Where has all our spirit gone?

According to modern day psychologists, we can measure the quantity to which our spirit is in crisis by the speed of our lives. If this is the case, we are suffering a serious spiritual crisis in the modern world.
Moreover, we are guiding our children into the crisis at earlier and earlier ages, and it should be little wonder to us that we see our young people turning to alcohol and drugs for escape or relief. It should be little wonder to us that we have one of the highest rates of teenage suicide in the world.

As educators, we have the choice of either be responsible for the situation or helping our students learn to cope with the insane pace of our lives and still live a human life.
Of course, we cannot go back to the conventional lifestyle of our parents, but we can help youngsters learn to step away from the madness, help them learn to find the "calm inner core of their universe" within themselves.

Our children are continuously trying to keep up with the increasing volume of information, on ‘face book’, ‘mxit’, ‘my space’ , continuously trying to stay abreast of the rapid changes in technology, iPods, palmtops and cellular communicators and forever trying to keep pace with the ever-accelerating expansion of knowledge and its applications can only lead them away from ourselves.

We should spend more time teaching wisdom and less time teaching information. Only by teaching young people to think, to take time to sift information, to decide how to let information affect their lives will we help them cope with the future. Most of the skills and facts we give them today will be obsolete within a few years. What we need to teach are techniques to manage information, to control the speed of life, to stay in touch with their humanity, to follow through with the belief of ‘Ubuntu’ despite the disrespect of human dignity around them. Otherwise, we are contributing to the growing crisis rather than helping to solve it.

What I find so interesting is how often we purposely hide our human spirit. As if it were a switch that could be flipped on or off. Off to hide the deep sorrow, the humility of disappointing ourselves, the anger of knowing that we are only one individual, and not the all mighty.

So I ask you to look at your world as it is; look closely and you will see your spirit, you will see it playing, loving and delighting you in the midst of your own

So look at life, look at the world as it is; look closely, and you will see God-- playing, loving, and delighting in the very midst of His own created Being. It takes but a single glimpse into the true nature of Reality -- and by Reality we mean both the spiritual fabric of the created material world, as well as the enduring Selfhood that remains forever untouched and aloof from our own personal psychologies and physiologies-- to dispel the illusions of the sorrowful man’s clouded and ignorant worldview. But a single glimpse … and our hearts and minds are forever free of pain and sorrow. But a single glimpse … and our entire being is permanently opened to a heavenly flood of blissful joy. But few know where to look; and it is very difficult to convince most men and women-- especially ‘religious’ men and women-- that the vision of God is already so near to their very own eyes.