Youth Week: Change-agents for this spiritual millennium?
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Youth Week: Change-agents for this spiritual millennium?
It’s National Youth Week 2015 and while governments across Australia are committed to improving sexual health outcomes for young people they have stopped short at addressing the cause of the problem.
Health authorities advise that the proliferation of online pornography is compounding the problems associated with promiscuity, and other voice are starting to speak out, as well.
Well, who’d have thought that the clearest voice to raise concerns about pornography and the film “Fifty Shades of Grey” would belong to Russell Brand?”
In an honest and heartfelt video Brand said he didn’t like the way he felt about himself after watching pornography. So, instead, he’s trying to blaze a trail in learning how to close the laptop and turn off, what he calls, the “waves of filth.”
“This cloud of pornographic information … is making it impossible for us to relate to our sexuality and our own psychology and our own spirituality,” Brand said. “It’s jarring and distracting… (and) really difficult to remain connected to truth.”
Brand is clued-in to the fact that pornography has stealthily entered the conversation, in the media and on social media, and is proliferating like some socially infectious disease. But like many today, he became “infected” by it when he was young and most impressionable.
He cites the latest research which found watching porn leads to an exaggerated perception of sex in society, diminishes trust between couples, results in abandoning hope of sexual monogamy and promotes the belief that promiscuity is a natural state.
While trying to tackle the harmful effects porn has had in his own life, Brand has become a change-agent for a healthier society.
Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the so-called “sexual revolution” proved to many that sex for sex’s sake was not all it was cracked up to be. Instead, we eventually discovered we could only find truth and happiness in a relationship that was built on honesty, loyalty, selfless giving and care for our partner’s happiness … all of which I have come to consider to be divine qualities.
We needed to upgrade our thinking to acknowledge our mental and spiritual side, just like Brand advocates.
At the end of the 19th century - an era that has recently been losing some of its reputation as strait-laced - a shrewd observer of human nature commented on the less overt but similar problems of her day.
“In the present or future, some extra throe of error may conjure up a new-style conjugality, which...severs the marriage covenant, puts virtue in the shambles, and coolly notifies the public of broken vows,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, adding that this would fly in the face of “...common law, common sense, and common honesty...”
That honesty, the noted thought-leader wrote, “is spiritual power”, because it has its source in the divine Mind.
She also made the connection between such spiritual thinking and how healthy and content we are - doing better when we take a step away from the human reasoning which chooses paths that seem easier or more self-satisfying, to be guided instead by motives like honesty and love.
In my own life, I’ve found her ideas unlock a life-changing view of men and women as actually being the sons and daughters of God, the divine Mind.
When we’re awake to this spiritual nature of ourselves and others, the need to objectify women or to allow ourselves to be objectified, to seek women as trophies to validate masculinity or to allow ourselves to be used in that way can no longer motivate us. And the temptation to seek out porn will fade away. We won’t spend hours locked away, wasting opportunities to climb a mountain, cook a meal, become a volunteer or laugh with friends.
It’s inspiring that significant numbers of Millennials consider themselves to be spiritual, desiring to commune with the divine and express those qualities in their lives.
The truth is that we each have an inherent spiritual strength to enable us to shut that laptop down when we need to.
Kay Stroud writes about the connection between consciousness, spirituality and health. Because her own spiritual practice of Christian Science healing has helped her so much she's curious to see how the elements involved are being recognised and implemented in society. @KayJStroud
Health authorities advise that the proliferation of online pornography is compounding the problems associated with promiscuity, and other voice are starting to speak out, as well.
Well, who’d have thought that the clearest voice to raise concerns about pornography and the film “Fifty Shades of Grey” would belong to Russell Brand?”
In an honest and heartfelt video Brand said he didn’t like the way he felt about himself after watching pornography. So, instead, he’s trying to blaze a trail in learning how to close the laptop and turn off, what he calls, the “waves of filth.”
“This cloud of pornographic information … is making it impossible for us to relate to our sexuality and our own psychology and our own spirituality,” Brand said. “It’s jarring and distracting… (and) really difficult to remain connected to truth.”
Brand is clued-in to the fact that pornography has stealthily entered the conversation, in the media and on social media, and is proliferating like some socially infectious disease. But like many today, he became “infected” by it when he was young and most impressionable.
He cites the latest research which found watching porn leads to an exaggerated perception of sex in society, diminishes trust between couples, results in abandoning hope of sexual monogamy and promotes the belief that promiscuity is a natural state.
While trying to tackle the harmful effects porn has had in his own life, Brand has become a change-agent for a healthier society.
Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the so-called “sexual revolution” proved to many that sex for sex’s sake was not all it was cracked up to be. Instead, we eventually discovered we could only find truth and happiness in a relationship that was built on honesty, loyalty, selfless giving and care for our partner’s happiness … all of which I have come to consider to be divine qualities.
We needed to upgrade our thinking to acknowledge our mental and spiritual side, just like Brand advocates.
At the end of the 19th century - an era that has recently been losing some of its reputation as strait-laced - a shrewd observer of human nature commented on the less overt but similar problems of her day.
“In the present or future, some extra throe of error may conjure up a new-style conjugality, which...severs the marriage covenant, puts virtue in the shambles, and coolly notifies the public of broken vows,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, adding that this would fly in the face of “...common law, common sense, and common honesty...”
That honesty, the noted thought-leader wrote, “is spiritual power”, because it has its source in the divine Mind.
She also made the connection between such spiritual thinking and how healthy and content we are - doing better when we take a step away from the human reasoning which chooses paths that seem easier or more self-satisfying, to be guided instead by motives like honesty and love.
In my own life, I’ve found her ideas unlock a life-changing view of men and women as actually being the sons and daughters of God, the divine Mind.
When we’re awake to this spiritual nature of ourselves and others, the need to objectify women or to allow ourselves to be objectified, to seek women as trophies to validate masculinity or to allow ourselves to be used in that way can no longer motivate us. And the temptation to seek out porn will fade away. We won’t spend hours locked away, wasting opportunities to climb a mountain, cook a meal, become a volunteer or laugh with friends.
It’s inspiring that significant numbers of Millennials consider themselves to be spiritual, desiring to commune with the divine and express those qualities in their lives.
The truth is that we each have an inherent spiritual strength to enable us to shut that laptop down when we need to.
Kay Stroud writes about the connection between consciousness, spirituality and health. Because her own spiritual practice of Christian Science healing has helped her so much she's curious to see how the elements involved are being recognised and implemented in society. @KayJStroud
