Do you see the similarity? Not sure how old either of them is in the photos depicted, though Putin (on left) is clearly older than Trump.

I wrote about Trump’s baby picture here, shortly after he won the U.S. presidential election.

https://www.babypictureproject.com/baby-picture-of-donald-j-trump/

My introduction to Putin’s early life came when I came across a book in the Little Free Library in front of our Green Acres Permaculture Village, and despite holding my nose, managed to read it. Clearly anti-Putin in tone, Marsha Gessen’s Man Without A Face described him as a playground bully.

But, she also mentioned that when he begged his father to let him take martial arts, everything changed. He could learn how to focus his considerable energy — and did so.

Here’s an RT article about Putin that reminds me of what I’ve read about Trump as a young person, both of them utterly full of energy, and mischievous as hell..

“Energy in him was in full swing” says Putin’s teacher regarding her famous pupil

But the point of this post is other than comparing the early lives of these two men who then went on to become world leaders. Instead, what I long to see is for each of us go back and find our own “baby picture,” the one photo of us that shows who we really are, our original nature, before all the conditioning set in. What would happen if we did? Here’s mine:

This morning, for our regular Monday morning work party, I was weeding out by the DeKist 2 property line, with Andreas and a brand new podmate, Justin, who is only 20 years old.

Way too young, we would usually think, to live here. But this young man is unusual. As we were weeding, he mentioned to me: “I know I’ve been programmed, and have been trying to let go of it. At first, when I realized this, I was overwhelmed. How could I ever find it all and let it go?”

I asked him, “What was the moment when you woke up, when you realized you had been programmed?”

“Well, I had been listening to some podcasts. And one of them mentioned a book, The Four Agreements,  by Don Miguel Ruiz.

I finally bought the book, during a time when I had just transferred to IU, was lonely and had no nearby friends. The book changed my life. I have, so far, read it three times. Because I keep forgetting, and must go back and remember.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I started de-programming myself when I was 26 years old, and now, at 75, I am still doing so.”

As we kept pulling grasses and “smart weed,” leaving the clover (good for the soil) and purslane (good in salads), then mulching the mostly bare soil with woodchips, I asked him to remind me. What are the four agreements?

Here they are, in an image, in case you don’t know them yourself, or, like me, need to be reminded.

Yes. What if we were to make it our primary goal, each of us, to return to our original nature, that unique, pure and irreplaceable core essence that came into this life innocent and unadulterated, utterly open to experience. What would happen if we learned to see others in terms of their own original nature too, no matter how they have been programmed since then? I keep visioning all humans wearing their baby pictures on their chests, so we could each see each other for who we really are, underneath all the layers of “identity” we have (usually unconsciously) piled on top of that precious, beautiful soul.