Reviewing the state of being human means allowing ourselves to look directly at the fact that we have three major bodily survival processes to our species.
They are:
1.) Intake/output (food / water),
2.) Breathing, and
3.) Sex, none of which we have been highly educated on throughout our present evolution.
Today there is research and knowledge that helps us know how much we still need to know.
We do not have a focus on foods and their nutritional value and resources. There is a constant emphasis on weight, being thin and fitting a social size, instead of health as the focus. So the marketplace for an adult is a huge selection of books of perspectives on how to be thin. Facts about the body's needs of nutrition were not there when our major growth and body development from birth through childhood was happening. Parents ate whatever ethnic food conditioning they had or what they could afford.
Water. We know so little about how vital water is to us that we are slowly but surely destroying its availability. Did anyone tell you when growing up that your physical body consists of over 70% water? That you need to keep hydrated? Water was not determined by amount, but by demand, and if you had been drinking other liquids, then chances are you did not know your body was dehydrated! Liquid was the thing, to drink coffee, pop, anything but water! The fact is, many of those liquids create dehydration. Water is what the body needs. Good water, clean water, drinkable water, and lots of it.
Breath is yet another ignorance we have socially. We pollute our air and atmosphere due to this ignorance. Breath is not a choice we make, pollution is. And when we have depleted the benefits in the air, we seem perplexed and puzzled. Then we do not connect our weak immune systems as having anything to do with air.
We need more understanding and knowledge on how to breathe correctly. Research shows children stop breathing correctly for health between five months to four years of age. Our population stopped breathing for health and body needs by four years old! Think about this. All physical and mental development depends on correct breathing.
Our most powerful time of development is from conception to nine years old. Biology books may not have caught up with the outcome of research of the cells, but our brain has been programmed by our environment, not our genes, and that determines how we will live the rest of our lives. The fact that brain neurons change after nine years old is not likely in our present system of education and lifestyle that is ruled mostly by media and social level standardization. So the majority of the world at large is still in the mindset they were in at age nine!
Breathing like a newborn is abdominal breathing, and allowing the entire respiratory system to work, even the lower lobes of the lungs. Shallow breathing comes from fear and early childhood anxiety. Early physical activity where deep breathing is accomplished is good. Yet most children today are held to sedentary lifestyles. Few chores or responsibility for family needs and living conditions are shared with them. Early understanding was achieved by earlier and healthier generations through family bonding and being involved activity.
Sound and practical psychology are grounded on a person feeling capable and educated. Babies and toddlers are like mocking birds - they imitate the people who make up their immediate influence and daily range of bonding. If we want them to be responsible teenagers and have a full role in family benefits and income, then it has to happen at an early age.
Children want to do what you do. They want to clean, cook, garden and work. So when you treat them like they are not capable, do not expect there is a switch that turns on when they are of whatever age you think they should kick in and do their part! It happens in the beginning.
Parents who work outside the home and the children who stay home have a disadvantage. So whoever is doing the home care needs to include and teach them daily. Chores and routines are grounding and assist in providing stability for children. Attention spans will be short if you are not creative and show excitement and joy of your work and service.
Children in rural communities have a greater sense of what it takes to live than urban community children. There is an exception if parents have a better focus on early childhood education. Home schooled children have a better and more grounded level of education than institutionally taught children. And a greater number of them maintain higher scores in college entrance testing. Why, you ask? It is due to living is learning and home schooled children learn as life unfolds. Basic educational needs such as numbers, letters, math, spelling, sciences, etc. are part of everyday ordinary living. These skills are mastered by living them, seeing them, and the manner of how they are applied during the course of a day of living.
Institutionalized learning is taking children out of their normal, hopefully home-safe, living activities and it makes education a chore and an activity outside the ordinary state of life. Children use their survival codes to deal with each other. The emotional field of dealing with an unfamiliar environment causes children to be unkind and more challenging to each other. Flight or fight instincts prevail more than a desire to learn educational basics. I think sending a young child off to such an environment is one of the cruelest things we do today. And obviously it is not working! Look at the results: drugs, premature parenting or conceptions, anger, and loss of communication with family.
So inevitably, the young person's environmental challenges create emotional reactions of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, insecurity and abandonment. So breathing follows. The breath of survival code is shallow and brief or a non-breath state, all unhealthy. The brain, as well as every cell in our body, shifts to flight or fight mode, hormonal balance is shifted, and then we alter our state of evolution.
Teaching people to breathe as adults is a lucrative business and health care must! Stress release practices are all based on breath. Save your money on the massage and get a Breath Therapist, you will live longer and healthier. All good things in life come with good breathing. Mindsets and outcomes to our activities are all breath related. Science is just on the brink of releasing the research that they have on the powerful importance to correct breathing.
Our societies and religious influences are lacking a sound perspective to the importance of sexual evolution as well. An uncomfortable subject to most people, I am always amazed even at this age of sixty-four years, how ignorant the mass is regarding the importance of sexual relations to us as beings. Yet it is the most powerful experience we have in life. With the emotional extreme that is put on it and all the rules and restrictions around it, we seem to forget it is the very nature of our existence. And it is the highest experience to being Co-Creators to the One That Is In All Things/God or whatever Sacred Name you use.
