HOW WE GROW UP & WHAT GOES WRONG
FROM HELPLESS INFANT TO INHIBITED ADULT - OUR JOURNEY
UNSTRUCTURED UPBRINGING - REWINDING NOT POSSIBLE
Had our past, childhood, been different, we would have gradually come to master our own emotions, just like walking and mathematics. But it did not happen that way, for most of us. Our parent’s negativity was their problem. They had less civilized grandparents and parents of their own, who used spanking, whipping, yelling, verbal abuses, and physical punishment on them, in abundance, to help them learn RIGHT from WRONG. This is what they internalized and now they apply the same techniques of upbringing on us. We would probably, do the same to our children, because we would not know, anything different or better. First sin, first clothing, the fig leaf caused it all. They put the most horrible emotion of shame into our heads for nothing. We reject our body. We reject our nakedness and bring on sufferings, anxiety, & diseases.
BEFORE BIRTH
Teenagers in school get hooked on birth control pills and start exploring sex, in an immature fashion. They drop out from school, take up minimum wage jobs to explore further. Their parents disown them, for doing their own thing. One mistake and the girls are pregnant. She never planned the child in the making, and now hesitates to abort it. The child inside her is unwelcome from the very beginning. The young, teen, would be mother, transfers the repressed feelings and tensions to the child, who is fully aware of light, sound, chemistry of mother. her attitudes towards the pregnancy herself & the unborn child.
AT BIRTH
Every child is born ecstatic. It is natural, the inner most core of every human being. Ecstasy of the heart and not of the mind or head! Each and every child is a bundle of joy.
AFTER BIRTH
Mother has to tolerate the child. He misses love from the very beginning. She can not give love, as much as, the child wants it or needs it, because she herself did not get love. She is unfulfilled, herself. Now she feels guilty, so she substitutes love with food. The child is forced to eat, even when he is not hungry. Things have gone grossly wrong again. Today’s child is brought up in day care units, by foster mothers, by step parents, with artificial love. The step parents definitely, abuse the child, while parent/mother is at work. Freedom is denied to the child, and gratification is delayed. When the child cries for milk, it is not given. The mother is possibly traveling, in a public transport bus or shopping, in the mall where she is feeling shy or shameful, to breast feed the child, in full view of the public. Delayed gratification causes repulsive and hateful feelings, to be developed in the child. This is the starting point of things, going wrong.
INFANT
Love is a necessity and taken for granted. The child demands love but has little comprehension of how to return it. All needs/wishes are only one cry away. They are instantly fulfilled by the co-creators. He is totally self absorbed, discovers his own toes, fingers, and being-sens. He has no fears, no doubts, and no beliefs yet, and no denial is experienced, yet. If he is left alone, he feels shocked and frightened, so he yells very loudly and clearly for attention, ever heard of a hoarse voiced baby, never!
BABY
Physical contact at this stage is very important. He needs to be hugged, cuddled, held, kissed, and he responds with coo’s and giggles. He quickly learns the art of blackmailing and uses good behavior to get more favors. Smiles and obedience are rewarded. Love is both given and received without question. Baby learns to sleep on schedule and wake up in comfort. He does not scream without reason, fright, or loneliness. At this moment, possessions bring joy; he clutches them tightly and calls them my own teddy bear and security blanket. He delights, in the use of his five senses. He symbolically chews and listens to every toy, he sees and touches.
CHILD
He acquires new skills at this stage. He can crawl and toddle. His new independence is intoxicating and therefore wants to explore new spaces, for which he is punished. He is taught hard discipline for running into dangers, not yet suspected. He can string up words and rejoice at the sounds, he can make and hear. Talking is fun and he enjoys being the center of attraction. He discards his toys and parental affection for the “Forbidden Eden Garden”. He can deduce and relate with his mental ability, thus he begins to dream of things, beyond tangible reach.
OBSESSIVE NO'S / DONT'S
Mom can I go outside in the beautiful sun! No! An obsessive NO! It is difficult to say yes, and if said yes, it is done reluctantly, making the child feel guilty. The child wants to sit and see the stars out side a little longer. NO! Come inside and go to sleep, when he is not feeling sleepy. When he sleeps and wants to dream a little longer in the early morning, mom says NO! Wake up; this is no time to sleep. Get ready and eat, but mom I am not hungry, NO! You have to eat right now. Total dictatorship, in the house and he is a slave. No wonder, they want to leave the house as soon as possible, when they grow up, to get to do, what they want to do?
