Perspective Part 4: Perspectives of Change

There's always more than meets the eye. Have you noticed? Even when it comes to knowing your Self.

It seems I'm always meeting a new perspective, side, or understanding of my Self and my life. I've always known that I am a unique individual. I admit, too, I've not always known just how and what I was supposed to be doing with my Self - my individuality - let alone my life.

I will be achieving the big 4-0 this year, and I'm quite happy and excited to claim that I have my unique Self not only intact but fully realized for the developing spirit it is. It doesn't matter how long it took me to get to that point. It does matter that there was a good reason.

The reason?

So I could share my experiential opus with others. It is funny that those talents I loved to use best in my childhood, the ones that got set aside upon attaining adulthood, those have now resurfaced and come to fruition. Gee, sometimes I think I could have saved a lot of time and agony if I'd had a better system at my back all these years. Thinking that gets me nowhere, but I still entertain the idea for the fun of it. Truth is, I know I experienced every moment without the ease of fast forward because, and for the same reason, everyone around me was going through the same thing.

Why?

Because we needed to learn our life work very very well. Because our children are the ones who are supposed to have that encouraging, supportive system (we wish we had had) at their backs.

It's okay. I'm really not complaining. I have found my niche. Many others are finding similar niches. Thank the currents of nature, god, and all good things ... we're beginning to wake up!

I still contemplate it though. Consider this: Upon reflection, or hindsight, have you ever said to yourself, "I thought I knew everything then, but now I know I knew nothing at all?"

Have you come to that same conclusion more than once? Me too. When I slowed down enough to think about it, I wondered why is it so difficult to retain that important smidgeon of knowing? Why, in the middle of any given situation, is it so hard to remember that there's more out there than I can ever ... possibly ... hope ... to even come close ... to knowing it all and, maybe just maybe, this moment might be one of those moments that I should recall that little tidbit of intelligence sooner rather than later?

Then I came across my answer. Experiential learning and conscious awareness (or conscious choice) which translates into perspective. At any given moment I get to choose my perspective. I can choose to stretch myself so thin trying to learn everything, or I can choose to pull my energies in and focus on what I do best.

It is not so hard anymore. As a collective, we are beginning to leave the old way behind. The old way of putting a whole lot of effort into learning what it is we're "supposed" to learn. You know, those exte
al, peripheral, material things.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic are only the first neverending tier we are presented with as children. Next comes, history, social studies, and language arts. We cannot forget to cram in music, and choir, and science. Our young must have it all, all the time. They are little sponges, who don't know their own minds. We must dictate and choose for them.

This has been the conscious collective's perspective. But there are voices who are beginning to question it, and turn the tide. We are getting ready to leave it behind. We just need to ask more questions.

Ever wonder why so many of our youth have such a hard time choosing a career? Why is it so many of them struggle when it comes to navigating the world of jobs, money, relationships, and the politics of "how to get ahead" in life?

My humble (or not) opinion is that we've neglected the fact that humans are still animals, and we are "supposed to learn" how to navigate our inte
al life, too. Everything but everything has been focused on the exte
al factors. There has been no freedom of perspective. There has been very little allowance for experience.

Timmy doesn't want to play football. Timmy got hurt the last time you made him play football. Timmy trusts himself. His experience with football really did hurt. Timmy doesn't believe or understand why he has to play football in order to "grow up and be a man". Timmy sees and hears someone important telling him he's not trying hard enough, he doesn't know what it's really like. Timmy feels that he is letting that someone down. Timmy stops believing in himself. Timmy does what he is pushed into doing. Timmy starts quietly building his new experience; that of resentment, lack of Self confidence, and lack of Self trust. Now he doesn't believe that he knows what is best for himself.

Not a very pretty picture, yet too often true. Whether it is intentional or not is beside the point. Too many people are unaware of their manipulative, push, push, push behavior that gets them the response they perceive as being right. Too many people assume, "it was right for me, so it has to be right for you, too." Wrong.

Take an addictive personality. If that person reaches adulthood, believing like most young adults that they're unstoppable, and applies that young addictive personality to accomplishing school, a degree, a job, or starting a company ... well, no one thinks the worse of them. They are putting their addictive tendencies into productive work mode. All the better for society as a whole. If it's not broke, don't fix it, right?

But when the bright lights and lure of easy money get overwhelming or don't come so easily, and those addictive traits turn toward a substance more quick to satisfy, and the company or work goes broke and just goes away, people around the scene tend to ignore it. "He's just in a slump. It's just bad luck. Too bad, another victim of the economy ..."

So, the addictive personality feels right, feels justified. It's not their fault it's the world outside, and bad luck. They might look around and tell themselves, "see, no one is saying anything to me,... that I'm doing something wrong, so that means I'm right. I'm always right. No one has ever told me I'm wrong. And even if they did, they're wrong because I'm right."

