January 1 through January 11, 2013
The Year of the Child
Beloved,
I apologize if I seem to have been ignoring you. It seems like it’s been a long time since we chatted. Events in our world have occupied my mind for the last couple of weeks.
[Michael laughs.] We chat all the time. Every minute of every day, we are in constant communication in one form or another because WE ARE ONE. You awaken in the morning with me on your mind and your last thought at night is a prayer of thanks for my presence. You know that! And I know that! And I love you much, much more.
I’ve noticed you’ve been a bit distracted, but … why? What’s happened?
I know you know that there’s been another shooting incident at a school in Connecticut. More than twenty people, including children and a few teachers, were killed and several more were wounded on December 14, 2012 (just before Christmas). The fact that such events, triggered in anger, fear and pain, still occur in our world just dismays and frustrates me.
Yes, I know. I’ve told you before. Catastrophic occurrences like this impact the entire universe, manifest and unmanifest. We are always there to help and comfort, give strength and guide. Those babies who lost their physical lives have gained their spiritual lives and while your world mourns, this realm rejoices in their homecoming. Their tasks and goals, for the moment, have been completed and they rest in The Eternal One’s hands … in the immersion in Oneness and Wholeness that you have experienced just the merest whisper of on a couple of occasions.
Do not fear for them. Their sacrifice is sacred. No life … no sacrifice … no energy … is ever wasted or ever in vain in God’s Perfect Plan.
We all feel so helpless when such terrible things occur … like nothing we can do can make any difference. Nonetheless, in honor of your lifelong commitment to issues of this nature and compassion for those affected by such tragedies, many of your children found a way to reach out in love and compassion to encourage those affected. Michael’s Messengers of Love sent each child who attends that school a ‘Care Bear’ through generous donations from your global family and trees were donated and planted in the name of each child who lost his or her life in the event. These are small contributions in events of such overwhelming and heartbreaking magnitude, but both groups acted out of love and compassion … and in your name and honor … to continue your legacy of humanitarian outreach and partially heal the irreparable damage that occurred to humanity itself.
God bless each and every one of you. You have always been my support … my strength … my rock and you rock my world.
I was so thrown by the event that I opted to reprint the entire text from your speech at Oxford University in 2002 here at With a Child’s Heart a couple of weeks ago. Your words on that occasion were not widely reported; and, if publicized at all, were accompanied by the censorship to which you and the world were subjected by the world’s media … or purposely trivialized to make them more sensational. Your speech is so important to our world today. The text was so topical to the incident in Connecticut, although your speech was made more than twelve years before it occurred … and even more important to our world now than it was then … because it focuses on the tragic consequences of bypassing, neglecting, ignoring or belittling childhood. This is a topic that you spoke very eloquently and quite often about during your time with us and, therefore, one which I know you felt keenly.
Yes! Very keenly … and I still do. It’s what we are doing here. We are re-imagining a world which does not tolerate violence against its future … its babies.
The number of references to the importance of childhood and the parent/child bond in your speeches and publications is staggering, so much so that a complete listing of your references would require more space than we have in one of these conversations. A partial listing would include: your acceptance speech for the Grammy Legend Award in 1993, several passages in your books, Moonwalk and Dancing the Dream (1991), your music, your short films, your Heal the World Foundation, and your Heal the Kids initiative, which you launched at Carnegie Hall in 2001 with the following words:
“I would like to welcome you to Carnegie Hall … the world’s most famous concert hall … to hear an entirely different kind of music — a loftier melody. It’s a more eternal song.
There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart’s chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood.
This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world’s percussion instruments combined … that sweet sound of love.
Just a generation ago, it was this sound that could be heard in every turn in every town. It was the sound of love that echoed in the living room when a father giggled with his son or a mother tickled a small infant child. It was the sound of love that echoed from children’s literary classes as the parents read their children tales before they went to bed. And it was the sound of love that reverberated in their dinner conversations between parents and children, not just once a year but should be discovered everyday for peace to prosper.
Sadly, that sound has become a lost melody, a forgotten refrain, an empty tune and all we have in its place today is a dark and terrible noise. Instead of dinner conversations, there is the noise of video games. Instead of homework there is the din of the evening news. And instead of regular conversations between parents and children about drugs and violence, there is the sound — the deafening sounds — of silence.
Who among us would have believed that the sound of children at their playgrounds would be replaced by the sound of automatic machine gun fire at our schools; that the sound of little girls skipping rope would be overshadowed by the frantic squeals of children dodging bullets? Yet instead of loving our children more we’ve installed metal detectors in our schools.
Are we blind to the fact that our children are raging against the indifference… crying out against the abandonment … thundering against the neglect?
Heal The Kids is about doing something, about making a difference and trying to help adults and parents realize that it’s in our power to change the world that our children live in.
As a wise man once said, ‘If not us, then who; if not now, then when?’
