Anything worthwhile in this world can’t be taken away from us. If it could be, would it really be worth having? I mean, lots of things do go by the wayside. Things like money, possessions, youth, beauty, talent. Our health seems to wane. Our very lives appear to end in something we call death. But I’m betting that our lives don’t end upon the cessation of our bodies. Our lives simply change.

But our essential qualities – those elements that make us human – live within us. Love isn’t something you can taste or touch or even see. Innocence isn’t physical. They’re more in the nature of feelings, and live immortally as ideals. Love once given leaves a permanent trace. The innocence we see in a child’s eyes must still live somewhere within us as grownups or we wouldn’t be able to recognize it in them.

Innocence and love aren’t lost forever. They’re simply obscured by trauma the way a cloudy day covers the sun. It’s our seeing that needs to heal so that we can experience these things again. They’ve never been lost to us. Covered over by fear and guilt and anger, we simply forget that they’re there.

Something needs to retain memory of these essential aspects of ourselves. Something needs to hold our memory of them for us until we can again call them to mind. It’s why we meditate and why we pray. It’s why we find ourselves engaging in acts of unrequited love for each other. Every time you let someone in in traffic. Each time you hold open the door for somebody, and every act of service done in secret reminds you of who and what you are.

That something which remembers while we forget seems to exist in a ‘place’ we call heaven or paradise, but which is really just a state of mind. This dimension seems so far above and beyond us, seems to so transcend the world, that some traditions in Africa have concluded that God ran away and hid. At times, this world seems absurd and meaningless in its inexplicable tragedy. It seems as though our innocence and our love have abandoned us. It seems as those we’re lost forever along in an eternal nightmare of darkness. Yet this hidden dimension called paradise is folded up within us, waiting to be remembered, waiting to be reborn.

Love and innocence have escaped into our dream of forgetfulness with us. You may experience them as intuition, as enlightenment, as awareness, as beauty, as your creative self. Some call it God, but what it’s called is irrelevant, and is a distraction from our experience of it. So to argue over proofs or definitions, over names and whether it even exists wastes time. It misses the point. The name you give it is unimportant since its essence is beyond definition.

This facet of the unnamable can guide and direct us. It hasn’t forgotten who and what we really are, which is innocence, which is love. All you need do is remember.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within