Sexuality is the very base of our life source. It is the spiritual fire that is the source of our physical existence. The effects our hormonal balance triggers are to maintain youthful and life-sustaining forces. Sexual activity can improve our aging outcome. If women find their sex drive and their activity dwindling after menopause, they age much faster. Instead of exploring it from a more mature and exciting viewpoint and activity, they withdraw. This is more of a social standard of belief. Being beyond child conception can be a more liberating time if you are exploring sex as the fires of creativity and pleasure! There is a whole chemistry here that I will not go into at this time, but it is the very essence of vitality and longevity. Creativity is enhanced with sexual activity. There is a personal level of need that is unique to each of us, some more, some less. And I am not referring to sleaze and abuse here, of these parts of our nature.
Sexual knowledge is still pretty much held to biological terms for most, unless you have explored Tantric Yoga practices of this life force. And that is exactly what it is, life force, to explore in a caring and loving manner, a giving and a taking of pleasure and inner exploration.
Today we see more of our lower animal and aggressive natures being set off with this powerful life force. We appeal to the weaker and less knowledgeable part of sex appeal. Sex is first triggered in our minds and reactionary processes which brings us to the physical climaxing that is the enviable goal of sexual activity. Thus, we can trip through our own fantasy and manipulate our own pleasure by masturbating, an exercise totally stimulated by thought and mind. Ads and media play with this natural base of operations by using sexually seducing models and suggestive reflections to stimulate product interest. It works; statistics prove it through sales reports! So a connection to all material products or services we use in our daily life is promoted by stimulating our interests in sexual expression. It often is done tastefully and there are some that are exploiting as well.
The point is that sex is a vital part of life, and it is the least taught or known wisdom. We have extreme severities, religious celibacy, sexual rapes and exploitation. The fact that there are such extremes with the subject makes no one comfortable with it generally. Children do not get early sexual education; is this in hope of avoiding interest? Well, that may sound ridiculous, but that is the plan in most instances! Parents do not know how to go about sex education, and they usually do it in a clinical sense and the young therefore realize they are not tuned in or don't have a clue! They are not willing to consider the children know something, in as much as they know they were born. So the drama goes.
Sex is a gift of life and pleasure. For us to approach it as a means of being truly caring and loving is a good base of practice, not as a duty, or service expected, nor punishable if not complying. Female suppression and male dominance roles do not make this the way Nature works it. Religious regulation is not working well and guilt-ridden teachings do not help an already failing system to regroup.
In my life and observing the ways of being human, I have come to see something I want to share. There is no need for you to agree, just think on it. We have a male dominated society almost throughout the world. So sex is harsh and restrictive. Obedience of the female and subservient, submissive behavior is asked or demanded from woman. Sex is her duty to her mate, and temptation her sin. Pretty grim stuff. She is asked to conceal her body as man cannot control himself, or handle the temptation. Man's sin or woman's? Someone is to blame and something is wrong, is what this all sounds like. So sex is going through some kind of abusive history.
Women who use this for their own agendas are placing themselves in a game of male aggressive behavior. Soon the psychological process creates a painful inner reaction for both man and woman. Then sex becomes the battleground and emotional anger and abuse prevails; just look around you.
In my life I have studied the Goddess teachings of many cultures. Also Ancient civilizations where woman was recognized for her gifts of beauty and love-making. She was an agent of caring and creativity. A life giver and Mother. Matriarchal civilizations were better balanced and men were honored more in them than women in patriarchal societies.
No doubt about it, gender differences are biological and chemistry based, but our sexual natures blend in the making of love, versus having sex. A man can naturally have sex without emotional connections, just pure sex drive and it's done. Woman brings more to it emotionally. Her hormonal base gives off a chemistry that directs this, it is called oxytocin and she cannot not personalize her partners. She chooses to be alluring and sublime and build to a thunder and plateau of sexual fire and breath. Pleasure is her goal, for herself and partner. To act out her fantasy of beauty and dance, her energy field feeds this to her partner. She draws forth passion and climax and the renewal of life forces are kindled. Man can accompany her or just exist within the dance. Either way she exposes herself and gives of herself from an inner place. If man is touched by it, he is moved to emotional connections of his own. So much for sin and punishment. What is the religious fear of sex? A given of such magnitude can only be such from Creator. We co-create with sexual pleasuring. We bring forth the fire of the Kundalini or Creation Fires in our sexual joining. The divine trine, Father, Mother, Child, all this and then some is sexual exchange of pleasure, nurturing, and healing. Only divine force can give this.
So as we look at all the "crazies" we do with the most powerful of all life-giving source, is there no wonder we are bringing ourselves to the door of extinction if we do not reconsider our priorities intelligently? If Life is a cycle, and in the cycle is a cell of life, can we turn this one around? I believe, yes we can.
And I believe enough of us are asking the questions that make for higher thinking. And children of God are maturing and growing up...to be....?
Sexuality is all about how we believe and what our mind set and perception are. It will only be as we make it. We have seen what guilt, shame, abuse and denials do. Let's take the position and act accordingly, let's truly be God's children. Let's look at these three sources of life truly as our keeping. What's your action plan?
By Parisha Taylor
Grandmother Parisha, an Elder and Peace Keeper of the Eastern Cherokee tradition, teaches the path to health, wealth and happiness.
Original content at: Parisha Taylor [http://parishataylor.com]
