A New Answer
I read recently that one in every five children has mental health problems. They continued to state that there has been a 43% increase in ADHD, a 37% increase in teen depression and a whopping 200% increase in suicide rate in children between the ages of 10 and 14 years.
For the purpose of questioning things as we do in this blog, why do those statistics keep rising when we supposedly have so many so-called “specialists” in each of those fields? It really is a good question to ponder.
As I have stated in my blog many times before, we come into this world with a certain set of beliefs and understandings that are already set in place. It’s a world that believes that answers to what ails us are found in books, in intellectual ideas.
Is it time to start questioning those beliefs and start seeing them as incomplete? If they are in fact incomplete, wouldn’t that explain why we never get to the root of the problems that face so many?
For example, I have spoken about the utmost importance of owning your own attention. The reason it is so vital to own one’s own attention is that if we don’t, something else will. That something else is the past nature that we typically live our lives from. It is always there in the moment to hijack our life for the purpose of keeping the past in place.
Here I am sitting on my couch. I just found out my friends are out doing other things without me. The minute that I realize that my friends are out doing things without me, the past starts talking to me “You know, they really don’t like you very much. You’re not as cool as they are. You are too boring”, and so on.
If we don’t own our attention, our attention gets hijacked and its focus is then placed on the voices of harm speaking to us in the moment. We then experience the negative sensations that go along with them. We essentially serve those voices without an understanding of what is taking place.
Now that doesn’t just happen once, it happens over and over again, moment to moment. The past is always hijacking the moment with negativity and if we aren’t there to oversee it with observation, that energy of negativity becomes more pronounced and more pronounced.
The world calls that depression. It is rather a perfect word because that past nature depresses us, it weakens us because we unknowingly are giving it its life force.
We are meant to use the energy in unwanted moments in a transformative, positive way and not negatively for that only proliferates them.
The reason depression feels so very real is because the increased pressure of that pronounced energy can feel daunting, but the reasons that the mind (the past) gives for that feeling is the lie. Guy Finley, a truth teacher, perfectly stated it as “The feel is real, but the why is a lie.”
We have repeatedly given that part of ourselves the authority over ourselves because we knew not what we were doing. Once we see what we have been the unwitting instrument of, we can start the journey of undoing. That journey starts in seeing how we have been complicit in our own suffering.
Nobody wants to admit that. I didn’t want to admit that. I couldn’t admit that until I saw it for myself.
What is suicide? What is it that could make anyone reach the point wherein they truly felt there was no hope? I laid it out above.
The mind, the past, speaks to a person “You’d be better off dead. Nobody really cares. What does it really matter anyway? I hate this world.” Left unattended, those voices create our experience.
Just as in the depression example above, when a person doesn’t own their own attention, the energy in those moments that was intended to be used for transformation, is stolen by the past. When it's stolen by the past, it feeds on our energy and in return, we get to feel the sensation of its daunting darkness that is its life force. Negative energy.
When we aren’t aware of what is taking place inwardly within us in any moment, there is a silent agreement to that very state and what it says it means and what action we should take to relieve us from the pain of its presence.
Pain has a useful purpose but when we don’t understand that purpose, pain will then use us in a negative and harmful way.
It is difficult sometimes to state what I wish to say in words. I try to be as clear and concise as possible. I have a true wish for every parent out there to work with their child so that they don’t become just another statistic. We can all rise above this lower level of consciousness that has imprisoned us for eons. That, however, takes work and diligent, persistent work.
That past nature will not lie down easily. Everything in creation wants to live. It’s no different with the past. Our true nature, however, is above the past, which means that no matter what the past says, it truly has no authority other than what we have unknowingly lent it.
Take your life back. Give your child the gift of presence. Be present with them. Teach them what it means to attend to the present moment without distraction. As the process goes, you will see how easily distracted you get and how easily distracted they get. That it wonderful to see! Why? Because it is the awareness above you that showed you that. That’s part of the undoing.
Image courtesy of: Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-little-child-smiling-while-peeking-from-tent-3932961/