My friends, with two children of my own, I know what it means to have to balance the demands of family and career — let’s not even talk about finding a date for myself, even though… [audience laughs and one woman’s voice can be heard, “Don’t you worry about that, Baby!” Michael laughs.] Even though Rabbi Shmuley keeps telling me he’s going to find me the perfect woman. My response is: “As long as it’s not a journalist.”
But learning how to strike this very necessary balance is what this special evening is all about.
In 3 weeks time, at Oxford University I will be delivering an address with strong implications for dealing with the parent-child relationship and giving an address that is certain to surprise you. Until then, I want to thank you all for coming out…showing your love. And I want to offer a couple of special thank-you’s going … that we have 100 New York City teachers with us … I want to thank Steven Shaunfeld, he’s a wonderful, wonderful. Everything he does for Heal the Kids is just incredible.
Together we can make a change for the better; together we can heal the world and make it a better place. God bless you all, I love you all.”
Three weeks later, at Oxford University, the following words summed up your oration: “Tonight, I come before you less as an icon of pop (whatever that means anyway), and more as an icon of a generation – a generation that no longer knows what it means to be children.”
With all these references, it is obvious that the estate of childhood and the deteriorating parent/child relationship was a particularly relevant issue for you during your physical life.
Yes, and it still is. It is the all-important first step to be taken in healing our world. Honoring the estate of childhood, as we’ve spoken about in previous conversations, has the potential of single-handedly opening the door to a healed and evolved humanity. And a healed and evolved human race will heal the planet. War will end; poverty will be a memory, violence will be erased, the degradation of the human spirit will be abolished, prejudice and bigotry will be eradicated. It all hinges on the restoration of the child at the center of the home and school communities.
Restoring the child to his place at the center of the home and school communities depends upon honoring the child’s needs, respecting the child’s sovereignty and healing the rifts that are all too apparent in the parent/child bond.
Baby, I found the following quote from one of my social network friends and I don’t know to which occasion I should attribute it, but I believe it’s relevant to this conversation:
I think every child is born wanting to do a certain thing and wanting to be like somebody who reached a goal. And adults make them feel as if, “Are you kidding? Come on … I want you to have a REAL job. What are the chances of making it doing that?”
The Wright Brothers, who were bicycle makers, had a dream of wanting to take flight. People never talk about the abuses they went through, these two guys. Or Edison … with every invention there was a world scoffing and feeding him negative information. He talked about it later. Disney, who was always told, “Don’t be stupid … come on.” His own father told him that. “You want to draw? How about a REAL job?”
Yes, honoring the child’s fears and dreams can heal the world. Rabbi Schmuley and I were writing a book about this very subject. We wanted to institute an International Children’s Day and propose a Universal Children’s Bill of Rights.
Yes, Michael, I know. The good Rabbi has published his book Honoring the Child Spirit and I have an electronic copy of it stored on my computer. This is just another in the long list of occasions and platforms you utilized to speak about the importance of a nurtured, protected childhood … and the serious consequences of a lack thereof … for our children, for ourselves and for our world.
Well, do you remember in Conversation #55 (April 1 through April 8, 2012), we talked about a daily meditation and visualization practice called Come Together Over Michael Jackson?
Yes, I remember. How has that worked out?
Very well, actually. We began in May and June with visualizing that all the guns on earth would be silent for one minute during the Major Love Prayer global visualization on June 25. The focus topics for the following months included educating the kids, feeding the starving children, treating all kids with treatable diseases, bringing peace to the conflict escalating in the Middle East, etc. Our social networking sites joined us in this initiative with Major Love Prayer and several Facebook groups all meditating on these same focus topics in private, individual practices … and then, using the Major Love Prayer global visualization on the anniversary day of your transformation, to collectively blast our intentions into the universe. The cooperation of all the different groups in a common purpose was hugely successful and created a strong bond of love and common purpose. While we didn’t see instant results, we didn’t expect to. We collectively set a commonly held intention and anchored that intention with our visualizations and prayers. And, as you have so often pointed out, when the intention is anchored within the collective consciousness of the planet, it’s only a matter of time before those intentions become real in the physical world of form and matter.
Well, we have begun a New Year and in honor of your lifelong commitment to the world’s children … and keeping in mind the recent horrifying tragedy in Connecticut … we would like to continue our Come Together Over Michael Jackson initiative by dubbing 2013 THE YEAR OF THE CHILD. To support this focus, we intend to concentrate our daily meditations, prayers and visualizations on the following monthly topics:
January and February – THE CHILD WITHIN
March – PAYING ATTENTION TO OUR CHILDREN (reading to them, playing with them)
April – APPRECIATING OUR CHILDREN FOR WHO THEY ARE (not making them carbon copy adults)
May – ENCOURAGING CHILDREN TO GO FOR THEIR DREAMS
June – FEEDING AND PROTECTING ALL CHILDREN (for all children are our children)
For the rest of the year, we can put our heads together and come up with additional topics later. These visualizations concentrate our focus on happy children, sharing quality time with the adults in their lives, being read to by and playing with their significant caregivers, learning life skills but being encouraged to dream their dreams and make those dreams a reality.
