TOPICS: Mythical thinking lead to animal stories – the environmentalist movement and denial of self – you are spiritual beings – a universal teaching about spirituality that is beyond a single religion – teaching children about the psyche –
Question: This is a question about the education of children, about animals, like in stories and cartoons, and I was wondering how healthy that is and what could be the alternatives. What other tools could we use to teach children about animals.
Answer from ascended master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels:
It is truly a burden to my heart that so many children in today’s world are brought up with these images of animals that think and speak like human beings. This is something that has grown out of the old culture, in which people thought in a different way than they think today. There are some philosophers who have brought forth teachings about the evolution of human consciousness going through different stages, as Jesus a long time ago mentioned on the website.
The concept that animals can think and speak like humans springs from mythical thinking. And it was a valuable form of thinking hundreds or even thousands of years ago. But in today’s more rational age, it is certainly not constructive to continue this. However, the problem here is that you have a movement – often under one name called the environmentalist movement – who sees it as their goal to make human beings more sensitive to the environment. And thus, they see it as a positive thing that children are programmed to believe that animals think and act and feel like humans—and thus they should be protected as humans.
And while there is some validity to increasing the sensitivity to nature, it can very easily be taken into a denial of yourself as a human being, or rather as a spiritual being. So without going too deeply into a very big topic, what needs to be taught to children is, of course, that animals are not like humans, and that humans are not a higher form of animal. For human beings are fundamentally different from animals, in that they have a living spiritual lifestream that embodies in a physical body, whereas animals have a group soul and not an individual soul.
And thus, what needs to be brought forth is many different variations of the teachings that teach children – at an early age – that they are spiritual beings. But here you again run into the challenge from traditional religion, which will deny that you are a spiritual being. For they will say that you are a sinner or that you cannot attain a higher state of consciousness, such as the Christ consciousness.
Nevertheless it is possible to give children a universal teaching that is not necessarily religious or spiritual in appearance, but is focused on teaching children something about their own psyche. And thus, the middle way is to start by formulating a teaching that is very universal in nature, so that it does not clash against traditional educational philosophy—which in many countries will not allow the teaching of religious concepts. And it does not clash with traditional religious philosophy, because it actually teaches the child valuable life skills in terms of knowing how to deal with the child’s own psyche, how to master its emotions by mastering its thoughts.
This can be done, and there are educators in the world who have already started this process. And it can be done in such a way that hardly anyone can refuse it, because time is ripe for the awakening of an understanding in the population that if we teach children about how to read and write and how to use technology, such as computers, well should we not then teach them about the most important piece of “technology” that they use every day throughout their lives, namely the human psyche, the human mind.
For how can we claim that we are giving children a comprehensive education, if we teach them about the anatomy of the physical body without teaching them how to take command over their own minds and use them to create a positive life spiral, rather than becoming victims of circumstances, so that their lives degenerate into substance abuse or other forms of self-destructive behavior.
There are enough people in the educational field and in other areas of society who are ready to embrace such an approach, such a philosophy—if it is formulated in universal terms and not in any way tied to a specific organization or spiritual teaching.
Copyright © 2008 by Kim Michaels