FIRST TIME PARENT HANDICAP
The ignorant parents sow the seeds first and latter on repent, when the birds fly away prematurely, from their nests. For a child there is no difference between his body parts, a nose or his sex organs, they are just the same for him. But he is baffled when he is smacked on the hand every time he plays with or touches his sex organs. This happens many times in a day. It is re-enforced weeks after weeks. Enjoying your own body is denied. The message driven home is of SHAME. Sex is BAD, dirty. He is taught wrongly, that nudity is gross. The child starts hating itself. Gender is recognized through clothes. We over clothe our children and ourselves. Two small children, peep into a nudist camp, through a hole. They can not identify man and woman, because they are not wearing clothes. How tragic, that you do not see yourself nude in your own dreams, so much afraid of your own body. Latter on as an adults, you are expected to perform well, sexually in a marriage. It is not going to happen. Do you see what went wrong already?
KILLING THE INQUISITIVE DESIRE
If a child wants to open up and see how a clock works. – NO! his curiosity is killed instantaneously. An inquiring mind is destroyed, instead of destroying a worthless clock. Thomas Alva Edison, the greatest inventor was lucky to have an intelligent mother, who allowed him to destroy an old clock, to keep his curiosity alive, for his whole life. This mother also encouraged her dropout son to become a genius, by changing the message of negativity & expulsion on her sons note from the school teacher to a positive message of appreciation. NO! Don’t! These two words are very potent. The child is made to understand, that happiness is wrong and being miserable is right. We destroy the possibility of ecstasy, joyful, delightful, life. You see, how things went wrong, in our past.
TOO BUSY
Parents have no time to love, so they substitute love with pocket money and other cash incentives. The child learns to be greedy. Money respectability is symbolic. So much money in the bank! Paradoxically, the value of money comes, only, when you spend it, and not hoard it.
ADOLESCENT
This stage is critical. He is neither a child, anymore, nor an adult, yet. Lost in between! Love is needed and important again. Apprehensions turn him secretive. He fears loss of parental security, is surprised by the material world, and longs to cross over to adulthood, quickly. He is doubtful of future and unsure of strangers. He observes adults very keenly, thus internalizing their behavior, involuntarily and automatically. Growing up is tough and hurtful. He is alone and lost in a new environment, because his buddies have moved away. Therefore, he tends to cling to his past. Hence he invents disguises, to hide his real feelings. He puts on comical masks and artificial laughter to fool people. Inside he is very fragile, sentimental and often moves to tears, yet he builds a hard shell on the outside, and erects high walls around himself, to protect self, from the cruel world. See for yourself, what’s going wrong.
TEENAGER
Now begins the uphill journey to maturity. This is the time to gaze into the mirrors, for long hours, fixing up new styling of hairdos, admiring self and being conscious of a phenomenon called “self image”.
FIRED UP BY HORMONES
Love is given because it brings pleasure. Hormones in the body trigger sexuality. Teen’s youth is fired up, but brings doubts of self worth. Beware! This attribute is one of the most important ones. SELF–ESTEEM and SELF– CONFIDENCE are values that always determine success or failure in future life. Social interactions begin with friends and relationships blossom. Dates, germinate romance and infatuations. Our personal sense of dignity and importance is realized through the opposite sex. Rightly or wrongly we are also hit and wounded by the cupid’s arrow, called ‘first love’ and we believe it is the last thing on the planet. You are wrong again. The responsibility of life are, not a burden yet, on the teen. He is on the road to learning to respect elders and be patient instead of being rash and reckless. He hides under the veil of Vanity and seeks reassurance in flattery and admiration, but is often ridiculed and humiliated. Sometimes he could be, just brushed aside as if he did not exist. He cringes and prays for sympathy. Everything is falling apart and going wrong for him!! To retain a false image, of superiority he resorts to bullying, younger children. Some teens do get fixated on bullying, and decide to take it up, as a hobby first and eventually a profession. Present time is for fun. Past is behind and future is a mystery.
ADULT
Life is serious business and he has to face the reality for the first time. He has to comply with hundreds of society rules, regulations, restrictions and stick to schedules, strict ones of course. Hard work and meeting the deadlines, makes it very taxing and frustrating. Many people breakdown and give up under this pressure of work routines. Work, eat, play and serve by the clock.
MAD RAT RACE
He is fully caught up in the rat race, where survival is an obsession. Learning and competing are mandatory in this arena. No time to dream and no time to waste. More work, study and increased responsibility, comes early. He yearns to be, better and better everyday. Love means surrender of self, but it is wrongly interpreted and channeled as love for work. The adult forgets the true meaning of love and moves on to marriage, another play field of life.
