A little girl innocently walks up to a man sitting quietly on a bench in the park as she has chased a butterfly that landed next to him and she asks him if he noticed it too. But chasing behind her is her mother who, after a sheepish smile to the man takes the little girl’s hand and walks away with her, whispering that it was not safe to do what she did because that man is a stranger and “We don’t know him, so he could be dangerous,” asking her to never do that again.
I’m sure all of us can relate in some way to the above example, either from within our own family experiences or observed elsewhere. Understanding how the current state of humanity, with all its violence and stories of abuse on all levels could lead to this approach of avoiding interaction with strangers for our children and ourselves as adults, I feel that it has actually led to more separation in society and that we have traded connection for ‘security.’ But at what cost, and are we really any safer, or have we isolated ourselves from making connections with other people based on some belief and out of fear that everyone we previously did not know is a potential threat to our safety? That sure doesn’t feel like someone who is ‘secure’ to me, but actually very insecure and indeed even living in a state of anxiousness.
Moving back to the original example of the child approaching the ‘stranger’ in the first paragraph. It is this gorgeous openness and willingness to connect with others in a tender way that is so innate in children that we are threatening when we impose an image of anyone outside our family as a possible danger to us. Imagine the difference it would have made for that man sitting on the bench if he would have been able to share that magic moment with the little girl of a butterfly landing right next to him, feeling safe enough himself to do so, a reflection of his own knowingness that the ‘stranger’ was not a threat, instead of what transpired above, leaving the gentleman wondering, “Do I really look that scary?” or “I wonder what’s wrong with me that the mother felt to rush her daughter away from me like that?”
There have been countless times where I have struck up a conversation with one of these ‘strangers’ at the local tea shop, in the grocery store, or even in the lobby at the garage waiting for my car to be fixed and have experienced some really touching and expansive conversations that left me feeling so much more connected to people and trusting that at our core we all have so much love to be shared with each other when we let down our guards and allow ourselves to feel it.
These interactions have reminded me time and again, no matter what area of the U.S. or other country I have been in, that we are truly all the same divine beings and even though there are people out there that could be dangerous because they have deviated from their true nature, to assume that everyone we don’t know falls into that category is holding us back from evolving as a humanity by cutting the connections and growth there on offer.
By Michael Goodhart, Aircraft Technician, B.A. Psychology, Lover of Nature and being playful with life, North Carolina, USA
Related Reading:
Every Move Matters
The Magic of Childhood Explored
Crying out for connection: technology and us
Words on Serge Benhayon 
In the current ‘canary’-pandemic as it could be known, is it taking advantage of those of us who do not want to understand the bigger picture, so it is like we are kept in the dark, like canaries were last century to alert miners to impending danger? At the moment the whole world is on edge so it is amazing to walk through the super markets and connect with others with a simple smile and a Loving look. Maybe being light hearted could relieve the pressure of isolation at present?
Considering the bigger picture and when we look at the facts that hundred of thousands die globally each year from suicide, with millions impacted by domestic violence, have we stopped to consider the impact of isolation and our lack of true connection with others, on such things as suicide and domestic violence rates?
When we are open to everyone we drop the rejection and self-worth issues we can carry through life because of what has been projected on us.
We all feel whether we can trust someone or cannot, the openess we had as a child is still there if we are willing to leave behind what we have been taught and or have experienced in the past. The ability to connect with others is innate,we cannot live without each other and it is a lie that this should be limited, as in only friends, family members or people we know well.
The truth is that we know everybody intimately because we are the One United Body of God, we are the inside and outside of everything.
We are a human race who find solace in connecting with everyone we meet some may becomes friends and others we can spend less time with but we do feel a connection with everyone we encounter.
Yes, by acting so protective we create a society where there is lack of connection and from this lack of connection people can start to feel so empty and lonely that they indeed can start to do the things we are trying to protect ourselves from at the beginning. I feel that when we would open up more and meet other people and truly talk with them that there will be more love and warmth so people don’t feel so empty and they won’t go to the extremes so easily. It only has to be one person who truly sees you and connects with you that can change everything.
Absolutely Lieke, and the Harmonious way of living you have shared would do away with people committing acts that serve no one.
Is the fact we see a person we don’t know as a stranger a simple reflection that we are living as a stranger to our true essence?
In trusting our clairsentience – our capacity to simply feel and read what is really going on, we save ourselves a lot of complications.
