Most people prefer to "hang out" and converse with others who share their views.

If you associate with people who think like you do, you don't have to feel isolated, or abnormal.
What's wrong with that?

I know that I don't enjoy being around those who insist that I limit my conversation to ideas which conform to their belief system.
I'm not particularly interested in appearing normal.
I like new concepts, and enjoy diversity.

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Among the people I am acquainted with, the "indigo" type child seems to me to be accepted as normal. Most of them aren't being medicated, either.

Well, yeah, because ANYONE can call themselves an Indigo or call their kids Indigo. It's a made-up category. And the definition is growing too. Some people are seeing themselves and/or their children as fitting into one of these new age categories (indigo, crystal, dolphin, new light, whatever) and they are adding their own ideas on what that means. If Indigo doesn't work for someone, they can choose "crystal," "rainbow," or just a "new" child.

Kath put quotes around the word 'normal' for a reason, and her point is well-taken, so there's no need to divert the topic to the definition of "normal."

No sudden human evolution is taking place with kids; evolution just doesn't work that way. The labeling of people as "indigo" looks to me like the same old thing of people succumbing to the PT Barnum effect, jumping on bandwagons, needing to feel special and purposeful, and even endowed with supernatural abilities (or needing to see their kids that way).

Remote viewing? Of course we all have remote viewing abilities; it's called human perception and reasoning and empathy, the ability to envision what could be happening somewhere else in the world or at a future time. I am remotely viewing that my dog is lying down in the living room right now. Wait, I'll go see. Yes, he is there. We are very smart animals who evolved with the ability to perceive possibilities, which might feel like we are predicting future events or seeing things happening elsewhere in the world, but it's just who we humans are, "normally". We also are fallible, but some people only focus on the times they turned out to be right, or even just close to right, or even just vaguely right in their predictions. If you're saying that you, LivingTQ can do paranormal remote viewing, beyond guessing or chance, that is testable. You can win a million dollars from the James Randi Foundation - you'd be the first.

Kids often come out with the dardest things, always have, always will. That's not because they have superpowers. What I think is happening is that "normal" to astute things that are coming out of their mouths are being interpreted by adults in their lives as somehow "new" or "special" or "supernatural" - or "indigo." I will venture to guess that there are more teenagers and adults, and parents, who believe they (or their kids) are Indigo than kids.

On the idea of not throwing out the baby with the bath water, we aren't talking about babies, we're talking about dangerous or damaging and manipulative cults. I don't accept that any services are so rare and valuable that we have to support a dangerous cult. Throw the cult out with the filthy bath water. Cults hurt people; let's look beyond our own needs and think about those who are getting hurt.

Oh dear...ha...yes we definitely have some communication gaps here.

First, I've seen this referred to as a "belief system" in this thread. When I questioned that and asked for explanation, the argument was made to call it a "belief". I'm with you on "belief". It's "belief [b:35e2c6c69b]system[/b:35e2c6c69b]" that doesn't work for me. Maybe that's our middle ground. Can we meet there?

Re:

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But what marks someone out as healthy to me is if they can chat to a stranger in public without mentioning an indigo, energies, psychism or whatever their particular obsession is etc unless the other person brings it up.

I totally know the kind of person you're referring to here and I agree. But using this logic, everyone who ever told you they were anything is unhealthy -- everyone with any belief who expressed it to you via a label, or terms associated with that label -- every person who ever said "God Bless", every person who ever said "Namaste", every person who ever said "Mahalo". You can't go to Hawaii without meeting many people who talk to you about how Hawaii is special, (that's a belief) who belief the rest of the world moves too fast and just doesn't know how to appreciate life. Are Hawaiians unhealthy? When I meet someone who can't have a conversation without mentioning Jesus or their faith every third sentence, I know that person has some issues. But I don't judge every Christian because of the experience I have with the few. When I was younger I was really resentful of people who did that. I had to ask myself at one point why I had such a strong reaction to it, and I finally came to understand that it was own perfectionism, my own inability to [i:35e2c6c69b]not [/i:35e2c6c69b]judge myself for the parts of myself that weren't yet fine-tuned, that caused me to get so irritated by these people who also had some work to do.

