This has been on my mind alot, contemplating what actual innocence is referring to. And although ‘I’ cannot be actually innocent it has given me a fuller understanding of what harmlessness and happiness is all about. I think this had a big part in allowing me to locate ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings.
With the above in mind I have been sorting through those feelings (good and bad) which were hiding under the apparent “feeling good” umbrella, and yet they were “nocent”, both to ‘me’ and to others. And I found that only the genuine felicitous and innocuous feelings are free of this propensity to inflict hurt, in whichever direction.
So it’s quite interesting, I can’t put it into words very well yet, but it is the focus on harmlessness, whilst holding in mind what actual innocence means, which allowed me to sort through the various feelings and begin to let go of those which had the capacity to inflict hurt. And doing this I have located these ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings, which are like a “fresh summer breeze”.
And it is so clear to me now that one can only be happy if one is also harmless, because to inflict harm is to experience / ‘be’ harm. It reminds me of Richard’s descriptions of actual freedom, this one in particular has been coming to mind :
”One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence”.
That last bit is just… wow!