Absolutely Henrietta, being understanding of our Clairsentience would it be our first sense or go to so we understand others more deeply?
Henrietta it occurs to me if as children we were encouraged to trust our clairsentience then we would naturally keep our own knowing of who to trust and know when someone is not in connection with the love within. Its such a natural part of ourselves but this example shows how we tell our children in so many ways not to trust their own wisdom.
When we only use our eyes we are looking out and not receiving the energy first and when we feel first our eyes can then confirm what we have already felt through our observation with our all our senses.
We are made to connect to each other. I used to address people in the shops by their name tag and not only did I see them change but I also felt lighter. I stopped doing this and recently returned to it. Connection is healthy for us and does make a difference.
Absolutely Leigh, and when we walk into a place and announce their name, because we have connected and can remember who they are, you can feel them light up!
This is so true. I used to work in a very busy motorway M & S store and on a busy day we could get five hundred people come through our tills. One particular day stood out to me because the majority of people were moaning because the lines were so long and didn’t want to engage with the staff but one guy actually said my name and it stood out. I remember being snapped out of something just by the mention of my name, no longer was I invisible or just a till worker who hadn’t got the time to talk to anyone. That moment has stayed with me as it was so unexpected. It’s very powerful when we address people by their name.
Absoulutely Julie, we are so much more than meets the eye and when we are True to who we are with our name being shared with Love this expands our awareness and deepens our relationship with Heaven.
I recently had an experience where I helped someone I just met connecting her with people I know that can support her with her career. She messaged me and said thanks for help considering she was basically a stranger. I replied to say she didn’t feel like a stranger at all. As I recently heard the Dalai Lama say we are 7 billion people, different colour, different religion, different country but same.
What you have shared Vicky is a beautiful reminder that we are all the same no matter what the outer packaging may look like.
‘Security’ is not pulling up the drawbridge and locking the door. When we are open and meet each other as who we are we are able to feel and develop a deeper connection with each other.
Media and TV make it look like there are ‘dangerous strangers’ everywhere. But in truth there are many many many lovely people out there. And when we start again to trust our sixth sense we know exactly when it is dangerous and when not.
‘Strangers’ are simply people we have not met yet. We all have the innate ability to sense whether someone is potentially harmful or safe simply because we are born with the clarity of being able to discern what is love and what is not. The problem lies in the fact that once we get hurt by one person, we tar all others with the same brush and thus see life through the lens of our own hurt. This is what prevents us from connecting deeply with one another – we simply don’t want to get hurt. Ironically, it is our protection that hurts us more deeply than anything else ever could. We are hurting ourselves.
One of our not so obvious current evils of our time is disguised in the fact we are encouraged to be suspicious of everyone and everything.
Spot on Anon – for when we have mistrust, then there is fear, and with fear people are more easily controlled by the unseen forces.
Knowing that very young children can feel energy maybe we should trust them more with strangers. After all a young one who is encouraged by a parent to hug a relative, despite her reluctance to do so, is demonstrating the fact they are totally aware of energy. To then usher that same young one away from a stranger makes no sense to me, especially if a parent is close by. The parent could then also interact with said stranger. I’ve had some lovely conversations with so called strangers.
We know from statistics there is more danger in the home than out on the streets.
Super thank you Michael. I love your question about whether we have traded connection for ‘security’ and the fact that ‘security’ is actually really fear based and contracts us from one another. The more I connect to people, the more I realise how much I love humanity and can feel the purity and sweetness of all of us at heart.
Spot on Matilda with what Michael has exposed in this blog – connection has been traded away for security and yet connection is our foundation.
With the understanding that everything that is every-thing is energy, maybe, we could start to deepen our openness, to exploring the relationship children have with energy, and let them find the truth, and share with us.
We live in a world that promotes security, but what does this really mean? And does it really even exist? What if the only real security is to invest in our connection with Soul?
So many of us seek ‘security’ in relationships but when we do this all it secures is the fact that we won’t evolve. The need for security comes from aligning to an energy that isn’t true and all of the things that we do in order to maintain a feeling of security are also not true. True security is found in our ability to abandon ourselves to the processes of life that are always in place to support us beautifully, even when things appear to be getting ugly.
When we come from fear it means we have already disconnected from our innate and natural source and knowing. It is the disconnection that is our dis-advantage and hence we are at the mercy of many things. Once connected the natural knowing and intelligence is there in abundance.