I promise you you have had [i:35e2c6c69b]many conversations [/i:35e2c6c69b]with people who consider themselves indigos who have not announced to you, or discussed with you in any way that they believe they are indigos, who never announce to anyone they believe they are indigos. Your argument that because those who do, [b:35e2c6c69b]have[/b:35e2c6c69b], therefore makes, by association, everyone who considers themselves indigo [i:35e2c6c69b]unhealthy[/i:35e2c6c69b], is unreasonable.

We're back to what I said about basing one's opinion of something on the choices of a few. I know the kind of people you're thinking about and I have the same kind of reaction to them and they don't represent me or most indigos I know. I have the same reaction to anyone who forgets that their truth is -- [i:35e2c6c69b]their[/i:35e2c6c69b] -- truth and tries to splatter it all over everyone and everything that crosses their path. But I have compassion for it. I understand it and I don't let it distract me when I encounter something that's new to me. That's their stuff to work out. And when that's your only experience with it, you can't be expected to have any other perspective. If you make the choice to believe that those [i:35e2c6c69b]have[/i:35e2c6c69b] been your only experiences with it, then you can of course come to no other conclusion.

If you blindfold 10 people and have them stand around an elephant and each hold onto a different part of an elephant, the guy holding the trunk is going to think it's a completely different animal than the guy holding the ear. If the guy holding the trunk jumps to the conclusion that it's something else and gets offended, he's going to miss out on that discovering the rest and it will just take longer before he is aquainted with the whole.

re: "beige child" haaaaa...love that. I definitely have my beige days. I remember writing in a journal once "I feel beige."

Of course it's dangerous to assign your children the attribute of "having special powersl"; I think it's also dangerous to rush to label large numbers of children as having psychological disorders such as ADHD.

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Well, yeah, because ANYONE can call themselves an Indigo or call their kids Indigo.

Let me rephrase what [b:c066b9bb0e]I[/b:c066b9bb0e] said;
Among my aquaintances, children who exhibit characteristics like being especially creative, outspoken, and active are accepted as normal, rather than being viewed as psychologically unstable.
(These are characteristics that have been attributed to Indigos.)

Which dangerous cult is behind the Indigo phenomenon? I gather Dahn Yoga has some sort of involvement. Was the Indigo idea invented by a particular cult, or has if just been co-opted by several to fit their own agendas?

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barabara
It occurs to me that the children called "indigos" have been discussed here as having ADHD; in other words, abnormal.

Suggestions have been made that they need therapy, medication, or at least a good spanking.
This is the point of my "wrangling", as you call it.

I think the problem is that if I use the terms ADHD, therapy or medication, you think I am using them as a disparaging term.

Such is the stigma of mental illness.

As someone who takes a mood stabiliser as I am diagnosed bipolar, I don't see having a diagnosis of ADHD as perjorative.

As I said originally, it is Doreen Virtue in her book who uses 'indigo' as a synonym for ADHD, not I.

My problem is not with the indigos 'differentness' as with the fact that they may benefit from treatment.

I hate the thought that people with ADHD and other problems, are turning down treatments that are proven to work, in favour of this. They will waste years, and be much more unhappy than they would with the proper help.

As to choosing to hang out with like-minded people, fair enough but you still have to buy a pint of milk, wait in the doctors surgery, and in other ways interact with 'normal' people.

I personally love talking to 'normal' people nowadays, I see it as a mark of good mental health if I can sustain a 'normal' conversation.

The ability to make small talk is what separates the sane from the insane.

Here is a conversation I had in a psychiatric hospital which will demonstrate this.

'Hello, how are you?'

'Fine thanks, how are you?'

'I've got the devil talking to me.'

---

I suppose my point is that if someone thinks of themselves as an 'indigo', it's bound to stop them being able to put themselves in the shoes of an un-indigo. (which is most of the human race.)

It's isolating, which is detrimental to people's mental health.
Love
Kath

I'm not for medicating the masses, and I think psych drugs are over-prescribed.
It [b:eca468dcbf]can be[/b:eca468dcbf] an easy fix for the mother who can't handle the energy of her active child to get a diagnosis of ADHD for him/her and some nice meds to slow him/her down. I am familiar with some of these medications.

