station of nobility...written 2017
Working with primary school aged children from a low socioeconomic region in Western Australia for over 6 years, I have been witnessing a gradual but systematic decline in the value and respect of the station of the child, the station of parenting both mothering and fathering. The station of family has completely imploded and shattered beyond recognition in many homes.
-
During these 6 years I have observed Governments and institutions pulling and squeezing at every level of these grassroots people’s lives. Gradual decline in low cost housing availability resulting with families sliding into “coach surfing” at relative of friends’ homes; finally being homeless and forced into cars or onto the streets. Husbands and wives forced to split up so the young children and the mother can be taken into women’s refuges but husband and older children with nowhere to go but homelessness.
-
Many families now with both parents addicted to some form of pain avoidance medication such as substance or drug abuse, both illegal and prescription. Increasing at a very rapid rate is the addiction to online gambling as well as “gaming” addictions and pornography (both for parents and children). Rapid increase of children playing over 18 years of age violent computer “games” throughout all year levels. Workaholic behaviour is also on the increase with the over stretched mothers.
-
You also have a lot of parents attempting to hold their family together but with no skills as both parents were raised in full time day-care.
-
As consecutive Governments continue to believe in privatising the elderly and childcare and now motherhood has been their latest sell to a very struggling generation still believing the answers will come from some institutional pen mark on some piece of paper.
-
The effects of all these crumbled families are being played out in school rooms throughout our communities. Teachers, amazing teachers doing everything they can to assist the children to have at least a functioning healthy and supportive learning experience.
-
My role as mentor means I get to hear and see the effects of these crumbling, imploded family units and the effects this is having on the children first hand. I hear how parents are stretched to breaking points and still trying to go it alone full of shame and guilt. Tragic situations where there is no room for criticism, disapproval, judgement or blame.
-
As my daughter is working at the Baha’i World Centre, Haifa Israel, at present I was given the amazing blessing to be able to go and stay with her.
-
My wish and yearning was to be able to spend many hours walking and meditating in the stunning and awe inspiring Baha’i gardens on Mt Carmel Haifa and Bahji, Akko. To be able to be on the other side of the planet to view all my concerns and issues from a distance and attempt to find guidance to assist the children and their mothers and fathers and families to find pathways out of this endless spiraling down destructive trajectory.
-
A spiritual retreat while also serving and enjoying my daughters company was profoundly on offer with the added opportunities to spend many hours in prayer, reflection and pondering in the Shrines surrounded by those extraordinary gardens.
-
My wishes and dreams were exceeded at every level and the guidance was abundant. Overflowing insights to all my concerns were being laid out in front of me like fruit hanging on lush trees in an endless orchard.
-
At its core was the guidance to look within one’s self and find one’s own nobility. But what shocked me the most was where I found the main keys to this understanding and what old concepts I had to shake off and leave behind before I could seek the next level of understandings to these horrendous issues we are all being affected by one way or another.
-
Right in the middle of the Baha’i Administration Center on the side of the ancient Mt Carmel sits the Memorial Gardens. As I sat and walked and reflected and read profound sacred texts within these gardens it dawned on me that this critical central point, that all other profound aspects and parts radiate out from this central point are dependent on and succeed because of the condition and state of how we view, act and think about the station of the feminine, the station of women, the station of mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and children throughout all communities around the entire world.
-
To stand there and realise how some part of me had accepted the main stream society’s value of the equality of men and women as being enough and that others around the world just had to get to our level and all would be fine. No!
-
Without realising it and just coming to the awareness that those Memorial gardens were dedicated to some of the noblest figures in the history of the early years of the Baha’i Faith and they were mothers, or sisters, or wives, or daughters, or children shook me to my very bone.
-
How did I miss this critical reality? How had I settled for such a low level view of the importance of the station of the feminine?
-
This reality showed me if I had quietly accepted what the society around me had sold me at such a low level of value of the station of the feminine then the rest of that society had also bought into that paradigm. And all paradigms are meant to be shattered at some point in time.