What happened? That addictive personality was sent into society without guidance and a clear understanding of their Self. They never received congruent information about how they think, act, and react; about how they work inte
ally. We can identify these traits from early childhood, but usually they get smoothed over, excused, drugged and covered up, ignored, or hidden away out of shame.

Why not teach our children who they truly are, encourage them to embrace that person, develop that person to the best of their abilities and advantage? But no. For so long, everybody needed to be the same. Women need to look like Barbie. Men need to look like Ken. And both need to portray to the world that they are super in every way. Not just one or two unique, focused ways.

For so long, we perceived a necessity to override human nature, and try to create super-educated multi-taskers. What we actually were doing was sending our children out into this world without the tools they needed to succeed with awareness and full knowing of who they really are and what they are here to do. We sent them out into the world without their own trusted perspectives and experiences.

How can you deal with others when you don't know why you react the way you do? I will tell you how, you keep yourself convinced that you are right, maintain your Self defense, then stay true to the belief that it is the other person or persons who need to change. Right? Not so right.

And that's only one personality type. What about the meek, the compulsive, the manic depressives, the do-it-yourselfers ...? From childhood, they didn't get encouragement to utilize their traits to their advantage, to find a way to help others with their unique qualities. We funneled humanity through a system of mediocrity and acceptable parameters.

It's starting to change, but the how is a challenging web of fearful guesses and absolute certainties. What is the best and safest first step?

What if we start with ourselves? What if we each choose to change our perspective? What if we each start to look around and recognize that there is a place for each of us in this world that is productive, helpful, and needed. Unique even. Those addictive personalities make fabulous fitness coaches, or business tycoons. The meek can be wonderful providers of spiritual enrichment. Compulsive people can really get an idea rolling. Do-it-yourselfers are able to take the idea and run with it. When acknowledged, even manic depressives (or bipolars), can manage and put their mood swings to productive use. When their energy is high, they can do more than most others put together. When their moods are low, it is their time to rest and go within. Let them do so without judgment.

Our perspectives of what is expected and what to expect are skewed. We've simply been focused on control and directive, financial gain, and normalcy. We've focused on each one doing it all, instead of all working together so we can each enjoy doing what we love to do best.

Thank goodness the opinion is growing that spiritual gain is the gain for one, which is the gain for all, for we all are one. Longstanding religions tended to nix the first one: you. But, now many are embracing the truer truth; in order to change anything you must first change yourself. That starts with perspective.

This change is nothing less than a step in the right direction. That's why it feels so right for so many people. There are other areas, not just religion, that stick out like sore thumbs in society. Everyone knows we're doing education wrong, but nobody knows how or can agree what to change. Maybe we are not asking the right questions?

Why do we send our children to school to learn the exact same thing as every other child? For some eighteen years, we make them believe they are all the same. Six to eight hours a day with no time, no give, no room for individual recognition or development of unique personalities and skills. What's the point? Burying our future in boredom and mediocrity?

I know. We have to put them somewhere, so we can go to work and bring home the paycheck. It's all about the money and the toys.
I'm not sorry to say that is simply ugly.

What if all of us were to work more one on one? What if we made our kids, our real future, just as important as our work? What if we took our kids to work, and made them a part of our day two or three days a week? Talk about teach the world some patience.

Remember hearing the stories about "learning the family business?" There are a lot of people with a lot to give and teach, and there are a lot of other people who could use their knowledge, young and old alike. There are still many more who really need to learn patience, but that's another article.

What if we took the time to seek out an animal communicator to develop our child's love and natural skill with animals? What if we sought a biologist out to share their knowledge with our teenager's love of biology. Could we restart our education programs to allow specialists to teach twenty interested children their specialty for three or six months? Rather than have one person teach twenty or thirty students six topics that bore them silly for ten and a half months?

Our children are learning to read, write, and do math in kindergarten now. Why not aim them at their areas of interest before burning them out on history? It's history! Why make them learn two thousand years of it over a period of eighteen years? Why not let them enjoy right now with what actually interests them? And if they lose that interest, allow them to move onto their new interest? If they want to learn history, they can learn it voluntarily in college.

Personality traits and innate talents, like perspectives, exist for a reason. We need them. We need them for balance. This world has attained it's level of imbalance for one reason. We have chosen that it be this way. We've chosen manmade material success and lost our happiness through not perceiving our unique, individual, inner beauty.

If we change our perspective and allow our true nature to shine through from beginning to end, imagine what the world would achieve.

How do we change the majority's perspective? We don't. We change ourselves. We change how we value others into how we want to be valued by them.

That's why things happened in my life the way they have. Since figuring that out, I have applied and offered my experiential knowledge to others. The results? The lucky ducks are getting the fast forward I was looking for! They are gaining all the insights it took me forty years to gather in a matter of months! No fair! But, oh! What the world will be like for these new generations ...

Copyright © 2009 Rebecca Halsteadnwww.ThinkItOut.net
All rights reserved