There probably are children who actually need meds; I'm not a doctor. I've also never cared for a severely hyperactive child.

I am aware of the "mental illness of the year" syndrome, however. Right now it's "manic-depression", including cyclothymic and other variations, as well as ADHD.
There are lots of nice drugs for these diagnoses.
A few years back it was depression (prozac), and before that anxiety (valium).

Schizophrenia had its heyday when the phenothiazines were discovered, but , if I'm not mistaken, that diagnosis has fallen out of vogue. (Those drugs are now well-tested, so new subjects to test them aren't really necessary.)

Any society that feels the need to medicate such large numbers of people into "normalcy" needs to examine the ills of the society as a whole. Maybe a new model of human behavior is called for.

[b:eca468dcbf]I am not advocating the "indigo child" concept, or the foolishness that has attached itself to the movement.[/b:eca468dcbf]

That's my opinion, whether or not it is popular, here or elsewhere.
I would prefer not to be medicated, myself, if there were another solution to any emotional problem I might develop.

If I had a child who deviated from the "norm", (whatever that is), as do the children considered by some to be "indigos", I would not rush to label him/her mentally ill and medicate him/her, although this might seem like the quick and easy solution. There are side effects to all medications, among other reasons for exercising caution.

It may be "isolating" for a child to be labeled "indigo", but labeling them "abnormal, sick, or emotionally disturbed" can be hard on them as well, particularly if it is not really true.
___________________________________________________________
I found an enormous number of links to articles on the subject of over-diagnosis and over-prescription of medication.
I am only going to post one link, to a review of the documentary "Comfortably Numb", about the results of prescription drugs given to very young children to treat ADHD and the Pharmaceutical industry.

[www.besthorizons.com]

If anyone is interested, I can post other links, but the are not directly related to "Indigo Children".

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On the idea of not throwing out the baby with the bath water, we aren't talking about babies

...ummmmm...I wasn't talking about babies either. It was a metaphor.

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looks to me like the same old thing of people succumbing to the PT Barnum effect, jumping on bandwagons, needing to feel special and purposeful, and even endowed with supernatural abilities (or needing to see their kids that way).

I understand why you see this the way you do. The human mind cannot experience what it does not believe is possible. Sort of a catch 22 I know, and the only way out of that box is to decide to open one's mind, suspend disbelief, [b:887ee320fc]suspend the belief (the illusion) that it is unsafe to suspend disbelief[/b:887ee320fc], (the belief that we don't have the spiritual integrity to protect ourselves from others, that they can do things *to* us without our permission, that we can be "victim"ized and are therefore unsafe) and see for ourselves if there is anything [i:887ee320fc]else[/i:887ee320fc].

We are not victims. If we don't understand that a hot burner will cause great pain and damage the hand, we put our hands on it. We don't seek to destroy all stoves because some people haven't learned that lesson. If we don't understand that we need to look outside ourselves for truth, we seek it from others. And eventually we learn that lesson. Until we "get it", until we look back at our lives and realize that the hardest times brought the best gifts/lessons we're going to want to kill that messenger, kill that teacher. Until then we can't see the brick walls as teachers, we can't see the gifts. So we don't grow. And that's ok. Everyone is ok. That is the beauty of free will. While one person is out running a triathalon, another is pampering herself and at rest. No judgement. There is no [b:887ee320fc]better[/b:887ee320fc]. Personally I have a preference, but that doesn't have anything to do with you or how I see you or how I see myself in relation to you. Does that mean that the people who manipulate others shouldn't be called out? No.

Not long ago, society let sick orphans die on the streets, rape was just something a woman had to accept as a part of life. Very recently we judged people as inferior based on the color of their skin, and wouldn't even sit next to them on a bus. You need only look at the changes that occurred between the 1950's and the 1960's to know that evolution can in fact occur very quickly. Look at the population curve, at technology, at the accelleration in nearly every part of our life after centuries of -- compared to what's going on today -- trudging along at a snail's pace, and it's not hard to entertain the idea that given all the unhappiness and addiction we see in the face of great material wealth, perhaps the next frontier is the human spirit: Maybe there is no better, maybe there is no good and bad. Maybe we're all just here to learn and we're too asleep and afraid to see the world as what it is, to surrender our definitions, our measurements, our associations....

