I was in a yoga class recently where the theme for the morning was Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance. I knew this about her. What I did not know was that she is also known as The Restless One; the one who keeps creating more and more and more. Without end. This aspect of Her reflects the principle of creation spiraling out of control. What is it that finally allows The Restless One to settle down into enough? Finding what she loves. Finding what matters most to her in all the worlds. The Hindu mythologies so beautifully and poignantly depict the experience of being alive. In this world view, the gods and goddesses are not just energies somewhere up in the sky, but are, instead, reflections, lessons and guidance for those of us here on Earth.

That day my mind kept coming back to something that I know to be true: When we find what matters most in our lives, something inside of us settles down and gets very, very focused. And very, very clear. It is like all else begins to recede into the background when you have your eyes squarely focused on what is most meaningful to you in life. Given the times we are living in, could this not be the one True North for all of us? The technologies are accelerating the pace of our lives and our attempts to keep up. The screens are more and more usurping the time we spend with our loved ones. Personal devices continue to squeeze out our children’s childhood. It is all happening at such a rate and to such an extent that it is hard to know how to handle all of it. Mostly, it seems to be taking us over and having its way with us.

But what if we made a conscious and regular effort to identify what we most love in life. What if we allowed the depth of that to still our frenzied mind and consumptive behavior? What if we stripped everything down to that? And for that. From this perspective, there is no deprivation. There is no hardship when we align with what matters most, even if that means doing without, or letting some things go. Perhaps one of the greatest abuses of the way we use the technologies is how we regularly loose track of what matters most. Instead of being part of a destructive creation cycle, what if we learned to still ourselves through love? Through protecting childhood. Through honoring our bodily needs. Through honoring our relationships. Through creating instead of destroying what is most precious to us in all the worlds.

For years, I had been wanting to add to my college curriculum a focus on how technology was adding to the stress load so many students were carrying, how it was distracting them from their studies, impacting their health, and creating a barrier between them and their friends. But I was afraid. Afraid of being seen as out of date. But then life stepped in. In the span of one month, I was made aware of two stories involving two beautiful young girls, inside and out, both fifteen at the time, and both of whom I knew.

The first story involved one of the girls sexting with a boy. He was not her boyfriend, or even a potential boyfriend. This girl had not experienced so much as a kiss, and yet here she was exchanging naked photos of herself and telling worried friends that it was no big deal. The second story involved the second young woman who started a texting relationship with a much older boy that she had met only one time. Early into this exchange, the young man became sexually suggestive and aggressive in his texts to her. At this point, her friend’s sent a text asking him to stop. He responded by texting back that if she told her friends any more about what he was saying, he was going to come find her, and do the most violent act of sexual aggression you could perpetrate on a woman’s body. Despite the advanced nature of this interaction, this girl too had never been so much as kissed. Amidst the horror of this, she dismissed it all by saying that it was not a big deal because it was just a text.

For weeks after hearing this, I was not right. I would spontaneously be overcome by grief and anger. I raged inside. I sobbed whenever I thought of them. I felt frustrated and disempowered.  I believed there there was nothing I could do. Or so I thought. Without knowing what I was doing, I took all of this to my college classes. Because I didn’t know what to do or how to proceed, I started at the beginning. I began by telling them these two stories in great detail. I was very emotional in the telling. It was clear how overwrought I was. And much to my surprise, you could have heard a pin drop that day. The class was riveted, and not because this was news to them. When I asked them if any were shocked, or if this story was new to them, not a single hand was raised. As a matter of fact, I went on to ask this question for a number of semesters in a row to literally hundreds of students, and still, not a single hand went up.

I have come to see now why they were so focused on what I was saying. They were fastened to my horror, my grief, and my anger that the innocence of these two girls and their precious budding sexuality was being squandered without apology, and was even being justified as something that was “no big deal.” And that was when I knew. I knew that for all of their bravado about how great things were, it just wasn’t true. Somewhere down deep they did not feel good either about what was happening. And when they saw my unfiltered reaction, in that moment, they could not deny it. It is so difficult to pierce the illusion around the collective agreement and collusion regarding how all powerful and amazing the technologies are, that it has taken me a long, long time to catch up with the truth. But please know this, all the way into the deepest part of yourself; they are not OK with what is happening, despite what they do or what they say.

In subsequent classes, I went on to tell them about how my family was living and how we were raising our children with little to no technology. I had no idea how they would respond to this, I only knew that an opening had been created, and so I took it. To my great surprise, they broke open too. They spoke of what was not working for them. They spoke of their anxieties in trying to keep up. They spoke of their dissatisfaction with their relationships. They spoke of not being able to sleep at night due to interference from their devices. Later, they came back talking about changes they had made. They taught, and continue to teach me so very much about human nature. They have reminded me about what we all yearn for despite the ways that we get sidetracked. They regularly remind me that the younger generations look to us, despite what they might say or what we might think. They remind me that the human spirit is infinitely creative when it receives the support and the inspiration it requires. They show me regularly just how difficult it is for them to handle this. And they openly and regularly worry about the generations to come.

