I loved visiting one of my friends during my childhood, not only because they always had Tropika in the fridge (yum), but also because his parents were Dutch and liberal. There was a freedom given to you as you entered the house: to be who you wanted to be. Don’t get me wrong; there was discipline and manners but no forced censorship.

Censorship fascinates me and is a bone of contention in many countries. South Africa is no exception. I find it intriguing that Hollywood appears to produce more violent films than those with nudity and sex. Do the exercise yourself: take note of the age restrictions of films that you watch on TV and you will notice this (and remember to look out for the nudity – it is often only a glimpse of a bottom). DSTV has an Action channel and yet there is an uproar about a proposed pornography channel. Why is violence condoned more than sex or nudity when the latter is so natural and something that most of the world’s population indulge in at some point in their life? We would wish that violence would not be necessary in real life and yet this practice is what is put all over our screens. Bizarre? I think so.

Just recently the South African Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana walked out of an exhibition of women’s art, offended by photographs of naked black women. Xingwana is now looking to debate when art becomes pornography. How can naked people lying together looking lovingly into each other’s eyes be considered pornography unless there is something shameful about nudity?

On Facebook I am a member of a page called “Conscious Parenting” – I recommend it to anyone who deals with children. The page administrators, a lovely Scandinavian couple who epitomise innocence and love, posted pictures of their young boy (I would guess he’s around four or five years old) enjoying the garden on the first warm day of spring. The pictures illustrated the innocence of children and were posted in that innocence. They were beautiful. Most of the fans loved them but then there were those who were disgusted because their son was naked in the pictures. They eventually removed some of the “offensive” pictures.

Nudity and sex are natural and normal. Those who don’t view it as such demonise and condemn and make it shameful. In some European countries it is not unusual for people to swim naked in public, yet there is no evidence of public nudity increasing the level of sexual violence, as opponents often argue. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite.

We are born of sex and naked. This is how we enter the world and then the judgement begins and with the judgement follows shame. This shame, grouped with low esteem, results in sexual obsession and sometimes abuse. It is not the nudity or exposure to sex that is the problem, but the judgement of it.

Let’s think twice before we censor for children because we are perpetuating the problem.

Just like it has never been seen as endearing to be foolish, love has grown to be disliked too.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return”, says the artist, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, in the beautiful film about love, Moulin Rouge. The strange thing is that it is not something that needs to be learnt as we are all borne of unconditional love. It is something within us that needs to be rediscovered.

Love is the true experience of life. It is the one emotion that incorporates all that we are and wish to be. It takes us places we would not have otherwise gone; it makes us do things that we would have not attempted otherwise; it makes us foolish. Like all experiences in life, love has its ups and downs and the greater the ups, often the greater the downs. The key is to enjoy the downs as much as the ups. Often the downs can be characterised by bitterness and hate but there is still nothing but love.

What defines a fool? They have a poor reputation; one given to them by those who do not take risks because they claim they are too clever to make mistakes. A fool is innocent, pure and trusting. They rely on their inner knowing to guide them. Even though their ego may see an abyss ahead of them, they keep going. They stroll off the edge with the faith and knowing that has typified many of the great leaders and warriors of history. Think of the great explorers who set out to prove to people that the world does not end and you cannot sail off the edge. How similar is love? Every experience of love is different yet we choose to see it as the same and this is what makes it the same. This is what results in repeated patterns in love. The patterns provide our ego with comfort but rob our soul of experiencing.

To be a fool in love it is necessary to abandon the mind. Laugh at the mind and its antics as it tries to anticipate what will happen next and how the other will react to your words and actions. Go with what you want to do and say. If you find yourself stopping yourself then you know that the innocence is being disturbed.

I recently experienced unrequited love. This is something that is written about a lot. It is an uncomfortable space but one that needs to be seen for what it is – love with yourself. Hindsight can make you look stupid because your actions were never reciprocated. Yet, the gift you give yourself is to see how you can abandon all rules and norms and be yourself regardless of how it may seem. Have you tried to “dance like no one is watching”? We have all heard the saying but for some of us it is more difficult than it may sound. It requires you to listen to what you hear in the music and to respond how you want to respond, not how you have been taught to respond, which fits in with the rest of the crowd. If you are one of those who criticises others for how they dance you will find this even more difficult. Try it though because when you have mastered this you are starting to get the concept of being foolish in love.

