If I could tell this current generation of beings one thing…
…one thing for the next generation..
I would want them to be able to love themselves.
To support themselves no matter what is going on in their environment. I would like them to be able to find friends who relate to them in a tribal supportive way so that they can enjoy being successful in life. This is my dream for the next generation, and especially the next generation of children.
My mission in life is to make the world a more perfect place for children.
It is hard for me to emphasize enough how important children are. Everything should be done for them. We often say this, and offer verbal recognition to this end, but not the actions that follow up to create truly make a better place for those children.
They need to be supported, they need to be accepted.
Instead, they are formed to cultural norms. I have the wish to make it a perfect world for people, for the children within them as well as the future children. For this to happen, adults need to feel good about themselves to be able to help the children feel good about themselves. The inner child in all of us needs to be woken up so we can feel supported.
***
“Since we also punish more than we reward, we sometimes help children “achieve” but they don’t feel good about themselves. And, when we do perform effectively, the motivation is not coming from within, children are motivated to achieve to make their parents happy. And this grows bitterness and resentment underneath.
All of that needs to heal for them to go onward.”
***
There is a thing about self-confidence and self-esteem. Some of what happens in education and parenting is the misplaced focus on self-esteem instead of self-confidence. The typical “wrap” is everybody in the race wins a prize. But! That’s not necessarily a good thing because it places the emphasis on self-esteem rather than cultivating self-confidence and takes away from healthy competition. Self-confidence is about producing and achieving things. If I feel good about myself then I can produce a thing. My self-esteem helps me feel good about myself and supports my self-confidence for what I do and put into the world.
Your self-confidence can feed back into your self-esteem and vice-versa. So, if we are going to help children in this world we need to work with self-confidence and self-esteem. There are a lot of good resources out there for self-esteem, all the way back to Mr. Rogers, the Cat in the Hat, and Doctor Seuss.
It is harder for our culture to support the self-confidence piece. A lot of the time, we tend to use classical behavioral conditioning which is reward and punishment focused. We usually punish much more than we intend to, resulting in a net experience of punishment over reward.
We need five positives for every one negative to feel good about ourselves and achieve self-confidence. Since we also punish more than we reward we sometimes help children “achieve” but they don’t feel good about themselves. And, when we do perform effectively, the motivation is not coming from within, children are motivated to achieve to make their parents happy. And this grows bitterness and resentment underneath.
“There is to be no power over. Ever. Power with.
But never power over another person.”
All of that needs to heal for them to go onward. For children, in psychology terms, this would be called operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, the behaviors children exhibit get closer and closer to the ultimate outcome. When we grade F’s and Zero’s we aren’t grading in a way that helps children get closer to the outcome. We don’t necessarily work for the children to help them understand their own goals and values to feel empowered to go for what they want. I have an associate, who uses these Q-sorts to help children be empowered to identify what they want to do. They are directly involved in creating their own curriculum. That’s the kind of thing I would like to see out there to make the world a more perfect place for children.
I have worked with a few parents who are like that too. Even though they are going against consensus reality, or more mainstream behaviors, they know of a universal reality so they take hard strong steps to help bring their children into the world, with self-esteem and self-confidence, trhough the operant conditioning way of working with them. To do this, these parents express their love five, ten, or even fifteen times for every correction. They have a lot of self-discipline and willingness to put aside what they’ve been told for what is supposed to be good parenting. They look at themselves without shaming themselves for not having done as good at parenting as they wanted to and because they don’t have the shame they can take the steps to treat the children with the kind of respect and caring that we want to. It’s a huge challenge, it is what most parents want to do. They need a lot of support in order to be able to do this. I wish there were hordes of people and organizations out there to make this happen.
***
“In the tribe the parents would have more support from the structure of the tribe. There would be elders, there would be shamans, there would be wisdom-keepers and sages.
And the wisdom would be respected, acknowledged and used by the rest of the tribe to the best of their ability, and those who are evolving through this, who are adults and elders, grow their own wisdom so that they can help the tribe evolve even more in a positive evolutionary direction.”
***
When living in tribe, every person is an important resource. You know you don’t have unlimited resources in the way that the modern materialistic science worlds thinks there is. So, there is this understanding that each person is a resource, each child is a resource. And in fact, that each person is a gift. Each child is a gift. In tribe, they work with each child to discover what the child’s gift is. Mentors, parents and teachers work with them to bring their gift out in a way that is effective. Both for the child and each member of the tribe, and it is therefore, what is best for the tribe as well, the parents and the kids. In the tribe the parents would have more support from the structure of the tribe.
There would be elders, there would be shamans, there would wisdom-keepers and sages. And the wisdom would be respected, acknowledged and used by the rest of the tribe to the best of their ability, and those who are evolving through this who are adults and elders, grow their own wisdom so that they can help the tribe evolve even more in a positive evolutionary direction.
Healthy Elder-to-Elder, Leader-to-Leader, and Adult-to-Adult relationships are so important. We model this behavior for our children and each other as we plan projects, and implement them. What we are doing needs to be done from this space; a space of honoring, a space of wisdom, a healthy tribal-relating space. I can’t feel I can approach business, or workshops in anything that feels to close too the consensus reality (mainstream) way of doing things, because that would take me away from the universal principals for doing things. It would take me away from this space of honoring, of wisdom, of stillness.
For me, to be able to do my work and relate in this way, it relies on others, holding the energy. Holding the Goddess. This is especially true for female-bodied people. I don’t know if we can do the healthy masculine piece of tribal-relating unless the female can hold the Goddess energy.
Until the female is able to strengthen and deepen..
That it is known you are honored and respected, and also being able to honor and respect yourself..
Seeing your own depth, your own divinity, your own Goddessness, and Goden.
***
For me, to be able to do my work and relate in this way, it relies on others, holding the energy. Holding the Goddess. This is especially true for female-bodied people. I don’t know if we can do the healthy masculine piece of tribal-relating unless the female can hold the Goddess energy. Until the female is able to strengthen and deepen, that it is known you are honored and respected, and also being able to honor and respect yourself, seeing your own depth, your own divinity, your own Goddessness, and Goden.
***
I feel blessed to have these awesome people in my life. Holding female energy. Holding power. Not wimping out. Not giving in to the cultural stereotypes saying who you need to be or who you should be. When you are doing that, as females, I don’t see it being done any other way. I like to believe I am contributing as a Red Warrior providing an environment where the feminine, the White Warrior, the Goddess can thrive. That’s my mission. Doing that will allow for the children to be there. I am working on holding enough of the feminine energy along with the White Warrior with my female colleagues and mentors coaching me. They beat up on me and kick my butt, in the very best way, until I am demonstrating appropriate behavior…it’s a partnership, and I am honored to receive these teachings from them.
[Pause]
A real partnership.
[Brother Eric Gently Weeping]
There is to be no power over. Ever. Power with. But never power over another person.
I think I am learning how to maintain that with my colleagues and my team of Goddesses I am humbled to work with, and they are helping me with that. And what I am helping them with is difficult to differentiate. It is like a type of blending…I feel blended most of the time with them. While maintaining boundaries, we still hold the one-ness.
I am also seeing the need for the oneness with the planet, with Gaia, with nature.
Like looking at the Water and the Sky.
So, that’s the getting conscious unity back. Doing this with conscious liberation. We the alleged adults have to put it together, put ourselves together and help other adults, so we can help our children. That would be the perfect world for children. I do believe it was there, once upon a time. You could see the kids were like a flock of birds playing, running in all different directions with different ages, and it was just gorgeous. It was free. It was loving. It was simple. Like birds flocking.