In hindsight, I see now I continued to engage people and dynamics it was not healthy for me to engage, because I didn't want to do the work that I knew, deep within myself, that I would have to do if I were to grow beyond where I was. The hard thing was finding the courage to trust that internal compass and surrender to the process, knowing how much it would change my life. Indigos are very much like people who left everything they knew, got off a sinking ship and found their way to shore, then celebrated when they found others who had done the same. The work came first. And it's a long lonely road, some call it the dark night of the soul. You don't go there because it's easier, you go there because you're ready. The whole nature of it is exactly the opposite of what you suggest. It's the shedding of dependency, the acceptance of the the idea that we are all completely responsible for our own lives and our own experiences. That we all appreciate one another having come through that dark night....trust me...that sense of belonging [b:887ee320fc]alone[/b:887ee320fc] would not have made the journey worth it. It is scary. It is loney. The reward is growth. It feel like jumping off into open space without a parachute and having "gone there" I completely understand why I put it off for so long. And I likewise completely understand why others do too.

I spent the last 10 years of my life mostly alone. I went through a mindblowing transition and at times it has been very hard, and very lonely. If I were a person who needed to belong, I would [i:887ee320fc]not[/i:887ee320fc] have embarked on this journey, made the hard choices. I don't feel superior. I feel tired. It's not a cakewalk, and whatever lies beyond this life, I will welcome it when it comes and accept I have to be here until then, but trust me when I say, it would be so much easier, on the more superficial levels at least, to be the bearer of a gift that people are more enthusiastic about receiving. I can't tell you how many times people have come to me months and years later and said "I'm sorry I didn't understand you at first." It is what it is. I am who I am and I wouldn't change a thing, but it's never been easy. Now that the ball is rolling it won't be nearly as hard for the younger generations to make the transitions.

And, as it has always been with change, some people will wave the victim/fear card around until they finally pass out. They'll throw everything they can't relate to, or don't agree with, into a file marked "cult". And that's ok too. When we're in that place we're part of this great ballet called life as well. As Maddy says in the film "Cold Mountain"...

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See, I think there's a plan. There's a design for each and every one of us. You look at nature. Bird flies somewhere, picks up a seed, sh**s the seed out, plant grows. Bird's got a job, sh**'s got a job, seed's got a job

Without people who question we'd never find the answers...

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Of course it's dangerous to assign your children the attribute of "having special powersl"; I think it's also dangerous to rush to label large numbers of children as having psychological disorders such as ADHD.

Amen again Babs


Kath, I am [i:aefd4cc647]really[/i:aefd4cc647] appreciating your comments. I'd like to share a bit more of my story if I may. Please note, some of the stuff more towards the end isn't directed toward you, anything you said, or to anyone in particular for that matter but are things I just really wanted to express on this topic.

I had severe depression kick in when I was about 13. At 23, being the self-policing (*whispering*) "indigo" that I am ;) I saw Patti Duke on tv and decided after much thought and many tears that that must be what I had. I marched into a doctor's office and "turned myself in". He was more than happy to give me medication and it did help. For awhile. I still had some occasional metdowns, along with some other pesky healthy problems.

Eventually, many years later, the physical stuff got worse, I started developing neurological problems, falling down stairs, running into doorframes even when I saw them coming....About that time I was having some dental work done and at that point the physical problems escalated in a big way. I was having several amalgam fillings replaced (they were old). I had to cancel the third set of removals because I was too sick -- ears reverberating, headaches -- just felt poisoned. After the last appointment I had run my car into a pole in the parking garage and tried to take a shoe off my foot that wasn't there.

So I started doing some research. I started wondering if I was mercury toxic. I went through dozens of doctors trying to find someone to test me. I was laughed at by one "professional" after another. So I had to become my own doctor. I was getting 2 hrs of sleep a day for those 2 years and was too sensitive to even the sound of human voices to have someone there with me to take care of me, I was totally exhausted and sick but I started educating myself about health and toxicity, both Western and Eastern medicine, and I finally found an MD with Eastern leanings who would give me a chelation challenge for mercury. My mercury burden measured an 8.3 on a scale of 1-9. (And what do you know...when you're toxic on one element/mineral, you are very often [i:aefd4cc647]very[/i:aefd4cc647] deficient in others -- including lithium.)