‘When we come from fear it means we have already disconnected from our innate and natural source and knowing.’ A lot is said here, and highlights the importance of being with and aligned to our innate essence.
We all hold an innate sense of knowing of who actually feels safe and who does not. It is this that needs to be honoured and encouraged in adults and children alike so we stay connected with our feelings and looking after ourselves as much as everyone else.
If the religions of the world made love their foundation rather than fear, beliefs about good and evil, and a judgemental God, the limiting beliefs and sense of us and them would be dismantled. Children would be encouraged to grow into open loving adults, to become parents free of fear.
The wonder and gorgeousness that young children offer to all those around them is pure gold. To have that denied out of fear of the corruption of it, already corrupts it.
I remember feeling really sad many years ago when my male friend was telling the class that he notices women cross the street away from him because he is a man. He was a very respectful man and understood why they did so. We so judge another and also we get judged when we trust another and it doesn’t go well for some reason. We’re not taught to discern what is danger or not and have to brand all men as dangerous or all strangers as dangerous.
Your blog and the conversation got me reflecting on the many ways we attribute stranger danger – different families, different suburbs, body sizes and shapes, religions, nationalities, skin colour, clothing, tattoos… the list could go on and on, we seem to be masters at division and holding fear of one another.
We are the United Consciousness of God, one mass of people, one collective of God and yet, as you say Melinda “we seem to be masters at division and holding fear of one another”. How far from the truth can you get? Let me answer that – about as far as we’re living now. No actually, hold that thought, the terrifying thing is, we could get even further from the truth and what’s even more terrifying is that we’re actually going there.
Basically for many of us, if someone doesn’t ‘look like we do’ then we’re automatically suspicious of them. What a terrible way to live. No recognition of our universal collectiveness at all just pure illusion of separatism.
It is interesting when we learn to reconnect to our self and be as open as a child, it becomes easy to feel the energy that is coming from someone that has ill intentions. As you have said, Melinda, we have all had many ways instilled in us, and when we let go of these values and briefs, we return to the child’s open connection to the world.
Steve you have reminded me of the simplicity of our essence, it’s naturally love and feels everything, once we separate from that in come the beliefs and ideals and it’s utter havoc because the mind is now loveless and what it can think is ultimately going to be individualistic and harmful – no matter how good it might seem, because it won’t be the quality and intelligence of love.
Yesterday on a London tube I had a few minutes of an exchange with a very sweet four year old boy who loved his trains, had the stranger danger practice come into play we would have missed out on this very open interaction. When it came to his stop his dad had to lovingly guide him off the tube because he just wanted to sit and chat to me, he hadn’t finished talking and by all accounts had a lot to share.
There is so much magic on offer in our every day interactions. I know I still gloss over many and reading this inspires me to stay alert.
Children can feel who they should and shouldn’t avoid, and this is the conversation we need to be having with our children regardless if it is a stranger to the family or a family member. How many of us have had bad vibes from a relative who we didn’t want to hug unless we were forced to?
A great point Julie… children are really astute and absolutely know who feels safe to approach and who does not; we need to give them the space to openly communicate where they feel to, otherwise we are capping their expression and trust in themselves making them override what is naturally felt.
I agree Julie but currently our beliefs simply won’t allow this to happen. How many mothers and fathers know that their kids are being abused by someone from within their own family but due to their own beliefs, fears, inadequacies and needs are simply not able to speak up? How many women know that their children are being abused but due to beliefs about ‘loyalty, duty and the ‘power’ of men’ say nothing? Currently we are riddled with beliefs and it will take some while before we get shot of enough beliefs that we are able to act independently of them.
We are born with the ability to feel everything and the outside world slowly numbs our keen Spider-Man senses with their beliefs and ideals. Even through all these layers, we can still occasionally feel things that are not right. Be it friend, family or a stranger, we never lose our ability, we just learn to ignore what it is telling us!
Very true Steve. We all have the ability to discern energy, we are just often more mastered in ignoring it!
This is music to my ears someone exposing the current need to protect.
This current need to protect like you say Micheal is causing more separation, it quite literally is horrendous how the fear has spread. Yes we always need to discern but as a nation we just project our insecurities onto often innocent others.
A friend of mine recently told me that her husband who was muslim asked her to carry his backpack whist out in London as he could feel the false projection from others.
