Are kids more conscious than adults?

[allislove]

Are kids usually have higher consciousness than adults?
I mean when you have underdeveloped monkey mind without a bunch of dogmas it's probably easier to be conscious.
Is enlightenment the process of returning to the child state of mind?

Edited March 27, 2019 by dimitri

[Leo Gura]

No they aren't.

They are just less corrupted by beliefs and less rigid.

Kids are very selfish and nowhere close to woke. They are like animals. They have no clue they are God.

[tsuki]

@dimitri Enlightenment comes from synergy of doubt and curiosity.
Kids are curious by design, but they haven't developed identity to be doubtful.

[mandyjw]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No they aren't.

They are just less corrupted by beliefs and less rigid.

Kids are very selfish and nowhere close to woke. They are like animals. They have no clue they are God.

This is half right. Kids or babies are enlightened until around age 2 when all hell breaks lose and the ego begins to develop. If you've ever lived with a  toddler you know first hand the turmoil and suffering that a developing ego causes.  They are still enlightened in a lot of ways, but it's a pre-mind pre-conceptual understanding kind of enlightenment. The same kind that animals enjoy in a way. They don't regulate their emotions so they can be very present and fully enjoy experiences in a way that we can't because in learning to regulate your emotions you create resistance and repression. 

So if you define enlightenment a something that happens spontaneously, yes they are enlightened. if you define it a state you enter of your own  conscious choice then no. 

[Nahm]

@dimitri  Spent the day in a third grade classroom yesterday. The project of the day was writing. We each wrote a fairytale using the Goldilocks theme. They all seemed just right to me. 

[Leo Gura]

@Nahm Little devils they are.

[Truth Addict]

@dimitri

Think of it this way, a child is a blank page (zero consciousness information).

An adult is a page filled with words (a lot of consciousness information).

The more you grow (in age), the more consciousness information you acquire.

Thus, no, a child is certainly not more conscious than an adult.

But, why do most adults suffer? (why are most adults so evil?) You might've wanted to ask.

Because they've caught a lot of devil (selfish) consciousness information along their way growing up in life.

The solution is to seek God, with happiness being the indicator.

[Nahm]

@Leo Gura Absolutely! Lol.  They’re so clever, they outsmart themselves - they never do what you say, but are always doing what you do. I have a close friend who literally can’t be comfortable in a room with kids. Full on panic attacks, from toddlers, within 10 minutes. His dad was like that too. My other buddy lays on the floor and starts playing toys with them before acknowledging me when he comes over. It’s like visiting someone with a dog, with bacon in your pocket. The kids do what he does too. 

[now is forever]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Nahm Little devils they are.

they even have hoofs. and they snort.

Edited March 27, 2019 by now is forever

[MsNobody]

In the book How to Change Your Mind from Michale Polan he mentions another woman's work where she says kids are tripping till around 4 ~5yo, they see things differently, colors are more alive, etc. He talks about an experiment she did with adults and kids, and kids were able to solve the problems faster because their minds are more flexible/resilient, capable of seeing possibilities and alternative ways that a conditioned adult mind couldn't, what I love most about kids is that they are always in the now, and spending time with then you are kind of forced to be in the now too, I wouldn't underestimate the power of those little creatures, only they know what's going on in their minds..

Here is a piece of the Podcast Tim Ferris did last week with Michale Polan

I also think, though, there’s the pure science piece, which is really interesting. I interviewed, in the book, Alison Gopnik, this psychologist who’s a colleague of mine at Berkeley, a child psychologist, and she has a fascinating — she studies the mind of a child, which she thinks is an altered state of consciousness. And she said, “If you ever want to experience an expanded consciousness, just have tea with a four-year-old.” And she really believes that kids are tripping all the time, up to about four or five. And in a very specific sense, that they take in information in this global way that we don’t. We have something she calls spotlight consciousness.

Tim Ferriss: Or the reducing valve?

Michael Pollan: Or the reducing, exactly, it’s the same metaphor. And it’s also ego-driven consciousness. It’s very pointed. We can block everything out. But kids have lantern consciousness. They’re taking in information from all different sides. That’s why you can’t keep them on task. But they’re doing something really important, which is exploring their environment and mastering it in a way that we, as adults, cannot at a certain point. It’s like learning a language after you’re 10. It just gets much harder.

Michael Pollan: So she’s kind of got a very interesting model that you could use psychedelics to restore some of the qualities of children’s consciousness, the kind of creativity, the kind of problem-solving that kids actually do better. We talked about the mask experiment, predictive coding. Kids don’t have all those models in their head telling them what’s likely to work, or what’s likely is happening. So they’re taking in all that sensory information, and they’re more creative as a result. Well, could you put us back in that head?

So there are pure science experiments that I know she would love to do that need to be funded, also. And I think there’s a real potential to learn important things about consciousness. Basically, one of the ways you learn about any complex system is disturb it, and we now have this amazing tool for disturbing everyday, normal consciousness, and studying the results. So I would love to see that happen, too. And that’s academic research. And I hope that there will be centers for psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins, perhaps at UCSF, where this work could be done, because I think the payoff could be tremendous.

[now is forever]

@MsNobody never again without disturbance 

also there is a lot to say about children being ego and children wanting to be ego - there is a difference, children understand that if they are taught. it’s not because they are still formable, it’s because they feel very deeply and they can understand what it means to be hurt for others, they overcome their ego regularly. they might be little devils if they are completely left alone but with the right guidance of course they shine devine light! sometimes so pure that you don’t even need to talk so much but rather listen. what would someone expect else from a being that is constantly morphing and shapeshifting into reality, starting out in a universe that hasn’t been settled yet - with some million more stars to begin with that  haven’t collapsed yet.

the devil indeed is the grown ups world, who destroy their kingdom. (it’s not about destroying it, it’s about setting it right)

Edited March 29, 2019 by now is forever