He cried bitterly. He had been caught stealing. At the police station, the boy spoke of his boyhood: When his mother went to the outdoor market, she balanced a basket on her head and carried him in a pouch on her back. Passing stands piled high with food, she would bend down to look at some items. That’s when the little boy picked up whatever he fancied and threw it into the basket. The child’s wrong behavior was not corrected and continued as he grew up. He excused it because he was poor.
When I heard of this incident, I knew how important it was for the boy to acknowledge his wrongdoing and not to repeat it. But I thought, “Didn’t his tears speak of his rebellion against dishonesty? Didn’t his spiritual innocence call out to be recognized?”
An insight into our spiritual nature initiates moral transformation by denying evil a base of operation – and so begins to regenerate thought and life. We recognize infinite Mind as the exclusive cause of man and therefore the source of his purity. We realize that because Mind’s innocence is by reflection man’s innocence, man’s innocence is intact. Humanity’s struggle to be free from evil, and its yearning for something better, testify to the inherent innocence of man.
EMH
An excerpt from my article Innocence—man’s true heritage, published in 1995
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