When we live from fear everyone suffers.
‘I feel that it has actually led to more separation in society and that we have traded connection for ‘security.’ This is a great observation, Michael. Imagine if we allowed ourselves to connect to everyone in the way the little girl did with the man, how the whole of society would change.
Yes. There is no doubt that the world will change beyond recognition when we let down our guards and allow ourselves to love each other as we naturally deeply do.
In any event we need to discern as well and teaching others to clearly discern what feels okay and also what doesn’t feel okay. If I was taught how to truly discern when I was younger, and to trust and act on what I felt to be true within I know a lot would have been very different for me in a positive way.
It is scary to think how much we have bastardized what could have potentially taught many children & adults exactly how to gauge who’s in front of them and whether they’re dangerous or not. What if the saying actually meant – when you see something strange, something that is not natural then you’re in danger. Rather than making it as if everything that is unknown is dangerous. We should never forget that the length of time you have known a person means nothing in relation to the integrity they could hold.
Spot on Viktoria – It is the energy of the person that we need to learn to read and connect to and not what they say or what they are doing.
Yes we create our community and society all by our own doings, as one person starts with it the person who experienced it is likely to copy the behaviour and do it to another. This is how it goes on. Of course it is not a set way of how it always goes but you have to have a strong foundation within yourself to not get hurt in these kind of situations and not shut down.
Like monkeys copying each other…. but that also means we can do it in reverse and bring a more true way of living for others to copy too!
It feels as though we are too willing to put labels on another rather than using our innate sense of knowing. If we lived this ourselves then children would know to connect to their own inner knowingness that would be far more empowering than filling them with ideas and beliefs that anyone we don’t know is likely to be a threat. They would feel a greater depth of trust in themselves and walk through life knowing from their own sixth sense who to trust and who not to trust.
Being open in our bodies to feel and share with another is so natural that young children do this all the time and as you have shared Michael it is so simple when we strike a conversation with another to feel the inner connection we all equally have.
The word ‘stranger’ is a great example of the power of words, in that it conjures up a feeling of unsettlement and encourages us to be en garde but if we were to replace the word ‘stranger’ with ‘God’, (knowing that we are all aspects of God in human form) then people that we didn’t already know wouldn’t seem so creepy.
Excellent point Alexis. Words carry a vibration for sure, and if we accepted that we are all aspects of God’s expression, it would change everything. Your comment also inspired me to actually look up the definition of strange (the basis of the word stranger) which I found as: : ‘unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.’ – Now that is quite interesting, that we automatically assume that someone we don’t personally know is unusual, unsettling or difficult to understand. This obviously can create a self-fulfilling prophecy when we load our relationships with such negativity before they have even begun!
Two words I’ve never accepted or rarely used: ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner’. Others include ‘immigrant’ ‘refugee’ when used to classify people as different, outsiders, kept at arms length or outside borders, rather than embraced equally as the God we all are.
Well said Kehinde, these are all words to enforce separation though of course it is all in the way that they are used and the tone or vibration of the person speaking too.
Everything written here can be related to elders and treatment they receive from family members and people in positions of trust. It may not be physical or sexual abuse, often what we see framed in surface ‘niceness’ hides the truth: breach of trust, emotional abuse and neglect of parents and other elders vulnerable and unable to care for themselves. We learn most people do not know how to love themselves, let alone another human being, related to them or not. Self abuse makes it more likely, we will abuse another.
‘Self abuse makes it more likely, we will abuse another’, Kehinde I would go one step further and say that self abuse guarantees that we WILL harm ALL others (at least energetically at least) because we are the One United Mass of God, in truth there are no others there’s only us.
I agree Alexis. With the understanding ‘we are the One United Mass of God’ there is no ‘other’ for we move together as One.
The harm in these situations is not only the judgement and attack on potentially true connection but the subtle suggestion that the child cannot trust what they feel. If we invite a child to express in all areas of their life what is happening in their body then we build a true indicator of innate wisdom which will guide the child through all experiences in life.
Interestingly I had the reverse happen to me recently I went with some friends children to soft play and was crawling around with them… the slides were great fun 🙂 A little boy tagged along and wanted to play with us too so I just let him be, tagging along we played all sorts of games and his mother said to him to not get in the way of our games I reassured her that he was not in anyone’s way and we all had great fun together. The mother could have reacted by taking her son away from the area and going to another part of the soft play area but she was quite happy for her son to join in. The parents at the soft play got to feel that it’s okay for a stranger to play with children and not pose any danger to them. so everyone had a positive experience.
