Hunger -part ll

SO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON'T GET FED? When we are unable or unskilled at knowing how to feed this different kind of hunger, when we do not have the support, or resources to help us grow to point of exploring and figuring it out we suffer. I has been referred to by Shakti Gawain as a Spiritual Emergency. Falling together can feel an awful lot like falling apart.

Ultimately the human spirit will triumph, and growth, evolution, and expansion of out understanding or consciousness will occur, but in our tiny, impatient human time frame, this journey that has no directions, or road map and for some, no mentors can seem like and intolerable or nearly impossible interim to navigate. Depression seems a natural response.

With out a way to identify or feed this different kind of hunger, many will turn to food in an attempt to fill the aching void, the ever increasing hole inside them selves that no food will ever really satisfy, but the emotional sensation can be the same making it harder still to identify. Especially with no framework or vocabulary in place, and no references to this kind of growth in our popular culture. So we eat and eat because our hunger is real, then we perpetuate the problem by obsessing about our weight, our looks, and the unrealistic, unattainable, media induced standards we have set and perpetuated for ourselves and our children keeping us in a constant state of feeling inadequate and unable to ever measure up.

The result? A lot of overweight, or weight obsessed, and unhappy people, who seem emotionally detached and indifferent, and mentally preoccupied with seemingly trivial ideals. an entire culture or subculture of addicts, be it drugs, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, electronics, porn, or just plain rude and sarcastic behavior. Perhaps the greatest danger is the normalization of these behaviors, this particular state of existence. An entire culture or society so warped into their painkilling behaviors and lifestyles, that our children are growing up in a society incapable of true intimacy. Who suffers? We do, us, Everyone. The entire world suffers when so many souls are lost to oblivion, and our children are born and raised into this intolerable and dysfunctional way of living.

To those of use who have unknowingly helped shape this unfortunate society with its loose morals and lack of soul nourishing values, this situation is more tolerable. After all, we have been part of the problem, and who wants to wake up, own up and admit to that? But our children are suffering. To them this artificial satisfaction that we perpetuate is less tolerable, and unrealistic, and unachievable, they are starving. The result is an increase in childhood disorders from A. D. D., to depression, to cutting, to crime, to suicide. Our children are under so much pressure to conform to unrealistic, media induced standards of artificial normalcy that they are literally killing themselves trying to fit in with it. It is our fault, and all we can do is be gentle with ourselves and each other, and begin to make different choices as often as we can, supporting each other along the way.

( some sources: Harvard University Study: "Dying to Fit In", New age speakers Patricia Sun, Melody Beattie, Marianne Williamson, "Women who run with the Wolves" by Clarissa, Pinkola Estes, Living in the Light, by Shakti Gawain, and multiple digital media sources.)