So...I wasn't bipolar, I was mercury toxic.

Orrrrrrrrr was I......?

At that point I was suffering so much that I committed to myself to 5 minute increments -- "Can I take this 5 more minutes?" -- and I did that for months on end to keep from killing myself. I was really struggling with the "Why me?" I was deeeeeply invested in victimhood. I was angry at God, the universe and everything because darnit, I was a good person, and I didn't "deserve this". There was a point one day when I surrendered. I actually said out loud, without thinking, "Ok, help me." It was at that moment that my ego "died" and I started to accept that maybe some of my choices had manifested this result. I realized I'd invested too much in the wrong people, people I loved who manipulated me in their own desire to fill in their own "holes", and that it had caused me so much stress my mind and body just couldn't take it anymore. When you are depleted in vital vit's/min's and aminos the body can no longer police the GI and toxins are allowed to settle in the tissues. One of the first alternative doctors I'd found after I got really sick hit it right on the head. The first thing he said to me after meeting me and sitting me down was "Who abused you?" My response? "I abused myself." It would be another few years before I truly understand what that meant, until that day I whispered my surrender on the couch.

And it wasn't until I opened myself up to that that my health started to improve. Not until then did I understand that if I was going to get better I had to find the answers within myself. I didn't do it voluntarily in the years previous, and now I [i:aefd4cc647]had[/i:aefd4cc647] to do it or I was going to die. I had to believe I had some wisdom within me and, happily, I realized that I did. Where before I looked to others for the answers I started creating ways of amplifying my inner voice. I would put my hands out in front of me, one was yes, one was no and I'd ask my question and wait until one got heavy. I started realizing that I really did know. I also figured out you don't get an answer unless you ask for it, because every time I stopped trying to find it outside myself and and surrendered and got quiet and just *asked*, w/in 48 hrs it would show up. I realized the answers were there all along, I just wasn't listening. My ego had it's own agenda.

A few months later I was well enough to pack up, even deep clean the apartment, and move back home. I got the supplements right, got off the meds and I was fine. After I eliminated the food allergies (we can eliminate them, and even do it ourselves, contrary to what Western medicine tells us) I was really in great shape. And now I know my body really well. I know what every symptom means, know how to compensate for the mercury when I eat foods that kick it out of my tissues or when I do too much physical work. I haven't had a day of the kind of depression I had before in 9 years now. I also realized that whenever I began to feel depressed I was inevitably plugging into beliefs or energies that didn't serve me, trying to justify to myself that engagement. I have my own business, I work out every day. Things are good.

So I went from Bipolar, to poisoned, to understanding that ultimately it was all a part of my underlying spiritual illness (dis-ease) ;) Now...I'm not saying that everyone who is diagnosed bipolar is toxic. (But I'd highly recommend that they check, and with a chelation challenge not a hair test and [i:aefd4cc647]not[/i:aefd4cc647] a blood test.) Nor am I saying that some kids aren't ADHD. But if we're going to be responsible about it, we need to do some digging. "Yes, ok, they are ______, but WHY." I had to work through half a dozen layers of "truth" before I figured out what was really at the root of my health problems. Before the mercury it was "Maybe it's Celiac", then "Oh, maybe the immune issues are a reaction to toxicity." Are our children not worth at least that much? When there is a hazardous piece of equiment on a playground we remove it, we don't leave it there and continue to administer first aid to all of the scrapes and broken bones. When we start applying that kind of logic to behavioral issues -- [i:aefd4cc647]then[/i:aefd4cc647] we'll be on our way.

I now see this as a spiritual journey, not an illness. I don't judge anyone else. But I know from my own experience, for myself, and from seeing casual nature of (and increase in terms of numbers) of diagnosis (plural) in the last few decades, that mental illness is big business. You are so right. Kids who truly have ADD/ADHD and not a nutritional deficiency or other spiritual or emotional issue should get help with that. But we are throwing drugs and labels at everyone these days -- this when the average western doctor only recieves 10 hours (!) of education about nutrition in medical school.

