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Except ye be converted and become as little

children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom

of Heaven.

JESUS OF NAZARETH

(C. 6 B.C.–A.D. 30)

Jesus Christ is one of the world’s major religious figures, regarded by Christians as the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament prophets.

Recently, while preparing to give a lecture in a town far from home, I had the strange experience of looking directly into a wall mirror while sitting at a desk. The entire wall was one gigantic mirror, and every time I looked up, there was this body looking back at me while I was writing in a notepad. Finally I just stopped and stared back. I couldn’t grasp the fact that this was actually me reflected in the mirror. I remember saying to myself, “That’s an old man who is renting my face.”

As I stared back I thought of the invisible being living inside each of us. This being is without boundaries or form, thus no beginning or end. This is the silent invisible witness that is ageless and unchanging. This is the eternal child inside each of us. It is as ageless children that we become synonymous with heaven, which represents that eternity where forms and boundaries, beginning and ends, ups and downs are all meaningless.

Heaven is not a place with borders, perimeters, edges, and precincts. Rather, it represents that which transcends demarcations. It is the same as that little child Jesus speaks of in this telling observation. In there, always with us, never aging, yet watching, always watching. Noticing the drooping of the eyelids, the wrinkling of the skin, the silvering of the hair. Indeed, it is an old man who is renting my face these days!

The ageless child in me, my eternal unchanging observer, knows nothing of judgment and hatred. There is nothing to judge, no one to hate. Why? Because it doesn’t see appearances, it only knows how to look with love on everything and everyone. It is what I call the absolute “allower.” It simply allows everything to be as it is and only notices the unfolding of God in everyone it encounters. Being without shape, size, color, or personality, this ageless child inside fails to notice such trivial distinctions. Not living on either side of any manmade border, it cannot indulge in ethnic or cultural identification, and thus warfare over these artificial terminus points is impossible. Consequently that invisible ageless child is always at peace, just witnessing, just observing, but most important, just allowing.

Recently I had the experience of running early one morning and feeling so exhilarated that I hurdled over a three-and-a-half-foot fence as I came back to the hotel at the completion of my run. My wife, who was observing me, let out a scream and said to me, “You can’t do that! You don’t jump over fences when you’re fifty-six years old. You could kill yourself.” My immediate response to her was “Oh, I forgot.” That invisible, ageless me who is my eternal observer forgot for an instant that it was living in a body that has been here for over half a century!

To me, this passage of Jesus’ from the New Testament speaks to the process of forgetting about our bodies as our primary identity—forgetting about our ethnic identity, our spoken language, our cultural label, the shape of our eyes, or what side of the border we grew up on, then making the conversion to become as little children, who are impervious to such compartmentalizing. Jesus was not saying we should be childish and become immature, undisciplined, and uneducated. Instead he was referring to being childlike, which is non judgmental, loving, accepting, and incapable of placing labels on anyone or anything.

When we are able to be as little children we realize that in every adult there is a child who desperately wants to be known. It is the child who is full and the adult who is usually empty. The fullness of the child is evident in peace, love, non judgment, and allowing. The emptiness of the adult reveals itself in fear, anxiety, prejudgment, and fighting. Enlightenment can be seen as a process of remembering that in the heart of a little child there is purity, and it is this pure divine love and acceptance that is the ticket to the kingdom of heaven. Make it one of your goals in life to be more childlike in everything you do.

The quality that we see in geniuses is equivalent to the inquisitiveness of children. Geniuses and children share a willingness to explore without thoughts of failure or worries about criticism. I think the key word in this passage of Jesus’ is “converted.” We are being told to become something that is perfect, kind, loving, and above all eternal. It resides in each of us, and it cannot age or die. The gentle, silent witness is what we want to convert to. That naive but imaginative mystic who is naturally spiritual is the child we want to convert to. When we do, we become childlike and leave behind our childish adult ways, which are the ways that prevent us from entering the eternal kingdom of heaven.

That kingdom is available to you here now on earth, as it is in heaven. All you have to do is make that conversion. To do so:

 Spend as much time as you can manage observing little children. As you do, recall the child in you who would love to play with them. The ancient thinker Heraclitus once said, “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” Be more childlike, playful, loving, and inquisitive as you make your conversion to the kingdom of heaven.

 When you find yourself acting serious and stodgy, remind yourself of the invisible observer inside you that is noticing your somber side. Is that observer grim as well? You’ll quickly see that your childlike witness cannot be at all like what it is witnessing. Then vow to make the immediate conversion.

 Make the decision that “I am never going to let an old person inhabit my body.” Your body may indeed be rented by an aging being, but that eternal, invisible observer who is noticing it all will stay childlike, innocent, and ready to enter the kingdom of heaven at the appointed time with such an attitude firmly in place.