10. A child runs through a field of wildflowers; their eyes fill with
beauty. Another walks an open-air market, St. Rémy de
Provence, the smell of olives and ripe melons fills her body
with a joy. A joy untouched by word.

When sense field and sense object meet in innocence, their
union becomes the swelling forth of Love. How do you know
if they have met in innocence—there is silence. Silence
pervades perception and brings with it mysterious benediction.

Silence flowers. An invitation is heard, received, met, entered.
All that—before the word “desire.”

We grow up. We become preoccupied. Pre-occupation, always
already occupied by that complicated business and bartering of
attraction, aversion, indifference. Mind’s figurings are
chaotic—sense field and sense object meet in fretful concern.
Odds are figured, interest calculated.

There is a strange forgetting within our desiring. But, also, an
odd remembrance, a longing. In the Himalayan mountains
there is a mythical great white swan who, when a bowl of milk
and water mixed is placed before her, can drink the milk and
leave the water. Our forgetting and remembrance are water
and milk mixed.

Forgetting and Remembrance are not ideas but alive entities.
Desire and Innocence too. These are living forces. And, it’s not
so much that you are living them as they are living you. But
you have a secret power—you decide who gets fed.

Longing’s prayer is the invitation of Innocence. Desire’s
demand closes doors.

Desire claims that if you feed it, it will give you the keys to the
kingdom of pleasure and glory. Innocence is shy and makes no
claims—it perceives in tender silence. Mind’s chaos accustoms
itself to the noise of ceaseless conflicting desires, but it can also
be trained. Wants to be. Mind’s blah blah blah is a dog looking
for a leash.

Everything Desire claims is delivered by Innocence. The Great
Work is a training in Innocence.