That’s an awesome example of how when we hold each other as equals without judgement or the belief systems that tell us not to play with certain people, even other’s children, the kids can feel this loving holding of them and they naturally want to be a part of this brotherhood.
I would also add that the word ‘stranger’ is used almost exclusively for men. Rarely would we refer to a woman we don’t know as being a ‘stranger’, which is incredibly exposing of our beliefs around the differences between men and women.
Children naturally know what is safe or danger for them, as they are connected to their body and feel what is invasive or really caring with them. We can see it in their eyes, in their spontaneous and unfiltered responses when they relate to people. They naturally connect to others and express what they feel and this is something very inspiring for us adults to also reconnect with that ability that in most cases we have lost by being prevented and conditioned by ideas of danger. Of course we live in a world which each time is further from its original safety and brotherhood, but it is by coming back to our innate awareness that we can discern and know what can be a threat or not. It is from that awareness that we are able to know and honour every true encounter and start restoring the brotherhood we all need to come back, which is the safest place to live in as humanity.
I worked in a place for 20 years that was full of alleged evil people… two prisons in the UK. My typical day required contact with the guests of the state every day. Prisons have a pecking order: the governors, officers, support services, inmates and then maintenance. I was one of the people that fixed that which they broke. The vast majority were open, friendly people. Whatever energy was in them when they committed their charged offence was no longer in them. There was an open tenderness that was exposed. There were a hand full of guests that the energy within them was just waiting for them to be back in charge. On visiting days there were always lots of children. They can still feel the evil that is out there in the world but found little in the visiting room.
Child abuse exposes the lie of the family home as a place of safety and love and shows the complexity of relationships. Abusers are not only those who perpetrate abuse, but those who ‘fail’ to see what is going on, believe a child who speaks of abuse and protect them in their own home. It could be said that a focus on ‘stranger danger’ is deliberate to divert attention away from family members and people in positions of trust.
It is, unfortunately, the case that most of the abuse is either a family member or someone known to the family. Often when people talk about the abuse they are convinced that the mother or another member of the family knew and did nothing.
Fear has to be taught, non of us are born fearful.
Who we perceive others to be plays a major role in how we are with them. When we view others with suspicion and as a potential threat then this brings in immediate separation, whereas when we view everybody else as an aspect of ourselves then it invites immediate connection.
How many moments of connection do we lose out on because of this stranger danger ourselves? When I step back and observe the way industries work to persuade you to buy their product, to stay loyal, or even to buy their religion, it is all based on fear. If we taught discernment and to trust what we feel, I suspect many of these industries and ways of controlling people would fail and we would be far healthier and potentially happier too.
If we leave a child to honour what they feel they know exactly what feels right and what doesn’t. They look beyond the outside, they read movements and therefore are less easily fooled by appearances than we adults are. In my experience, the greater danger comes from raising our children to be polite and good and not question what they are feeling and picking up from adults, just because they are adults and ‘supposed to be respected’.
“the greater danger comes from raising our children to be polite and good and not question what they are feeling and picking up from adults” Thank you Lucy. This needs to be said: politeness and blind respect of adults exposes a child to danger. But also the biggest danger come from those placed in positions of trust, as children are we not ‘groomed’ to trust, the vicar, priest, teacher, father, mother, scout leader? Conversations with children about inappropriate behaviour from adults or other children are rare. The question is who is to initiate these conversations if parents are themselves in overwhelm, emotionally dependent, needy or damaged?
We also make assumptions that sexual predators are men. As a child, I had super sensitive antennae and sensed when a males gazed at me in an inappropriate way. But was totally unprepared, post puberty, when a sexual advance came from a female. We need to support children to be open and welcoming, but also talk to them about the preciousness of their bodies and inappropriate behaviour from others, male or female.
My family and I were observing a really beautiful toddler in the park the other day. She was so sweet, light, cheeky and joyful. She was in a large group of people socialising in a London park. Somewhere on the edge of the crowd was her father, deeply engaged in conversation with others. She ran in joy away from the group, sat down when she felt she had gone far enough and would run back. She did this several times. We couldn’t work out why no one else was looking over at her; all that beauty was simply stunning. Are we really so shut down that this type of gorgeousness is not celebrated let alone noticed? Living lives from fear, security and protection – it would appear so.
