Looking into the most highly realized persons who are aware of their participation in this chaotic and insane world where we are dysfunctional at every turn from the barbarian decisions and actions of war to the financial freefall of counterfeit money made from thin air, to the sicknesses and diseases that swallow us whole, I see we are all broken mature (i.e. adult) trees and we are fixing ourselves as best we can to become more whole again. Again is the key word here, for we were whole once: as children. As Jung stated the child is an image of wholeness. But where do we go to fix our broken selves? Would it not be prudent to go to the source of the problem, the root? If so, then we must return to the issues of childhood. For childhood is where are the wiring of our behavior gets fired. The root is there. If we want our forest to be wooded with whole, healthy trees, we must find out what is the proper environment to facilitate this wholeness from the seedling, and not simply repeat the cycle of fixing the broken mature trees.
I turn to Dr. Maria Montessori, a much neglected source of light regarding personal (child) development, and her SECRET OF CHILDHOOD, 1966. She continually repeats and shows that "the child is the father of the man."
"Childhood constitutes the most important element in the adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made. The well being of the adult is intimately connected with the kind of life that he had when he was a child." Dr. Montessori knew exactly what we are learning from contemporary brain research and the axiom “neurons that fire together wire together”.
"The startling blindness of adults, their insensibility with regard to their own offspring, is something that is deeply rooted and of long duration. An adult who loves children but unconsciously condemns them inflicts upon them a secret sorrow which is a mirror of his own mistakes." We would all do well to contemplate her profound accusation of unconscious psychological maiming of children by adults.
"A child cannot develop and expand as it should because the adult 'represses' it. But this word 'adult' is in itself an abstract term. In reality a child is isolated from society; if an 'adult' influences him, it is a specific adult, the adult closest to him. And ordinarily this would be first his mother, then his father, and finally his teacher. Society, however, attributes to adults a completely different role: it credits them with the education and development of the child. But now, after the human soul has been probed to its depths, there arises from it an ACCUSATION against those formerly regarded as the guardians and benefactors of mankind. But since nearly all adults are either mothers, fathers, teachers, or guardians of children, we may say that all adults stand accused, that the society responsible for the welfare of children has been put on trial. There is something apocalyptic about this startling accusation: it is mysterious and terrible like the voice of the Last Judgment: 'What have you done to the children I entrusted to you”? - Devastating and alarming words from Dr. Montessori.
People who are young (rather than calling them children) have a psychic development that is all their own, yet can only be developed in the proper environment. Rather than mature as broken and unwhole, it is for young people to show us the way to wholeness. Wounding is part of that wholeness, as is gaining conscious awareness of patterns, callings, and nature, with all her mysteries. Our view of the developmental needs of the child has been skewed toward the adult needs and is therefore biased in a way that does not contain the suchness of what really is. In reality, children not only have no rights (including the rights we enforce with protective service agencies which are the adult rights to do what they want with the child), children are the most discriminated persons of society. Montessori’s words of apocalyptic warning ring truer today than one hundred years ago as “children” are drugged into oblivion by the adults in charge.
Richard Edinger, in Archetype of the Apocalypse: A Jungian Study of the Book of Revelation, points out that if enough people bring to consciousness the apocalyptic coming of the self along with an ego that is open and cooperative, this can lead to Jung's "broadening out of man to the whole man" and away from the more catastrophic manifestation of the apocalypse. Shall we include people who are young in this experience or keep them relegated to "not ready for, inappropriate for, too fracturing, and without resource to handle?"
Many people around the age of six already understand, experience, and question the repressed ways of the adults around them. By puberty many people today are not only fully equipped to deal with the dark side and shadow, they are longing for it. If we take a look at what they are really calling for, we will see a hunger for something deeper, psyches desiring redemption and development through the dark forces that have already made themselves known. The coming of the self to the adolescent is serious business. When nobody listens to their needs, they act out the more catastrophic manifestations of the apocalypse rather than the "broadening out to the whole man."
Until we allow young people their innate, self-evident right to decide for themselves, we will continue the repression that seeds the adolescent rebellion. We will repeat the accusations of their ineptitude and blame the young persons for their idiocy rather than understanding that they have been hard wired to make these destructive decisions because of our keeping them powerless for far too long. As Rollo May has pointed out, the powerless will make perverted decisions as they strive to attain power. The cycle repeats itself endlessly as we grow into broken mature people and then spend all our time consumed with making ourselves whole.
If we start to allow children their inalienable right to make decisions for themselves, from eating what they want, dressing how they want, learning and going to school how they want, etc…and simply start aiming to keep our “children” in their innate wholeness from the beginning and learn from their connectedness to truth and innocent wisdom, we will begin to reverse this destructive and inefficient cycle and find ourselves with whole mature trees that have time and energy to be creative and life affirming.
No comments:
Post a Comment