"The last twenty years or so, spiritual/new age authors have sent this message
to readers: "You have something broken about you and I can fix it."

Now a newer, truer message must be heard: "You are here to deliver a beautiful gift to
the world - and it's a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and get on with it."

FOR THE MONTH in which we celebrate Valentine's Day, let's examine the principle of Innocence, which finds its focus in the human heart. From The Invisible Garment:

Innocence is what keeps human beings able to learn - it makes us teachable...

Innocence as a principle idea never becomes unconscious. It keeps one available to learn at all times - waking or sleeping. Even as we develop more sophistication and have mental categories, expectations, and cynicisms, if our pattern contains Innocence, we cannot totally bypass the innate influence it has on our lives. Whether or not our personal pattern includes Innocence, we humans never reach a point at which we cannot learn.

I select Innocence for us to explore this month not only because of its connection to the human heart, but because of the interweaving of learning and romance. Due to the extreme emotionality and passion involved in our love affairs, we often overlook the teachings we receive from our lovers. Yet, those men and women who stir love within our beings are indeed most profound teachers.

Over the past twenty years, I have heard thousands of dreams from my clients and colleagues. So often, especially from women, I hear dreams that center around the person whom they first loved. These "first love" dreams almost always involve the re-uniting of the estranged lovers. Often the dreamer finds this kind of dream disturbing, as it brings up a concern in her that she's not "over it."

After examining hundreds of these "first love" dreams, I saw a clear pattern emerging. It's a pattern of innocence. Our first loves taught us how to love and be loved. If one can bypass the inevitable reason for the eventual break up and heartbreak, one can clearly see the amazing lessons about love that he or she learned from that first experience of loving and being loved in a way that included the stirring of sexuality. That's the principle of Innocence at work in our lives.

Whether or not intercourse and sexual gratification existed in this relationship, every woman experiences the awakening of The Goddess within her body thanks to her first love, and every man experiences the emerging of real power in his body as his sexuality begins to mature. These lessons are among the most valuable in our entire lives. Who but a true "lover" can teach us the lesson of the beloved? Is there anything more sacred than first love?

No wonder it continues to show up in our dreams. On certain occasions, under certain astrological and physiological circumstances, we go to sleep and slip out of the boundaries of our waking reality, out of our physical bodies, away from our psychological maelstrom. There, liberated from the chains of mundanity, we encounter the indescribable energy of the human soul. There we remember how deeply loved we are and how profoundly eternal that love is. As sleep ends and we begin that journey back to our mundane realities, we write a story (what we call the dream) about that love, so that we'll not forget again. We use the most obvious metaphor for that divine energy that we felt in our deepest sleep - our first loves. We put the face of the person we loved first (in this lifetime) on the experience of soul love, because that's as close as we can come to describing the experience. Innocence actually writes these dream stories. Innocence reminds us that we can learn the lessons of love over and over and over again. We can and do experience the joy and passion of primal love eternally.

Moving more deeply into this scenario, most of us experienced some kind of "heartbreak" at the hands of our first loves. Again, a lesson. Helen Deutsch wrote a poem once entitled "The White Magnolia Tree." I heard it read on television when I was very young (before my first love showed up) by Helen Hays. I'll never forget the line: "...the bitter lesson that a heart which breaks must mend itself again (that it can and must be done.)"

It's been said that a broken heart has more room. A heart which has once broken loves more deeply, for it now knows compassion. No experience teaches us about pain and resultant compassion like the first broken heart. Again, Innocence emerges, for as Helen Deutsch points out, the broken heart can and will mend itself. Innocence will be restored, for it must. Human must continue to learn, or they wither.

The paradox of Innocence lies in the heart-mind. We traditionally think that learning occurs in the head brain. However, science in recent years is pointing out that the heart isalso a brain-like organ. It has as many neuro-receptors as the head brain, and thereby can bypass the head brain and communicate directly with the nervous system. In addition, the heart has an electro-magnetic field of energy that extends beyond the body, which is capable of receiving messages from other surrounding fields as well as radiating messages into the environment.

Innocence makes learning from the heart-mind possible. The principle of Innocence opens the eyes of our hearts, the ears of our hearts, and the mouths of our hearts, so that we see, hear and speak with a new language. Romantic love accelerates that experience. When we're "in love" we hear more, see more, feel more, experience more thanwhat is overtly before us. Awareness of that electromagnetic field becomes slightly more heightened when we're in love. Innocence, or the availability to learn, dominates our energetic field.

Scientists predict that within the next few hundred years (if we don't destroy ourselves before then), the heart-mind will become the dominant thinking tool. The head brain may always be the source of reason, but the sensitivities available to us through the development of communication with the field around us holds the only hope that we will become true stewards of the earth. Innocence waits patiently as we learn to trust our teachability.

Of course, we know that romantic love is certainly not the only kind of love, and is certainly not the most enduring. However, this month we're focusing on it, because Innocence depends on the energy that we identify as "romantic."

Romantic love excites us, impassions us, turns us on. It reminds us on some unconscious level of the enthusiasm with which we take an incarnation. It stirs in us a memory of what it means to be fully engaged in the process of learning about life.

If you're one who had to "fall in love" many times in your youth, perhaps you had a memory deficit. You needed to be reminded again and again and again of how magnificent you are, how worthy of love, and how fully capable of giving and receiving. Innocence took a while to find its home in your heart. (Don't feel alone. I must have fallen in love fifty times before Innocence convinced me that I could settle and evolve.)

If you found a life partner with whom you experienced romantic love, and then let it root in your heart and grow into all the other forms, you may call yourself extremely fortunate and extremely wise. Innocence has taught you well. You know the heightened privilege of exploring all the potentialities between lover and the beloved.

If that life partner has not yet appeared for you yet, may this February - this mid-winter darkness - bring that light into your life. Hearts open, eyes open, Innocence alerted. Cupid's arrow is not a soppy, sentimental concept. It is a heart-piercing, lesson delivering, energetic lightning bolt.

This month, look for Innocence as it influences your life. Look for the ways your heart-mind has already developed. Notice how quickly you learn from the environment. Measure how much you trust your wisdom. Look for ways in which your electromagnetic field picks up information before your head-brain processes it.

And most importantly... look for dreams of your first love.

© Connie Kaplan, 2005