Social Creatures
Children of all ages are struggling with the loss of certain parts of their social life that used to be an integral part of their every day life.
Not only are we social creatures, but we are intended to learn through direct relationship with others. Relationships are a necessity in Life. In truth, Life is relationship.
Life brings us its lessons for our greater good through our relationships with others. Now, even if a monk goes into seclusion without human contact, it doesn’t mean that Life stops bringing lessons to that person. The lessons just come through different avenues.
There is no substitution for self-knowledge, for if a child has some understanding of how Life truly works, there would be no environment that they would find themselves in that would become a struggle for them.
Why?
Because if our children had the understanding that their job is to work to observe their thoughts and not serve them moment to moment, they would understand that any thought or feeling that arose to try to “bring them down” was false and not for their greater good.
Without that understanding, a child (or anyone) simply unconsciously serves those thoughts and feelings. When those thoughts and feelings are unconsciously identified with, the child (or anyone) unwittingly becomes an instrument of that negativity.
I attended a rally a short time ago and there was counselor who spoke and said that in this past year of Covid, she had written more prescriptions for anti-psychotic meds for children than she has in the past 6 years total.
My heart hurt hearing that because the world is not in need of more "bandaids." It is in need of self-understanding. Without it, we drug ourselves, we commit suicide, we hate, we blame, we destroy, we harm, we go to war. In other words, we simply remain blind and keep doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result.
There are so few people who want to hear this information, but I know its not who they truly are that doesn’t want to hear it. Something “old” in them is dismissing the information in favor of the continuity of itself.
Do you look out at this world and find it a world that you wish to live in? Most people whose ears start to hear this information, hear it because its just too painful to live in this world the way we have been living to date and they’ve reached the bottom and have nowhere else to turn.
And that’s a great place to be….
The problem isn’t that our children aren’t getting the social interaction that they miss with their friends.
The problem lies in the unconscious identification with the thoughts and feelings that are moving through their minds telling them that they need to be with their friends in order to be happy and content.
Yes, we are social creatures. It's natural to want to be with others, but the point I wish to make is that we are ceaselessly being given what we need in each and every moment (no matter the environment we are in) in order to transcend old, limited parts of ourselves.
Something old in us does not like change. Change is something that is resisted. What is resisted persists, as truth teacher Guy Finley puts it. The more unconscious attention that is placed on what we don’t want, the more those unwanted thoughts and feelings return. That is how a person ends up instrumenting depression, etc.
Do your best to help your child socialize as much as possible. Let go of the rest…and remember what a wise man (Vernon Howard) once said: “If our present ways do not supply self-command, it makes sense to drop them for ways that do.”
Image courtesy of: Hannah Nelson on Pexels