The child is not the only victim, by being told to stay away from strange men. The brush paints all men to stay away from all children. Why wouldn’t a strange man enjoy the company of the joyfulness of a child? It’s a very natural feeling. Yes, there is evil in the world, however, children can feel everything, and we should learn from them what we have chosen to forget.
Remembering also that abusers can be female.
We should be more discerning, yes vigilant but discerning too.
Discerning was not a word that I knew of or used but gosh do I know about it now and use it a lot, particularly in teaching young people what it is and what it means and of course how to do it.
I prefer the word ‘feeling’ to discerning because feeling feels closer than discerning, there’s something ever so slightly removed about the act of discernment when the truth is that feeling is instantaneous and we’re all doing it constantly, it is our second skin or maybe even our first?
So true Michael – it’s in a place of disconnection and isolation that the darker parts of life play out. If we truly want to be ‘safe’ it’s connection that counts.
The belief that danger lies outside the home and with ‘strangers’ creates a false sense of security and results in a blind spot to the reality: abuse against children predominantly takes place within the home or with people known to them.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child. An estimated 30 percent of perpetrators are family members and an estimated 60 percent are people in the child’s life such as childcare providers or neighbors.
https://www.rileychildrens.org/connections/sexual-abuse-awareness-month-rethinking-stranger-danger-in-kids
We are more likely to see others as strangers when we are estranged from our inner-most and divine selves.
That is spot on kehinde2012, for those that work with statistics it is black and white – there is more danger in people we know than strangers, so are we creating fear to be polite and not speak up, to not cause a scene, and this is perpetuating the actual danger rather than the perceived danger? I don’t have an answer for that question, I simply pose it as something we should all consider based on the facts available to us.
Your question Lucy is the one to ask. With so much self disregard held in the bodies of most of humanity, abuse is now normal: we no longer recognise its more subtle forms anymore. And yet these forms of abuse (neglect, breach of trust, taking advantage of someone’s vulnerability) are more insidious because, without awareness, they are not easily seen or felt by those close to those being abused. Politeness is another evil. You will find elders, regardless of how badly they’re treated, resolve to save face, protect family members and preserve the family name. They choose to harbour hurt, sadness and resentment rather than speak up. Of course there are those without a voice (people who live with dementia for example) and unable to speak up. The bigger problem, is this: so conditioned are we to not speak up for most of our lives, that when called to do so, don’t know how to.
I find people can be more open with ‘strangers’ because there’s no baggage/hurts in the relationship between us like there can be between people we know very well. Yes, there are some unpleasant types but if open to it we can feel when a person doesn’t feel right or seems ‘off’ to us. More often than not we leave the brief interaction feeling lighter for having connected to another.
I felt this too Leigh, sometimes you have an amazing connection with a stranger you never see again, and agree, the lack of baggage, expectation, taking for granted probably plays a part. So perhaps for more amazing connections that lightness needs taking to those relationships in our everyday life too.
When I grew up many years ago, we were left as young children to wander all day everywhere in the summer holidays. Our parents had no idea where we were, but inbuilt within us was a radar like sense that we knew who to keep away from and who it was okay to talk to should we want to. Society was different too because we lived in a small town and everyone knew us and so the town folk as it were also kept an eye out for us if we were in town and not wondering the country lanes. I wonder if because I grew up in a time where there was less sensational media coverage as not everyone had a television and not everyone bought newspapers so we were not saturated with negative news. We now have 24/7/365 wall to wall news coverage and most of it is negative. I wonder if this does have a negative effect on our consciousness that creates a sense of anxiousness that the world is an unsafe place to live in.
Mary – without doubt this has a negative effect on people’s perceptions. Whilst I am sure the world has got more extreme in its behaviours, the inherent fear that you are about to be attacked or robbed or scammed in some way I am sure has escalated beyond the proportions of its merits.
Mary I definitely feel the news has a negative affect on us. While it is good to be aware of what is going on around us and in the world and not only aware but to contribute towards a safer and more loving society. For some, being saturated by negative news and lies will have an impact on how the world is seen, which of course is also how other people are viewed.
It is wise to encourage young children to retain their sensitivity to who is ‘safe’ and who is not. The mother could have talked to her daughter about how did it feel talking to the man.
