness and depth of a child’s sense of wonder, we all recognize it. Why? Because it’s within all of us. We’ve all managed to mask it, to hide it away, cover it up and generally camouflage it from ourselves. We’ve traveled an intricate, complex journey and have forgotten the map that takes us home, home to where anything can be a new experience and filled with that sense of wonder; where experiences are pure. I had given up on the idea long ago that it was even possible to recapture this perspective. Then I happened upon Avatar.

Anyone who has taken The Avatar Course sooner or later gets to the point where words are no longer sufficient to describe an experience. These words can come close and can give you an idea of how the experience was, but it’s just a representation, the difference between feeling and observing. And in the process, you become truly aware of the difference.

I must preface my Avatar experience with the fact that I was quite skeptical. Always proud of my intellectual prowess, I felt the idea of an Enlightened Planetary Civilization to be a very noble idea but possibly a bit idealistic and naïve. What I discovered was that I was the one who was full of naiveté.

As we go through our lives, we build boxes of beliefs that restrict us into limited experiences. These beliefs are self-created and trap us into thinking we are helpless and other people, events, or situations control our paths. This is very easy to do, effortless. But you know what? As Harry showed me, it’s just as easy to break free.

With Avatar, Harry shows us how to remove all the limitations we put upon ourselves. I take control by recognizing the beliefs that have kept me entangled. I created them, I can let them go. This was my first realization from The Avatar Course, and it’s a big one.

This realization may seem a little simplistic to some, but isn’t that the point? Simplicity is only considered a detriment when you assume the identity of the intellectually superior, a very limited scope, believe me. When this identity is assumed, attention is placed on the analysis of the experience. The true experience is lost as the encounter is broken down into “why’s” and “how’s.” In our eagerness for description, we have bypassed actuality, forfeited knowing for the show of knowledge.

What is thought of as naïve by some, can be experienced as vast wonderment. It’s just a shifting of viewpoint. And that is the first step on the Avatar path, discovering how to look at things a different way.

The Avatar Course has given me the tools I can use to realize my limitless potential. To open myself to all possibilities and, likewise, to open all possibilities to me. Just like my teacher.

Well, it’s getting close to dinnertime, and I’ve got to pull my daughter away from her sky. As I look at her, I am satisfied to know that I have the ability to experience that expansiveness of wonder. I, too, have the clarity to see without words.

Come to think of it, maybe I’ll just join her for a little while before we go. There’s no hurry, we’ve got the map to get home.

Soon she’ll grow up and begin assuming identities, wearing them to suit peers, teachers, parents, employers, etc. And, just maybe, at that point, I’ll get the opportunity to return the favor. I’ll play the teacher.

“You deserve to experience your creation of you in all its wonder.” —Harry Palmer

“…in all its wonder.” Thanks Harry. And thank you, Miyo.

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All content copyright 2008, Star’s Edge, Inc. EPC is a service mark of Star's Edge, Inc. Avatar®, ReSurfacing®, Thoughtstorm®, Love Precious Humanity®, Enlightened Planetary Civilization® and Star’s Edge International® are registered trademarks of Star’s Edge, Inc. All rights reserved.