Mind functions according to the Law. How could it be otherwise? To understand how a thing works, we watch it. Seeing how mind works is direct apprehension of the Law. Appreciation for the Law breeds understanding of the mind. Understanding breeds acceptance. Acceptance brings one to reality, the present.

     There are many who are angry with their mind. They argue with it, and wish it was different. Failing to understand its compounded nature they have no idea how to change it, and despair. Some to the point of killing it.

     Arguing with one’s mind is like arguing with an idiot. You are capable of reasoning, your mind is not; it’s not ones and zeros, but then neither is it sevens and elevens. The difference between your mind and you is the difference between a cash register and magic.

     Mind is born untrammeled (not blank), a stallion or a mare, that in order to harmoniously function in our culture needs curbing and training--long known to be a delicate process of firmness, play, affection, and celebration. Raised in such a fashion a colt can grow up to be an enthusiastic, vibrant creature; as, of course, can a human child.

     There is only one sin. It is to impinge on another’s boundaries, to trammel another’s sanctity.

     A broken horse don’t run good, neither does a broken child. Child abuse is about people who didn’t get their own needs met as children trying to get them met through the use of children. What is universal about abuse is the insult to the most personal creation of our self. The self we have created in the world as we see it. The core we hold holy. The place we mark up, and set about with boundaries. The construction of a strong defense is the important work of childhood.

     When a child is born he has been building for nine months. Holding together what has been compounded requires great strength. When the poet says, Things fall apart / The center will not hold, this is what he’s talking about. A person in trouble is said to be Falling Apart, Losing his Grip, Disintegrating, Having a Breakdown, A Breakup, Is Crumbling or Degenerating, Is Shattered. Or, conversely, we say, Get a Grip, Get Hold of Yourself, Pull Yourself Together. All these maxims refer to the compounded nature of things. The child poisoned in the womb by a careless mother makes and repeats mistakes.

     Once born, the beat goes on. The child doesn’t wait till he can talk, he babbles. He doesn’t wait till he can walk, he struggles up, staggers, falls, struggles. At two-and-a-half he wants to drive the car. At ten he wants a girlfriend, at twelve a motorcycle. Go ahead, set yourself up, tell him not to drink until he’s twenty-one. If it’s on the menu, he’ll eat it. If he gets indigestion, C’est la vie. To paraphrase Rocky Raccoon, He’ll be better just as soon as he is able.

     To the extent we are not crippled, we are voracious. The dumbest mayor knows enough to get in front of the parade. Not to lead, actually. But to clear the way. And just in case anyone falls and scrapes a knee.

      There is an inherent understanding of growth and development. There seems not to be an inherent under-standing of the forces arrayed against it. They are formidable. Here’s a story:

     My boy is three-and–a-half. We drop into a park we seldom visit, but which he loves for its unending circuit of climbing and crawling and running. It’s a slow Monday morning, but there are four children scooting around the palisades, and running over the ramps; three boys and a girl. All are about five. The leader is a boy of substance. A cocky lad, tall and broad, and confident.

     Off they go, and my boy falls in at the end of the line. Whoopee! No clam has ever been as happy as a young boy running and climbing, and this boy of mine is right in the mold. They make a circuit, and rest a little. My boy arrives at the rest spot a little latter. He’s not pooped, it’s just his legs are shorter than the other’s. And then off they go again. Whee! This is living! Each circuit is slightly different, and after four or five, they pull up at the corral.

     The big boy leans back against the balustrade, the others gather around him. My boy arrives, but holds back from actually joining the group. He’s a happy puppy.

     The big boy surveys his sycophants, and with the slightest of nods toward my boy, he says, Who’s the baby?

     My boy is not slow, and standing near him I feel the knife go searing through his heart. As far as I know, it is the first, utterly cruel experience of his life. I can feel the weight descend on his shoulders. He drops his head. But he says, loud enough for all to hear, I’m not a baby.

     My own homicidal instincts to the contrary, it is for this instant that I have been training him. I’m so proud at that moment I’m about to collapse. The attack is aimed at his core self. It is an attempt to tear down the construction, the battlements I have been actively helping him build. Inside that core there must be no doubt that I’m a good guy. I’m not a baby, I’m not a jerk. Such an attack must not breech the works. He hasn’t been taught violence. He’s been taught to hold his own. To stand behind the works we have so laboriously raised and laugh at the idiots with their puny slurs and insults. At three-and-a-half he wasn’t quite to the laughing stage yet, but he was truckin’.

     The proposition is that the self that emerges from this intense period of construction may be resilient or fragile; may develop into a confident, self-assured person, who successfully demands that the world respond to his needs, or a person who doesn’t think of himself as inherently deserving of a response. Whether the child falls into the first or second category is entirely dependent on the parents.

     At any given moment we are the reflected sum of our incrementally collected, collated, and classified experience. We learn how to do what has been done to us. Child suicide is a form of retaliation. A warped input produces a warped output; how could it be otherwise?