Then take another step and do it again…differently.

I have always heard that it is a greater blessing to give love than to receive. I have listened but never quite understood how it can be possible.

Receiving someone else’s love is such a beautiful blessing that lifts you up and gives you meaning. It motivates you to bounce out of bed in the morning; it causes you to skip through the garden and wear an inane smile all day. It is your life blood. It is therefore no wonder that losing that love is then so painful and tragic: the very thing that was driving your every move is taken away and you are left with nothing.

This is the important difference in giving love without expectation of anything in return: it all relies on you. You choose to give your love or you choose not to. It is not dependent on another and so when you choose not to love anymore you can take responsibility and deal with the pain.

But in order to give that love you need to love yourself. We have all heard this but it is not always an easy concept to grasp. Love yourself? This means loving yourself despite your perceived “weaknesses”; loving yourself whether others whom you love, love you as much or not; loving yourself because you will then have so much love that you will attract others to love.

Giving love should be unconditional, which means it is free of expectation and the resultant anxiety. It is free of past experience. It comes from a place of knowing that is so certain that nothing can shake it. It comes from within YOU and is therefore not reliant on anything or anyone but you.

These are all easy words but how do you roll this out in practice? What helps me is to always imagine myself when I was five (you can pick any age that personifies innocence for you). When I was five there was no expectation of a situation and I lived always for the moment: if I saw the moment as sad then I was sad; if it was happy then I was happy. I did not force myself out of sadness because I wanted happiness and I did not hang onto the happiness because I did not want to lose it. I merely experienced the feelings and these feelings were unique and special because I did not know them from past experience.

And so it should be in giving love: like it is the first time. You have a blank canvass to create the most beautiful experience you know how to in that moment in time and you are doing it without any other painting or artist in mind…it is only you, your emotions and the canvass.

Give of yourself freely and create the love you want to see in the world because then you will see nothing else.

I am reading one of Osho’s works: Being in love. Wow, mind blowing stuff. There is no love in the world, is what he says. You are born knowing nothing but love, but you are vulnerable because you depend on your parents for everything. And that is where the corruption starts. That is where the beliefs of your parents, their friends, your friends, your teachers and all the other members of your collective unconscious start to take hold of you and you get lost. You get lost in all the beliefs that once were justified and relevant but now are just believed. You lose your innocence, your love and the uniqueness and individuality of who you are.

The reason for this is control. We all know someone who has an “uncontrollable” child; a child who fails to conform to acceptable behaviour; one who does their own thing “with no respect for others”. Look at how we are trying to control the child to get them to conform. And we want them to conform to standards and norms that lack the love that we are capable of; standards and norms that have been in place for so long that few know the significance of them. How loving is it to take a child filled with innocence and love and drum the ways of this world into them? No matter what your religion or belief you have to believe that a child is born from a place of more love than what we currently live in. Surely? So what are we doing…unconsciously? We are removing the innocence and uniqueness of a being so that they can fit into a society that we spend everyday trying to fit into in denial of our truth and our very being.

For years I have been living a life for others because of this conditioning. I have always wanted to make people like me and to see them happy as a result of my actions. This has included my parents. In fact, they are the ones I have been most concerned about disappointing. So much so, that I reached a point of going into relationships for the other; because the other wanted to. In so doing, I lost myself and forgot what it is that I want. Fortunately this realisation is never too late as the truth is always with you; you only have to drop the lies. It is easier than it sounds. How do you know whether it is a lie or not? If you can defend yourself when under heavy questioning with a clear heart, then it is your truth. If you see yourself getting overly defensive because you are filled with fear of the illusion crashing around you, then you have found one of the lies to drop. Congratulations! Oh, and it is only difficult to drop them if you hold onto them. Otherwise, they simply fall away!

Okay, so this is meant to be a view on the world. What has been going on? What lies have we been fed and held onto? How have we given our choice away and conformed to the collective? Is YOUR financial situation as bad as THEY believe? Has YOUR life changed for the worst as was predicted? If it has, you have to ask yourself just how much you rely on the opinion of others to determine your health, wealth and happiness. Take back the responsibility for your life and know that you are in charge because it is your life, despite all the conditioning you have carried for all this time – it is still your life and always will be!