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Waiting in an unstructured attitude, alert to the unexpected.
This card relates to hexagram #25 of the I Ching: “Innocence.” Carol Anthony compares the state of “conscious innocence” (oxymoronic as that phrase might seem) to the game of tennis. If you’re expecting the ball to come across the net in a certain way, you’re unprepared for how it actually comes across. The stance of conscious innocence means reducing expectations in favor of being open to the unexpected so that you are ready for anything. Casteneda/Don Juan says, “The warrior is always humble and alert.”
We fall from this sort of Innocence when we prestructure the future, expecting our career, love life, finances, etc. to turn out as we imagine. But man proposes, and the Tao disposes. Things rarely turn out as we expect, and that’s great because we learn from the challenging unpredictability of life. If we cling to our expectations, however, we are handicapped in dealing with the unexpected life coming at us right now.
In A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler I suggested that we have a “gerund filter” in our minds to tell us when we are losing our Innocence. The Gerund Filter involves a list of categories of thought indicative of the ego nervously trying to control the Tao. The position of Taoism (based on the I Ching) is that the universe is unfolding as it should. But the ego, like a nervous backseat driver clutching an imaginary steering wheel in its sweaty, white-knuckled grip, never trusts the nonlinear path of the creative so completely out of its control. Categories (presented as a list of gerunds) that indicate the ego resisting the Tao and/or trying to assert imaginary control over it include: WANTING, WISHING, WORRYING, HOPING, FEARING, DREADING, DESIRING, ENVYING, COMPARING, SUPERVISING, LIFE-GUARDING, JUDGING, COMPLAINING, SELF-PITYING, STRIVING, ANTICIPATING, EXPECTING, PRESTRUCTURING, CONTRIVING, FORCING PROGRESS, HEDGING, RATIONALIZING, CLINGING AND DOUBTING.
Yes, this is an intimidating list! It shows how often we fall out of the state of innocence.
We lose our conscious innocence in so many ways. We fall from Innocence when we “look aside” and compare our rate of progress to others. We lose our innocence when we fall for our ego’s desire to see straight-line progress toward our goals, disdaining the inscrutable zig-zag path of the creative. We fall from innocence when we find ourselves hoping for or dreading imagined future events. The fallen mind views everything as a blessing or a curse, but the innocent mind accepts everything, expected or unexpected, as a challenge and a learning experience.
Conscious Innocence gives us the creative power of “beginner’s mind.”
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
— Suzuki Roshi
A beginner’s mind is open, curious, and even awed by what is free of preconceptions, expectations, and prejudices. The beginner’s mind is like the mind of a small child filled with wonder and amazement as it discovers things for the first time.
Consider this an auspicious time to regain the power, creativity, wonder, and amazement of Conscious Innocence.
See the Zap Oracle card, Reaping the Unexpected Harvest, for an example of a day when I fell out of Conscious Innocence and had to find my way back.
See the Zap Oracle card, Beginner’s Mind
See hexagram # 25, especially the commentary in Carol Anthony’s A Guide to the I Ching
