Today’s youth are getting wrong messages about what it means to be free. These erroneous ideas spread on social media faster than a brush fire in Colorado. They convey ideas like, “Freedom is having unlimited choices and experiences… Happiness comes from getting everything you want… Change your appearance, change your life,” etc. These messages lead young people to pursue superficial, fleeting gratification. They also confine the youth evermore to their bubble of egotism and, by extension, their delusion. After all, reality is something we discover in relationship to other beings. The smartphone-algorithmic-echo chamber culture of life online only exacerbates this problem. It’s a prison the youth don’t realize they live in. They think a cell phone and wifi gives them wings. In many cases, it actually clips the wings they were already growing. In such a climate, the spiritual guidance of youth becomes a fundamental question we should all be asking.
They are in dire need of a spiritual education that explores who they really are, not what social media influencers and political agenda drivers want them to think they are. Mainstream society and education provide no help in this endeavor, for the same fallacies drive them. They are merely slaves to the same unexamined materialistic distortions. Religion can help in the form of youth groups. However, even those in many cases prove unsatisfying for families. Mainstream religion is often calcified by dogmas incapable of embracing the questions today’s youth grapple with.
Ok, but is This a Real Problem?
As someone who’s been working with youth for the past 20+ years, I can tell you the meaning crisis is real. I find it funny when armchair intellectuals argue with me claiming the youth are better off now than they’ve ever been. Such opinions are for those who live in abstractions and not in real life. From my vantage point in the captain’s chair of the classroom, I can tell you this is the most disoriented generation probably since post-WWI Germany. Their mental health statistics are alarming, something well documented in Jonathan Haidt’s landmark book about The Anxious Generation. Modern life tempts and confronts them with more choices than ever before. It continuously reinforces the message that their identity is synonymous with their body and feelings. In other words, with all that is temporary in life.
It seems to me the road to hell is paved by identifying with all the wrong things. Then, you become what Jesus called in Aramaic a “satana” (ܣܛܢܐ) – that is, a being divided against itself (as Dale Allen Hoffman explains).
The Spiritual Guidance of Youth Begins by Exploring True Identity
Every human is born with the question, “Who am I?” I see this seeking accelerate in children around the age of 9. Thenceforth, we go about our lives seeking all manner of ways to satisfy it. We pursue a career, a relationship, an accumulation of goods and property, etc. thinking these things will provide us satisfying answers. In all cases, we are seeking that identity in a role or form which changes.
The trouble with these pursuits is they are all, in one way or another, materially based, and matter is constantly in flux. For example, I may be a teacher now, but what happens when I retire? What about my marriage? Well, that too will one day end when one of us passes away. The same is true for all my stuff, and even my gender and race! This body is a shell, a set of clothes, or perhaps we could call it a vehicle in which my soul and spirit run around to experience the world. How do I know I won’t be reborn in a different set of clothes?
None of these embodied characteristics encompass who I am eternally. They are just changeable details. If I identify too strongly with them, one day I will suffer a meaning crisis when they change. The truth is, only a true picture of who we are can free us. If a bird stays stuck in a cage and can never fly, it will remain depressed for it cannot experience its true destiny. When we give youth the message that freedom is found in creating a perfect experience in earthly life, it’s like locking that bird in its cage. It also encourages them to remain dissatisfied, for utopia on earth is not possible. Neither is it desirable. This matrix was designed to give us at least a little dissatisfaction so we’d never stop seeking that which can only truly satisfy us: the eternal.
A Remedy for the Spiritual Guidance of Youth
Isn’t it time we address the spiritual guidance of youth by inviting them to explore who they are beyond what is temporal? In yester-age, most American youth went through confirmation at church. Other cultures across time and space have provided similar life trainings coupled with rites of passage at this age. These were spiritual initiations designed to set the youth up for physical, soulful, and spiritual health later in life. Today, fewer and fewer American adolescents go through anything like this anymore. We have left our congregations and synogogues, but nothing has taken their place.
As a remedy, we offer a weekly Teen Empowerment Class at Enkindle Academy, and we probably go much deeper than most confirmation classes. This is a tightly knit, warm, and welcoming group of peers with a loving guide who keeps them focused on the good, the beautiful, and the true. We do visioning exercises, keep a goal journal, do book studies, and work through the challenging and juicy topics that plague them. We do meditative exercises exploring our biographies and all the people and factors that shape who we are becoming. It’s not group therapy, but it is a place to explore who we truly are in a spiritual scientific way free from the distractions of mainstream life. Visit us at the following link to signup or get more info: https://enkindleacademy.com/live-teen-empowerment-class.
Ultimately, children need a spiritual education into the nature of the self and its relationship to the material world. This education must ask them to take an interest in the world and others. For, the irony is that the self is not confined to this body. In fact, most of it lives outside the body in the world around us. This body is like a node through which the self becomes conscious of itself. Thus, continually withdrawing inward will not give us the answer to the essential human question. For that, we need to become social in a meditative way.
Curating the Future
Imagine our society a decade or two into the future if the youth keep consuming today’s mainstream messaging. What will the world look like, and is that a society we want? Materialism has put us all in cages we have willingly accepted. Meanwhile, the bird inside is rebelling since birds wish to fly, and the meaning crisis is the canary in the coal mine.
This earth is a classroom to learn the only lesson that will ultimately liberate us: love. We learn these lessons in a temporary, constantly changing classroom that will ultimately perish in time. The love will remain. The love is our ticket to eternity. Love is a spiritual experience. It is what we encounter when our sense of self grows beyond our temporal identity.
Today’s youth are being taught to mis-take the classroom for the eternal essence, and that is not freedom. It is bondage. Let’s further the spiritual guidance of youth by silencing the distractions and giving them a helping hand. Let’s introduce them to the idea that something eternal and unchanging underlies all of creation, of which they are an inextricable part. Then, let’s invite to commune with that reality. The result will be that all the other things in their lives – their work, relationships, gender, etc. – will find their proper places.
How to Connect
Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9, encouraging students to deepen their reverence for nature and adopt sustainable, regenerative attitudes towards her. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing and language arts, and empowerment groups for teens.
Our Creative Writing Class meets weekly. We are always accepting new students, and enrollment is growing rapidly. When we have enough students, we open up new sections. Visit us at the following link to signup or get more info: https://enkindleacademy.com/live-creative-writing-for-youth
Signup for a free sample lesson now.
Parent Mentoring
We are considering offering parent education here at Enkindle Academy. This could take the form of live parent training groups, individual mentoring, short blocks on how to teach various subjects like math, history, language arts, etc. It could also take the form of families submitting student work for feedback on how their student is doing. We are open to whatever other suggestions you have. If this interests you as a homeschool parent, please Contact Us, and let us know your wishes.
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