What's more outrageous -- to give these kids the benefit of the doubt, looking into the matter further, or putting the kabash on the whole thing, telling a kid there's something wrong with him because he doesn't fit the mold, telling him it's too damaging for him to think of himself as special, drugging him, and referring to him as a cult member instead? A kid who can describe events that occurred during his own gestation and birth to a stunned mother who never told him that he was [i:aefd4cc647]actually[/i:aefd4cc647] expected on Thanksgiving Day (actual day of birth: January 9th.) That kid was me.

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I suppose my point is that if someone thinks of themselves as an 'indigo', it's bound to stop them being able to put themselves in the shoes of an un-indigo. (which is most of the human race.)

I can only say that I feel more in touch with and able to put myself in the place of an "un-indigo" than most "un-indigos" I know. If that label is slapped on a kid who isn't, then yes, it's going to have some adverse affects, but the very nature of indigos is that they feel things so deeply and have such sensitivity for other people. The very person that most un-indigos would shrink from in fear, an indigo would fearlessly step up and engage. I was always the first kid in class to approach the person who was rejected by others, to try to communicate with hand letters with the deaf girl in Sunday School. When my teacher railed abusively on a boy in my class in the fourth grade, I actually got physically ill. I started crying and had to go home. I was the girl asked to the prom by the guy who'd had the trash can dumped over his head by the star athletes the day before. I was accepted by the "in-crowd" but I was also the person that everyone else judged as "losers" trusted. I've always had a very eclectic group of friends and I've remember thinking in college that if you put all the people I consider friends in a room together they would beat each other up. We feel the pain of others so deeply -- indigo or not -- that it hurts. We actually have to work to keep from, as the Native American's say "taking the feelings of others into our bones".

E.

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Which dangerous cult is behind the Indigo phenomenon? I gather Dahn Yoga has some sort of involvement. Was the Indigo idea invented by a particular cult, or has if just been co-opted by several to fit their own agendas?

I think I misunderstood something that LivingTQ wrote when I commented about throwing out dangerous cults with the bathwater, now that I reread her post. Sorry.

I had already posted here that I don't think the Indigo child movement is led by a particular dangerous cult. I do fear it could lead vulnerable children/teens and parents to questionable groups that use indigo "training" or "therapy" as a lure. Some "indigo" resources (schools, programs, therapy) sound benign enough. The indigo child movement's main promoters are not people whose judgment, and honesty, I trust, especially when children are involved.

As far as I know, Dahn is not addressing the term "indigo" children in particular but has worked with James Twyman to supposedly train kids to do psychic and spoon-sticking and bending.

I think people here are making some very good points. Wrongly medicating kids is not good and treating them like little "Masters" or saviors is not good. The idea that too many children are being drugged has drawn many people to the indigo movement. But there are other choices - not either/or.

We keep hearing that masses of kids are being put on medication who don't need it. Some experts say that that is not the case. The fear tactic is powerful, that our kids are being drugged into submission to accommodate our 'systems'. If it is happening, generally, then let's tighten up the criteria and keep looking at viable, tested alternatives. Meantime, a lot of kids really benefit from monitored medication along with counseling!

LivingTQ:

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The human mind cannot experience what it does not believe is possible...open one's mind, suspend disbelief, suspend the belief (the illusion) that it is unsafe to suspend disbelief...

It appears it is necessary to "believe" and "suspend disbelief" to be an "Indingo."

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we need to look outside ourselves for truth...Until we "get it."

Fact and objective proof is not important we need to just "get it."

Sounds like Landmark Education, and once again a belief without any factual foundation.

surrender to the process, knowing how much it would change my life.

"Surrender"?

This sounds like a religious conversion experience.

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Indigos are very much like people who left everything they knew, got off a sinking ship and found their way to shore...it's a long lonely road, some call it the dark night of the soul

More of the same.

Apparently you were diagnosed as "bi-polar" and placed on "lithium." Now you insist that was wrong and that you are an "Indingo."

Frankly, it seems like you should consult a psychiatrist and seek some additional counseling and another evaluation.

Claiming to be an "Indigo" is no substitute for getting the help you may really need.

And your posts here are becoming more and more like preaching and fantasy based.

You should understand that the rules of this board preclude preaching, whiether its a religion or belief in "Indigos."

Please review the rules again.