Effective Consciousness and Self Development Doing What Feels Right
What will you be when you grow up? This is the question that many teachers and other adults ask children. Most answer enthusiastically that they want to become doctors, teachers, pilots or astronauts. When asked why, they answer, in one form or the other, because they want to make a difference.
Does this imply that electrical workers, plumbers, clerks, and all the mundane occupations that make up the society have no impact? Is that what we are teaching our children?
For a child to grow up capable of eventually attaining effective consciousness and self-development, they must be taught that nobility of an occupation is not confined merely to saving lives, going into space or making lots of money. Yet even adults subconsciously equate success with such accomplishments.
Don’t be misled into thinking that these are aspirations that should be discouraged. However, care must be taken when we talk to children about what they should do when they grow up.
So many of us have lived lives that are far removed from what we imagined they would be when we were young.
We thought we could do anything, accomplish everything, and go everywhere. When reality kicks in and we end up counting shirts in the backroom of a small department store in our hometown, we believe we had failed. And because we believe it, we do fail. This is the perception of self-development we have grown up with and the perception we are handing down to our children.
Yet an effective consciousness can be so easily developed by opening up the realms of possibility. Consider the following scenarios:
A child consistently breaks toys because he is interested in how it works. Of course, he is unable to put it back and is scolded for wasting a perfectly good toy. At the time he is dismantling the toy, he is exercising effective consciousness without the chains of conventional wisdom pulling him back. This does not mean that he should be allowed to become wantonly destructive, but with enough parental guidance, he will realize that there is as much fulfillment in putting it back as in dismantling it. He will also have learned that there are some things that cannot be out back.
The school expresses concern that the child is not performing as well as he should, and believes it is a behavioral problem. When investigated by a specialist, it turns out the child cannot read properly because he is dyslexic. Scolding and punishment by teachers for a perceived behavioral problem turns out to be a learning problem merely made the child withdraw more into himself, perceiving himself as a failure.
A widower with six children of school age has a unique coping mechanism. When going to the grocery, he allows the children to choose the food they want to buy provided they are not processed. Each child is allowed to choose one meal and all members of the family eat the same meal.
In each case, the child is allowed a certain degree of empowerment, and they begin to develop into a person they are most fit to evolve into. They may develop ambitions and aspirations that have more to do with material success, but they are comfortable in their decisions because they have developed the need within themselves.
Being rich, successful, or famous is not a bad thing if it is the right thing. Effectively conscious and self-developed people do what they feel is right and in a person with a healthy sense of self, what feels right is usually right on.