Children....Oh so innocent...Or are they?

It seems most people always assume that our children come into the world as a completely clean, empty slate. Thinking this, our job as parents would then obviously be to fill that slate up with our abundant knowledge and teach them everything they need to become caring, intelligent, contributing members of the human race. We assume they bring nothing with them at all except the bodies they are born with. In the Western world, not believing in any form of reincarnation, our natural assumption of the "clean slate" theory is the only possible explanation for this.

I studied eastern philosophies and spiritualism for years in the wild and crazy sixties, which included Zen, Buddhism, Meditation and Reincarnation. The general idea with reincarnation of course is we are brought into this world over and over again until we finally learn all the reality lessons we need in order to advance into the higher planes of existence. Moving always toward the day we ultimately reach the realization of the oneness of everything or God, as the western religions call it. As each life ends, we choose our next life on the basis of what we need to constantly move toward that lofty goal.

The great eastern scholars don't see reincarnation as a absolute truth writen in stone like western religions tend to do. They just see it as the most logical explanation to the cyclic nature of the world.

Getting back to children, as I watched my child and other children grow through the years, I'm often left wondering how it could be that children come into the world as a blank slate, when they each show such individualism, no matter who their parents are or the environment they were raised in.

As we all know, there are kids who are raised in the most horrible circumstance imaginable. Dirt poor and living in filthy, even dangerous environments with uncaring parents and still somehow raise themselves above their appointed stations in life to become brilliant, amazing, accomplished human beings. Then there are other children who seem to have it all. Money, powerful loving parents who end up in prison, having done some incredibly stupid and horrible things, seemingly out of the blue and completely out of character in relation to their parents.

Nature versus Nurture. Which is it? The environment they're raised in or how they were raised?

Watching my own child through the years, I've often wondered why, if she had a choice, did she choose us to raise her. It took me years to finally admit that we must have done a lot of things right in her upbringing to help her be the super intelligent, driven maniac she ended up being. For the longest time, I couldn't imagine where she got a lot of the great attributes she ended up with, other than the obvious influences from my wonderful wife who had so much wisdom to give. I did finally take some personal credit for helping her along her path to who she ultimately became.

I've came to the conclusion that basically she is who she is. As most children probably are. She and most of them most likely would have turned out great no matter how they were raised or by whomever because that's just who they are down deep in their beings. This of course brings this whole conversation back to the idea that we are somehow born with at least a seed of who we are before we learn anything from our parents or the environment at all. What that seed is, I have no idea. Our soul? The ongoing culmination of all the previous lives we don't remember living? Again, I have no idea.

Do you?




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