Once again we hear on the television news today about a young person attacking his teachers and classmates before taking his own life.

Why is it that this type of behavior is becoming so prevalent?

I do not claim to have all of the answers but I do have a couple of theories.

Suppression of emotion comes to mind.

It is often seen as improper in our modern, business-driven world to display emotion. Sensitivity is a liability not an asset.

When a child misbehaves in school we punish them for their “behavior.”

Just as in our modern medical system, we are treating the symptom and never concern ourselves with the cause.

What are the FEELINGS that led to the inappropriate behavior?

We have all heard it before:

“Chin up lad.”

“Quit whining and get on with it.”

“Don’t be a sissy.”

“Crying is unprofessional.”

“Boys don’t cry.”

“Women are too emotional in the workplace.”

And my favorite one…(from a famous movie)

“There’s no crying in baseball!”

As children get older they are constantly taught that crying is childish, that whining is immature, that daydreaming is for sissies and that emotion in general is for private, a bad thing to display to others.

When I think of this (in my opinion) outdated concept, I think of the black and white television household of the 1950’s America.

Maybe it was easier to teach the Beaver to control his emotion and not snap one day with a rifle in tote.

But today’s children have to handle many things that “the Beave” could never even fathom.

They have factory farmed food coursing through their veins and hormone laden milk in their lunchboxes.

They don’t have Wiley Coyote being crushed by a crayon drawn anvil, they have rap music glorifying rape and realistic video games where shooting someone with a gun and covering the screen with blood spatter is temporary.

Add to this all of the materialization that they are told will make them happy, unrealistic body images flashing from every surface and the fact that they no longer spend more than an hour or two a day with a parent.

What you end up with is kids that are bottling up and stuffing down probably 300 times more emotion than their predecessors in 1950’s Doo-Wop America.

No wonder children have behavior problems, anger issues, attention deficits, attachment disorders and the like.

We are asking them to now live the lifestyle that has been sending viable, successful adults to high-priced psychotherapists for decades, and to be completely silent about how it all makes them feel.

We are asking young people to be good little soldiers when there doesn’t even have to be a war.

Am I advocating raising kids who respond with tears and frustration to even the smallest disappointment?

No, but I am saying that being “mature” and “adult” or even being “balanced” and “spiritual” about something does not mean being “unemotional” about a thing.

To deny emotion is to deny humanness and this serves only to dehumanize.

Spirituality comes in realizing that emotion is part of being human and that self mastery is not the elimination of emotion but the achievement of the ability to maintain an overall spiritual outlook on life while one is experiencing the emotion of the moment.

This is a feat which can take years to achieve.

But living in the moment requires one to experience the moment fully.

To get the full spiritual lesson on physical incarnation we must allow ourselves to embrace all the aspects of physical life, including good and bad emotions.

It is possible and even necessary to reach a place where we can WITH DETACHMENT rise above people and situations that emotionally manipulate and repeatedly drain us.

But not all, or even the majority, of emotion is unconstructive.

Sharing emotion with those whom we love and wish to have close ties with is the very glue that holds us together, it is for emotion and feeling and caring that we have chosen to incarnate.

Without emotion we are machines and machines have no soul.

If emotion served no constructive or beneficial spiritual purpose to help us along on our development towards wisdom and ascension, we wouldn’t keep choosing to come back down to this material plane of existence.

We must learn for ourselves the energetic and karmic lessons that lie beneath our own emotions.

We must accept emotionality as the doorway to our true inner self, to the lifetimes of energetic information that we have stored within our subconscious mind.

Don’t you want this kind of spiritual self awareness for your own children? For if they can recognize and respect the value of emotion for their own self-development then, and only then, can they recognize the same for the feelings of others.

The resolution of conflicts, whether personal or global, lies in thought, yes, but moreso in the expression of emotion. For in expressing the energetic vibration of events we release them from burdening our future selves and our future generations, we negate their long-term karmic expression and make manifest their effects in the now.

Let yourself feel, express and learn from your emotions as you walk your path of personal and spiritual development.

Have the courtesy to extend this right to others without judgment.

No other seeker, no other non-seeker, is exactly where you are on your path and thus you can be ahead of them in some ways and still learn from them in others, just as they will learn from you.

Being a spectator (or watcher) in your life situations is the most spiritual approach, but allow that other you, the living and feeling you, to be a participant as well.

Allow the stream to flow from where and to where it might, but remember to dip your hand in that cool, running water.

Remember to respect that seemingly ethereal stream for its power and beauty so that you don’t drown in it.

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