Addressing Soul Needs Is Essential To Be Happier or Peaceful

 

Due to neglect of soul needs in the education curriculum, human development has failed to realize feelings of peace and contentment. To be happier or more peaceful, a training in systematic understanding of emotional complexities, needs to be inculcated with the same zeal as mathematical skills are taught.

 

 

A focus on integration of soul needs along with material needs while teaching how to make choices in everyday life is essential to create peaceful adults. A training in integrated Emotional and Spiritual development is the only way to permanently increase peace and happiness in the world.

 

Though we blame everything else except our thinking patterns for the problems in our life ,  a regular focus on grades/marks/ performance ability, success and money has been the core negative thinking principle which has led to a lop-sided development of humanity wherein inner peace of the mind has been sacrificed for a need to perform due to external pressure.

 

 This lop-sided development has led to creation of imbalanced individuals who have no training on how to resolve complex emotional issues and resort to violence or addictions to vent out frustrations in an attempt to find inner peace.

 

 

Human happiness cannot be created as a side-effect of success. You cannot get balanced, peaceful and happy adults by pursuing mechanical/academic success as the goal of education.

 

Mind patterns are set in childhood and are affected by mass culture which is affected by education, predominantly.  Since, the focus of all education has been on becoming successful at the cost of neglecting training in development of peace and inner happiness, people are driven towards a rat race to earn success.

 

Training young minds to think that working mechanically for successful performance is all that is needed to be happy makes them feel comfortable about ignoring complex emotional development , which actually aids human mind towards evolving to be happy and healthy through the obstacles which adult life projects.

 

 

Children driven towards winning above being peaceful, start finding short-cuts to success which are manipulative and corrupt. A pattern of mass thinking has developed such that respect is measured by money.  If you are not aiming at happiness or inner peace, money for success can be earned by being manipulative and corrupt more than by being good and helpful.

 

However, happiness and satisfaction come from a job well done whether it is acknowledged as successful conventionally, or not. Winning always is not necessary to be happy. Trial and error are common processes involved in research and inventions. Through the process of overcoming failure, happiness and satisfaction continue to motivate the person towards achieving success with satisfaction. For example, Thomas Edison continued to fail for thirty years before he finally created an electric bulb. Like him, students need to be trained to be motivated from within by a system of education which rewards the process of achieving satisfaction and not just the result.

 

A balanced training between inner satisfaction and outcome/ happiness vs. success ensures internal and external satisfaction even if the money earned is less than conventionally well defined. But, a pure focus on results/money/success leads to neglect of effort on feeling satisfaction, peacefulness or freedom from anxiety

 

 

The need to never be peaceful is conditioned as a habit of thinking during schooling years, due to the stress on external good performance above inner peace. Children are judged as being good or bad by external measures of success like school grades which later are replaced in adults by external measures of success like cars, clothes or jewels.

 

However, getting good grades or performing well in sports or dance or music or art or earning good money in adult life does not lead to contentment in adult life. Children, always motivated to perform for pleasing society’s norms of success, cannot, naturally, focus on inner contentment.

For further reading, please refer to the book - Spirituality In Education: Redefining Success As Rising Peace, Optimism & Happiness

( www.pastliferegressiontherapy-shivaswati.com, www.shivaswati.com)