I feel the first focus topic is the most important because we can’t expect to heal anything in our world if we haven’t taken the time to heal ourselves.
Yes, that is true.
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and make a change.
All of us have issues from our childhoods that we need to address. Whether it is abuse or abandonment, neglect or violence, peer or sibling bullying or degradation, illness or depression, adult pressures to abandon our dreams in favor of making a living or eschewing imaginative play in favor of the logical, cynical world … all of us have issues from our past that have made … and continue to make … lasting impressions upon our lives on a daily basis. By addressing these issues, we can heal THE CHILD WITHIN and that healed child can, then, reach out and heal others.
A suggested visualization to support this topic follows:
Prepare your sacred space with whatever has meaning for you. A candle, a stick of incense, a beloved photograph … whatever feels right for you. Sit comfortably, breathing normally and become increasingly aware of your breath. A favorite prayer may be said or hymn may be sung to increase the sanctity of these moments taken out of your day to spend with God, Michael, Higher Self, Allah, Krishna, Buddha. All are One!
When you are comfortable begin to notice your breathing and direct it more purposefully. Take deep breaths filling your abdomen like filling a water balloon, then your lungs. Exhale from your lungs first, then your diaphragm. Repeat these deep, slow breaths, feeling and acknowledging with gratitude the nourishment the oxygen provides to your body.
When your breathing is comfortably directed in this pattern (don’t force it), begin to empty your mind of all the chatter, worry and meaningless thoughts that cascade around it during your normal everyday life. Perhaps, you might count your blessings with gratitude for your health, the abundance you enjoy, the things that bring you joy.
After a few minutes, think about your childhood and one (just one, please, at a time) event, word or relationship that brought you pain or discomfort. View the incident with an unbiased eye, forming no judgment of right or wrong. In this way, there is no fault or blame. Remain aloof from it and unattached. It is done and cannot now be changed. Allow yourself to feel, again, the pain you felt. The pain is not right or wrong … it just is; don’t judge it. Accept it as a challenge to be overcome with forgiveness.
Now, view the other people involved in the incident … one by one … and forgive them for their part in your pain or discomfort. This may take a couple of minutes. Don’t feel rushed or pressured. Let each appear at his or her own time and in his or her own way. You might call them forward in your mind by using their name and let their actions in the incident be accepted. Acceptance does not mean approval. All you are doing is accepting the past which is over and done with. In Michael’s words, “The past is said and done. I need us to carry on.”
Now, picture yourself … the wounded child … in this incident. Call yourself forward and forgive yourself for your suffering. This is the most important part of this visualization. We are not here to change what occurred. We are here to forgive it so that we can move forward. Whether you misunderstood the implications of the incident or didn’t is not important. We are here to accept that this incident hurt you in some way. We are here to forgive the fact that we suffered over this incident. We are here to heal that wound and make ourselves whole again. You might visualize receiving a BIG HUG from yourself … or from Michael … as the graphic accompanying this example shows.
When all has been accepted and forgiven, continue to breathe in the same pattern for a few minutes. Begin to hear the sounds around you, to feel the air, to smell the smells. You might want to add an affirmation, such as, “I accept that this incident occurred. It caused THE CHILD WITHIN pain. It is forgiven.”
Open your eyes and become aware of your sacred space. Next time, use the same template but with a different incident until you have reviewed and healed all the painful episodes.
Jan – January 11, 2013
Tragic loss shakes people out of their normal blur of routine life and makes them wake up to find what has the highest value, priority, and meaning to life. From his many words addressing this key issue of the parent/child bond, we have a shinging example of how to bring love to the world… starting with a focused attention on children. At the end of his acceptance speech for the award for “We Are The World” Michael said “When you leave here tonight, remember the children” .
I love the focus of healing the world, by healing the child within, and all the children around the world.
May this effort be blessed, now that we have fresh eyes and hearts to know… it truly does matter. Make a difference in the life of a child. Today.
I cried for my inner child and revived my hug from Michael Thank you Jan and Michael LOVE YOU MORE ❤
O, Come, Let Us Adore Him. I don’t know why that came to mind as I read this, but it did, so I posted it. This Conversation has touched me deeply today, and I will heed all that has been said here. It will take awhile to heal my child within, but I think it’s time to do just that. Forgive and move on, and then use that newly found energy to make a difference in a child’s life.
P.S. I love that it this was for 1/1 to 1/11 and posted on 1/11. Lots of good vibes about that Jan 🙂
A touching piece here, loved reading all the words. Something to think about.
Children are the future…but OMJ how shaken up the World is right now! With a puber in the house it is difficult to explain many things.
Michael, we will Keep your Legacy alive…you are everywhere…. Marry X
ThanX Jan, you are the Best.
Dearest Jan, Don’t always comment but always read and always come away with renewed strength after the world has thrown me for a loop once again. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHEN (not if ) WHEN this goal is accomplished, AND it is signed, sealed, and delivered as the dream and work of Michael Jackson…now that’s a world I might want to live in……