THE SEARCH FOR PERFECT MATE
The woman is after the Seed & Security, The man is after Pleasure & physical intimacy.
He is aware of his primal urge to find a mate: The perfect mate to share his joys and sorrows. The search goes on, this one or that one. Vices and virtues of the potential mates are weighed in a balance and found lacking and wanting. This brings in anguish of emotional indecision. In the case of first love, every vice and short comings, are thrown to the winds. Decisions are painful and difficult, yet they are made in the favor of one, and the mating begins, mating of the hearts and minds.
Till now he was centered on self, now he has to expand, to relate to others, in his circle. They love, but do not know why? Love is a consuming flame. The adult is sexually uninhibited, but emotionally handicapped, fearful, and suspicious of the stranger, his new mate, because of his ‘skewed upbringing’ his unstructured past.
LOVE & SEX ARE SEPARATE PURSUITS
The adult is adept at executing duties of a fixed organizer, but totally lost in the mystery of his own existence, spheres of his life. Fall in love to rise out of the past. Desire for sexual expression is inborn in every child and the grown up child, our adult, suppressed or eliminated. It is supposed to be redirected and harnessed for creative forces with the help of will power. Sex transmutation can make mediocrity, into a genius. It is the safety valve to let off “excessive steam” and prevent the mind from going neurotic. It is also the ultimate, therapeutic agent for healing your troubled emotions. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact, that men and women freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge in it. It is very brave of them, but sad when it lands them into trouble, divorce, alimony & prison too?
LOOSE LOOSE SITUATION
Sex is a pretty costly affair. You decide to move in with a young beautiful girl, have sex and an off spring after wards. Soon you get fed up and decide to call it quits with this girl and fall in the trap of another beauty, to start it all over again. What is the price tag for such short flings? Alimony to your ex-girl friend and mother of your child, monthly child support payments for the kid till he grows up to be 18 years of age and fend for him self. All this could run into $ 100,000 on the lower side and $ 500,000 on the higher side. You are totally ruined, and keep paying up, for the sex you once had. See! How mature you have grown up to become and behave as one.
HEALING YOUR PAIN & FEARS
For years and decades, we keep on suppressing our pain, feelings, and build up walls around us, seeming to protect ourselves, by distancing from the world. We approach life very skeptically, fearfully, rarely initiating a contact. We hesitate to be, who we are. Then one day we fall in love afresh. Love makes us feel safe enough to open up. When we are in love, all the negative feelings of past float up? We become aware of our pain. It is time to THAW out all the repressed feelings. We have to take time and be in the moment to realize and release all of the past. But something again goes wrong. When all these feelings of our past come up, we wrongly interpret them as our partner’s criticism, blame, and rejection. You are never upset for the reasons, you think you are, beware! Pain from the past is projected into the future almost all of the time. Therefore, at this point we need to listen to our feelings with great compassion. We need to parent ourselves. Why are you so sad? If you do so, you will be miraculously healed.
THE CENTERED WAY
Subsequently, we respond to situations in a loving and respectful way. The centered way! The art of healing is to understand and accept our unresolved childhood feelings, by sharing it with our partners. In order to love others, we have to first fill up our own vessel with love. Therefore, love yourself, your body parts, and your soul first. Ironically the very act of avoiding our negative emotions, gives them the power to control our lives. A person who can not be stimulated to great heights by achievement of love is hopeless. Dead, although Alive!
Personally, we siblings were brought up with great love & care. Our parents sacrificed a lot to send us to the best schools and it paid off very well. We were additionally fortunate to interact with like minded relatives and grow up with enlightened cousins, friends & neighbors. I am full of love and genuinely in a bliss mode. My concept of marriage is as follows. Cosmic energy decides which two people will get together for a life time. IT instructs the male like this, “Mr. I have a complementing person who is emotionally handicapped and I would like you to take care of her for a lifetime.” IT also instructs the female like this, “Miss. I have a complementing person who is emotionally handicapped too and I would like you to take care of him for a lifetime.” Each one of us is challenged in multiple ways and must look after one another. When we do the exact opposite then cosmic energy is disturbed and gets out of balance and we get into greater trouble. As a kid I went to convent schools and picked up the Moral Science lessons very effectively. They had a deep impact on me & therefore I am what I am today. I am truly spiritual without any particular religion, in all my actions not merely words/lip service. Now it is time to give back to the world what I took from it. Hence this book of knowledge & a host of other books to follow, especially one on female emotions & Utopian health care management system.
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