-
Every other insight and guidance I was able to see and understand during my stay in Haifa was built on this new profound awareness. I had no idea how or what I was going to do when I returned but the way I now was looking at the reality had changed completely.
-
Shortly after my return to Perth Western Australia with all these new understandings and insights, plus 14,000 images of those majestic gardens and sacred places, I was taking part in a Skype study group which was exploring ways to support and accompany people as they work and serve within a community development setting and one of the readings was directed to the need of understand what paternalism was.
-
Again I found myself back in the same state I had found myself in the Memorial Gardens in Haifa and realising how I had also missed that the majority of women since the 60s had believed throwing out the feminine and embracing being paternalistic gave them equality with their male partners or work colleagues. No!
-
I had completely missed that the actions of others, both men and women which I had witnessed as unhealthy was the out of balance male role of paternalism. What is the negative out of balance feminine energy? What are the healthy balanced actions of a noble human being with both feminine and masculine selves developed?
-
Where do we seek role models and heroes that can guide us towards living such a new way of life? How do we inform these mums and dads that they are noble and have hidden within them immense capacities as yet unimagined?
-
How do you let families know the vision inside their own minds need to grow towards beauty and love so we can all step up and aspire to our own station of nobility and that families and men and women and children and the elderly are once again valued and sacrifices for the betterment of each other will change the downward trajectory of disconnection and destruction into a spiraling ascending powerhouse that humanity has not yet seen the likes of.
-
I have no answers past this point except a vision and an understanding of what is possible and the only other reality I know to be true is now I have to find all opportunities to raise this awareness and create spaces for conversations where we can all look within at our own understanding of our true capacity and nobility and what does a healthy masculine and feminine self look like?
-
How can we build families that are resilient and flourishing and the true station of the varied roles be understood in this new light of understanding?
-
These answers are not going to come from any Government or institution but only from social action at the grassroots of every community worldwide. All social realities that have been out grown by an ever advancing and maturing humanity have to grow up also and it has always been through social action at grassroots that the changes have happened.
station of nobility...written 2017
Working with primary school aged children from a low socioeconomic region in Western Australia for over 6 years, I have been witnessing a gradual but systematic decline in the value and respect of the station of the child, the station of parenting both mothering and fathering. The station of family has completely imploded and shattered beyond recognition in many homes.
-
During these 6 years I have observed Governments and institutions pulling and squeezing at every level of these grassroots people’s lives. Gradual decline in low cost housing availability resulting with families sliding into “coach surfing” at relative of friends’ homes; finally being homeless and forced into cars or onto the streets. Husbands and wives forced to split up so the young children and the mother can be taken into women’s refuges but husband and older children with nowhere to go but homelessness.
-
Many families now with both parents addicted to some form of pain avoidance medication such as substance or drug abuse, both illegal and prescription. Increasing at a very rapid rate is the addiction to online gambling as well as “gaming” addictions and pornography (both for parents and children). Rapid increase of children playing over 18 years of age violent computer “games” throughout all year levels. Workaholic behaviour is also on the increase with the over stretched mothers.
-
You also have a lot of parents attempting to hold their family together but with no skills as both parents were raised in full time day-care.
-
As consecutive Governments continue to believe in privatising the elderly and childcare and now motherhood has been their latest sell to a very struggling generation still believing the answers will come from some institutional pen mark on some piece of paper.
-
The effects of all these crumbled families are being played out in school rooms throughout our communities. Teachers, amazing teachers doing everything they can to assist the children to have at least a functioning healthy and supportive learning experience.
-
My role as mentor means I get to hear and see the effects of these crumbling, imploded family units and the effects this is having on the children first hand. I hear how parents are stretched to breaking points and still trying to go it alone full of shame and guilt. Tragic situations where there is no room for criticism, disapproval, judgement or blame.
-
As my daughter is working at the Baha’i World Centre, Haifa Israel, at present I was given the amazing blessing to be able to go and stay with her.