I have been contemplating, practicing and researching conscious use of technology with children for more than 20 years. I have observed and read about all of the many ways that it is changing our children physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally; negative impacts ranging from brain cancer to attention and behavioral problems to impaired memory to social autism, to weight gain, to sleep problems and so much more. As devastating as all of this is, I am noticing something far more destructive; a loss of purpose and meaning. Collectively, we spend more time in front of a screen than the time we put into the exploration and loving expression of who we truly are, why we are here, and where it is that we come from.  What does it mean for our children to grow up in a culture where the biggest, vastest and most ubiquitous daily presence in their life is ever-increasingly a machine? What will it mean for our children who are growing up absorbing the belief that the most powerful presence in their lives emanates from something man-made? While we might not be saying this out loud, no one needs to. Children absorb what it is that we value most. Children take their cues from us about what to orient to in life.

Are we actually going to leave the very unfolding of the human heart and spirit up to a machine? Pause for a moment and reflect deeply on this. Our children need Something Greater to connect to; whether that is God, The Great Mother, The One, All That Is, Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, Shiva, a social cause, Nature, or your family. However you experience it, and by whatever name you refer to it, our children need to be in relationship to something more than themselves and their self-indulgent forays into the cyber world. What is it doing to their spirit to have the very essence of their existence reduced down to the number of “likes” they get on Facebook? Or how many friends or followers that have accumulated. Or how many texts they send or receive each day. How does self-absorption and narcissism further humankind and inspire us to reach for our very best? It does not.

Our children require meaning and purpose for their souls to flourish as surely as their bodies require air to live. The steady and depleting diet of screen images along with the amount of time spent there reduces their spiritual life down to a tiny or non-existent corner of their lives. But certainly not the guiding force. Not the orienting direction in their life. What compounds the damage is the importance we, as their primary role models, have put on life in front of a screen; modeling for them that this is the shiniest and most coveted brass ring to reach for, despite what else we might preach about what is most important.

Meaning, purpose and a connection to Something Greater is what holds us through all of life’s ups and downs. It is what uplifts us and carries us further than we could ever go on our own. This is what will support our children when life challenges, fails and disappoints them. Experiences of Presence are often subtle, paling in comparison to the yelling and demands of the devices. Spirit is never pushy, quick, or loud in the ways of the machines. And because the satisfactions of the devices are so immediate and compelling while asking simultaneously so little, how will this prepare our children for a life lived in Connection?

Ultimately, will it turn out to be progressive of us, or in the best interest of humankind, for the dominating cultural attitude to be that man and his accomplishments are the greatest show on earth? The technologies are amplifying this ignorant and ultimately erroneous belief in far-reaching and destructive ways. What will it do to our children for them to grow up believing that they are the most powerful force in the Universe? How will arrogance, self-absorption and our own self-importance further the hopes, dreams and the very best of our species? How will disconnection from Source play out in our relationship to caring for and about others and the planet? If our children, through years of experience with being in control of all that they touch, come to believe that they are the omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient ones, how will they live? And then, how will be able to live together?

All of our greatest and most shining exemplars are those human beings who submitted to something beyond themselves. At its best, the human experience includes honoring, respecting and submitting to something more powerful than yourself. To give them the impression that we as people are in control of everything, that it is all just a click or a swipe away, is to rob them of their true place in the order of things. Watch what it is that lights you up in the presence of your children. Watch what you talk about most. Watch where you spend the majority of your time, energy and money. Do you marvel as much in the Infinite as you do the man-made?

We need heroes and heroines right now. More than ever. Why? Because this culture does not value or protect its young. This culture does not properly grasp the protected status children require to grow naturally, healthfully and well. It is evident in how many of them go hungry. It is noticeable in how many of our young people suffer from disorders that have toxic environmental links perpetrated by corporations seeking to make a profit. It is evident in the way our children’s childhoods have become overly commercialized and consumer-oriented. It is apparent and appalling in the way we sanction food that is grown with toxins, harmful modifications and refined to the point of being dangerous. It is manifest in how many of our children are on unprecedented amounts of medications. It displays itself in how many of our kids are depressed, stressed and anxious. It shows in how little we pay and respect teachers, and how little real progress ever happens in education. It reveals itself around the multi-billion dollar amounts always available for the defense budget, while schools continue to be level-funded year after year despite increases to the cost of living, and to the growing demands that schools must meet in terms of student needs. And it is palpable in the way we allow our children to see things and spend their days in ways that rob them of their innocence, vitality and inner freedom.

I have yet to meet a parent who in some way is not worried about how the technologies are using our children. Why is it then that we are not organizing around this one? Why are we not refusing to allow this to continue? Why are we not carving out the time and the actions necessary to address our concerns? We are so schizophrenic around the technologies in the truest sense of that word, i.e. to be of a split mind. Through one side of our mouths we lament what is happening, and through the other side we live as if our devices are valued family members who get the preferred seat at the table. Or worse yet, we allow that family member that we do not want around our kids, to live with us nonetheless.

Likely, parents everywhere, and at all times, have struggled with some version of their children getting into something, or being exposed to, what we would most want them to avoid.  Recently though, the reality of our children getting involved with the wrong thing has exponentially exploded with the advent of the screen technologies. This is alarmingly exemplified by the story I just heard of local teenage girls posting nude pictures of themselves on Instagram, all in the name of body image empowerment. Funny thing is though, as the story goes, only the good-looking girls with the “good bodies” are doing this. And oh, by the way, the political statement is entitled The 100 Day ‘Ho Down. In case you didn’t catch it, it is ‘Ho as in  WHORE. So, young women are exploiting their bodies, referring to themselves as whores, all the while believing that they are taking back the night with this one. Will this be enough for us as the grown-ups to weigh in on? We can refuse to address this in any kind of a meaningful way, but the truth is, it will go on; with or without us.