When Jesus instructed us to be like small children in order to learn the truth, He wasn't advising us to throw temper tantrums, fall down a lot, or poop in our diapers. Unfortunately, that is the part about being an infant that many modern adults seem to have kept very much a part of their lives, figuratively or literally.

Jesus was referring to more positive aspects of being a small child: innocence, openness, and a constant quest to learn the world around you.

A baby is innocent in that he hasn't yet done anything to make him form opinions about the world around him. She is also innocent in that the world has not yet had a chance to form opinions about her, at least not opinions that are significant.

An infant is open in that he doesn't yet filter everything through the filters of past experience and training. Because there are no filters, the baby tends to see things more as they really are rather than as we have collectively decided they are.

And the small child is constantly learning. Learning about it's parents and other people. Learning about the strange world around it: plants, animals, and man-made things. Learning from sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Have you ever noticed how a baby will put just about anything in it's mouth? This seems somewhat crazy and comical to adults, but it really isn't. A baby uses all it's senses to help it understand things that are new. And a baby isn't choosy about who she learns from. Sure, a lot of it comes from mom and dad, but also from brother Fred, sister Angela, kitty cat, and even the other baby that aunt Sue brings over to visit.

We could all learn the truth about our world if we were constantly learning in an open, accepting, and tolerant way the same way that babies do. Babies are never born bigoted or prejudice in any way

The other side of the coin, is that when we are teaching others, we all should learn to be able to teach like good parents, and that is especially true of spiritual teachers.

A parent repeat a word hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times, before the baby learns to repeat it and understand it. The good parent learns to accept, very reluctantly, that in order to learn to walk, run, swim, play ball, ride a bike, etc., they are going to fall down and get hurt. They will sooth the baby, and tell him he's not really hurt, it's OK, and take him to the doctor to get patched up when it is more serious, but the baby still has to learn to walk. You don't decide after the first or second time he falls, that your not going to allow him to walk ever again.

A teacher, especially a spiritual one, needs to be tolerant like that, especially today. In our very materialistic world today, it is often difficult to get through to people the importance of spiritual development and eve more, the details of how to do that. And just as the good parent has a pediatrician and other experts to consult on how to teach the baby, the good spiritual teacher does also. His teachers are the Beings of Light who have already left the material world and returned to the Worlds of Light, or have never left the Worlds of Light. And of course there are the less advance spiritual teachers who learn how to teach from the more advanced ones.