-
My wish and yearning was to be able to spend many hours walking and meditating in the stunning and awe inspiring Baha’i gardens on Mt Carmel Haifa and Bahji, Akko. To be able to be on the other side of the planet to view all my concerns and issues from a distance and attempt to find guidance to assist the children and their mothers and fathers and families to find pathways out of this endless spiraling down destructive trajectory.
-
A spiritual retreat while also serving and enjoying my daughters company was profoundly on offer with the added opportunities to spend many hours in prayer, reflection and pondering in the Shrines surrounded by those extraordinary gardens.
-
My wishes and dreams were exceeded at every level and the guidance was abundant. Overflowing insights to all my concerns were being laid out in front of me like fruit hanging on lush trees in an endless orchard.
-
At its core was the guidance to look within one’s self and find one’s own nobility. But what shocked me the most was where I found the main keys to this understanding and what old concepts I had to shake off and leave behind before I could seek the next level of understandings to these horrendous issues we are all being affected by one way or another.
-
Right in the middle of the Baha’i Administration Center on the side of the ancient Mt Carmel sits the Memorial Gardens. As I sat and walked and reflected and read profound sacred texts within these gardens it dawned on me that this critical central point, that all other profound aspects and parts radiate out from this central point are dependent on and succeed because of the condition and state of how we view, act and think about the station of the feminine, the station of women, the station of mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and children throughout all communities around the entire world.
-
To stand there and realise how some part of me had accepted the main stream society’s value of the equality of men and women as being enough and that others around the world just had to get to our level and all would be fine. No!
-
Without realising it and just coming to the awareness that those Memorial gardens were dedicated to some of the noblest figures in the history of the early years of the Baha’i Faith and they were mothers, or sisters, or wives, or daughters, or children shook me to my very bone.
-
How did I miss this critical reality? How had I settled for such a low level view of the importance of the station of the feminine?
-
This reality showed me if I had quietly accepted what the society around me had sold me at such a low level of value of the station of the feminine then the rest of that society had also bought into that paradigm. And all paradigms are meant to be shattered at some point in time.
-
Every other insight and guidance I was able to see and understand during my stay in Haifa was built on this new profound awareness. I had no idea how or what I was going to do when I returned but the way I now was looking at the reality had changed completely.
-
Shortly after my return to Perth Western Australia with all these new understandings and insights, plus 14,000 images of those majestic gardens and sacred places, I was taking part in a Skype study group which was exploring ways to support and accompany people as they work and serve within a community development setting and one of the readings was directed to the need of understand what paternalism was.
-
Again I found myself back in the same state I had found myself in the Memorial Gardens in Haifa and realising how I had also missed that the majority of women since the 60s had believed throwing out the feminine and embracing being paternalistic gave them equality with their male partners or work colleagues. No!
-
I had completely missed that the actions of others, both men and women which I had witnessed as unhealthy was the out of balance male role of paternalism. What is the negative out of balance feminine energy? What are the healthy balanced actions of a noble human being with both feminine and masculine selves developed?
-
Where do we seek role models and heroes that can guide us towards living such a new way of life? How do we inform these mums and dads that they are noble and have hidden within them immense capacities as yet unimagined?
-
How do you let families know the vision inside their own minds need to grow towards beauty and love so we can all step up and aspire to our own station of nobility and that families and men and women and children and the elderly are once again valued and sacrifices for the betterment of each other will change the downward trajectory of disconnection and destruction into a spiraling ascending powerhouse that humanity has not yet seen the likes of.
-
I have no answers past this point except a vision and an understanding of what is possible and the only other reality I know to be true is now I have to find all opportunities to raise this awareness and create spaces for conversations where we can all look within at our own understanding of our true capacity and nobility and what does a healthy masculine and feminine self look like?
-
How can we build families that are resilient and flourishing and the true station of the varied roles be understood in this new light of understanding?
-
These answers are not going to come from any Government or institution but only from social action at the grassroots of every community worldwide. All social realities that have been out grown by an ever advancing and maturing humanity have to grow up also and it has always been through social action at grassroots that the changes have happened.