Michael thank you for sharing this and stating something so important – we are lumping everyone in the category of dangerous because of a few disturbed individuals. In particular I know of a man who is so tender, gentle, loving and adores children, and children also adore him, but if out in public he tries to engage with a baby or child in some cases he may be treated like a pedophile or as dangerous. This is so wrong because men are such beautiful creatures and also children need those interactions to build trust with people, even if it’s only very short interactions. Those knee jerk reactions against our fellow man do need to be looked at because if we trust our senses we can feel who people are and allow ourselves to enjoy many beautiful interactions with people of every age.
I was never taught the “Stranger – Danger” lesson. My family has always been one to interact with people, wherever we went my father would usually get to know the locals, other people who are also on holiday and form big groups of people who have never met and may never meet again. Perhaps not the safest in the eyes of the over-protective western parent, but what if interactions like that actually teach children to discern those adults who can be trusted and who cannot. If we tell children that the only people who are safe are the ones that we already know, or are related to us, we are actually telling them that they don’t need to discern anybody because automatically relatives/ people we know are safe and automatically people we don’t know are not. But, have we forgotten that the most common cases of pedophelia actually come from people who are closest to the family? Uncles, Family friends and neighbours? In teaching children that strangers are dangerous, we are teaching them to close themselves off from the world because everybody is out to get them & nobody can be trusted – when the fact is that is not the case, many people are good people but we will never know that unless we get to know them.
I love what you have shared here Viktoria about how the reality is that we have to nurture in children their innate sense of feeling what quality of energy people are in and if they feel safe and at ease with them instead of merely labeling strangers as ‘bad’ or possibly dangerous. Reading your own and some other comments here that talked about how statistics show most crimes against children actually come from family members or others they already know shows me how powerful a platform for unveiling the truth this and other Universal Medicine blog sites can truly be and how we can have such a building conversation that uses the base blog as a platform for discussion and pondering what we feel is going on in the world and in our lives
Thank you Michael, yes you’re very right. Having a platform which is an open space to communicate and discuss important topics within society is crucial because only that way can we bring light to what may be chipping away at our society.
It is true in essence we are all the same. And of course while it is important to keep children and young people safe and away from harm it is equally important to teach them to trust their clairsentience so they can feel from their body what is okay and what is not okay, which of course includes people and moments in their life.
What’s really sad is that most men wouldn’t think “Do I really look that scary?” or “I wonder what’s wrong with me that the mother felt to rush her daughter away from me like that?”, I think that most men have come to accept that this is what happens and even that they can understand it to a certain degree. It’s not just mums that are en guard, everyone is, everyone’s in an almost permanent state of alert, anticipating and fearing an attack or disturbance of some kind. This way of being puts an enormous strain on the body as it never gets to truly rest, not even in sleep.
It’s our fears, our projections, our ideas and our beliefs that constantly get in the way of everything. And when I say ‘everything’, I mean everything. Nothing is as it is, everything is muddled, confused, congested and distorted by these things, which is why none of us have a clear view of life, we’re all looking at it through very, very smeary glasses. Glasses which we then take off and put on our kids.
It is a fact that children are at greatest risk from abuse from within their own families as well as from people that they already know, so if we are going to warn them about danger and how to avoid it then surely we should be talking to them about the possibility of danger coming at them from people that they already know?Not only that but sharing with them that many people that abuse children manoeuvre themselves into positions of trust first. The chances that a random man sitting on a park bench is going to harm a child is so much less than the chances of either a family member or someone who works with children. The facts speak for themselves but we don’t want to address them and so it suits us to talk about ‘stranger danger’ because it means that we don’t have to look at our own harmful behaviour.
A point well made Alexis. We are certainly reducing the potential for joy and spontaneity within a community when we fail to address our own behaviour- a side effect we have perhaps not considered in full before.
Alexis, you expose what happens when families do not have conversations in general about things that matter, let along those related to self awareness, care and safety. Even when abuse happens in the home, children do not share with another and when they do, they are often not believed. We leave our children exposed to danger by not talking to them about dangers with people they know or don’t know. These behaviours in themselves are harmful for they allow abuse to happen or continue.
We have created our own corundum in protecting our children when as you have said that the truth is, the family is its greatest source abuse. When we encourage them to voice what they feel may at times be exposing and even embarrassing for some, but, it’s a solid platform for them to speak the truth.
So True, Alexis