UPDATE (2006)
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE
A PLACE FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES
by Erika De Bly, in Holland
First of all I would like to say thanks to all of you who have given us a response to the information on this website. It is great that we get this opportunity to share our experiences with those interested in a different approach towards education in different parts of the world.
Especially for the last half year we have received a lot of emails from parents and facilitators sharing their experiences with children and telling us about the urge to start a place like The Rainbow Bridge.
Meeting Point
A lot has happened since the article about The Rainbow Bridge was placed on the website. With no funding anymore to pay for the monthly income of the facilitators the school closed at the end of 2003. The children went to different schools and doing well as far as we know. They sometimes ask when The Rainbow Bridge is coming back. The facilitators have either gone back working with children in the system using the experiences at the time of The Rainbow Bridge and some of them are working out their process to find out what their dream is. I (Erika) am at home with all the signs of a burn-out which is my way to go through this part of my process to find the rainbow bridge within myself. But it seems that the process of The Rainbow Bridge is a continuing story. And that’s what it is all about the process and not about a goal in itself.I would like to share these experiences of this process with you. Why? After a while I was confronted with “spiritual projects” of friends who experienced the same kind of situations during the time they were or are working with their particular project. While sharing ins and outs I realized that they were going through the same steps as we did. Everyone gets the opportunity to work out processes alone or with each other. They come and go, stay or return at a certain time.
For me it was all part of my journey to find out that it was ok what had happened during the years The Rainbow Bridge was a school and that the time was right to close. It seems that we all get our own project's). It was and is a learning process and a beautiful gift which was given to us all. When we started in Holland there were no other educational initiatives with the same intention at the time. Our journey was one of trial and error and most of all of trust in the way the children were guiding us.
A new direction
We all want to move into a new direction. Many of the old paradigms of education are changing in the light of new knowledge. The children being born today will force changes in the system simply by being unable to adapt to schools in their present form. Many teachers experience the same thing. Parents are confronted with children getting sick because they feel isolated and not understood. It seems to happen in many countries all over the world. The magazine Children of the New Earth keeps us updated about what is new or different in the field of education, health & nutrition, parenting, among other things, in different places of the planet.
What is the new direction? It were the parents or children through the parents asking to start a private initiative. I felt guided to do so and meet the right people to work together. Just like I felt guided to organize the WESAK children's festival (see part I). I cannot explain how this happens. The feeling is there like an inner-knowing. What I did not know and did not realize is that meeting the right people is one thing. The confrontation with everybody’s processes including my own, recognizing and dealing with it is another thing. I knew intuitively what was happening although I did not have any references. When I start talking about it and tried to explain what was going on hardly anybody could follow me. Everybody was so pre-occupied with what was going on. For me it also was a whole new situation and I had to learn how to cope with it. Now I know that by going through an experience you are aware of that particular situation and you understand.
I have also learned that we can only proceed when we act as one, when we are working together and everyone involved takes responsibility for his or her part of the project. Together we share responsibility for the whole project.
During the years it became clear that The Rainbow Bridge is one of those places where people meet and get the chance to work on their own processes. The children were and are the mirrors most of the time. Mirrors of Love, Peace, Compassion, Joy, Abundance……….They asked for guidance to learn about the world on planet earth and to get advice about using their spiritual tools being human. But most of all they needed to be recognized for who they really are.
Communication
At the time we invited a trainer to give a reading and healing course for facilitators and parents. When you are together with the children lots of them communicate directly through energy in ways we still have to learn and/or re-member. For example through colour(s), sound(s), scent(s), emotion/feeling telepathically. It is also important to keep the place clean energetically. I know of a school in Russia where children or adults after having been in contact with the outerworld cleansed their aura’s upon return. In an article by Mary Bell Nyman about ‘Raising Psychic children’ examples are given from the time the children’s psychic pre-schools and elementary schools Yin Yang in Berkeley and San Jose, California still existed. The schools closed in the early 1990’s. All the teachers were unique in that they were all trained in clairvoyance and completed a minimum three years of training as a clairvoyant healer and psychic reader. The teachers were the guides and the children the creators. The teachers communicated with the spirit of the child and acknowledged the free will of each spirit and what their spiritual intent was for this lifetime. Children were not taught how to be psychic – they already were! Teachers were trained to use their psychic tools to create a safe haven for children where they could use their natural psychic abilities. The children were also trained in the academic areas of math, reading, writing, science, language, socialization skills, and problem solving. Allowing children space and permission to grow and have all the knowledge they acquired from past lives, in their present body, was an essential part of the process at Yin Yang. Teachers served as spiritual guides who helped the children discover and enhance their spiritual autonomy and communication with the Source (God, Spirit….).
Each morning, as a child said good-bye to his parents at the classroom door, he learned to make spiritual separations. This meant pulling his energy out of his parents’ space, allowing them to have their day, and also sending the parents’ energy back to them, from his space. Children disconnected by putting their parents’ energy in an imaginary soap bubble and releasing their energy with an “I love you, Mom, I love you, Dad, see you later,” and popping it. They used an imaginary magnet to call their energy back from their parents’ space as well. Before entering the classroom, the child learned to ground and match the energy set for the day. This allows any foreign energy to be released, making it easy for the child to be present inside her body. When children matched the energy of the school, it meant matching a vibration set for permission to learn and discover themselves. This vibration was usually a color. This allowed the child to separate from home and say "hello" to school, being present in the moment.
At the Rainbow Bridge the facilitators meditated in the morning and cleansed the place and set the energy for the day. Sometimes there were parents who joined them. The children choose not to meditate. We were on our way to do games with children to learn to ground, cleanse their energy and protect their aura bubble. Sometimes using Aura Soma essences with all the beautiful colors and lovely scents. Not all the children were open to participate yet. When I worked with a child on an individual basis it was a combination of energy work and cognitive work in a playful way.
During the time I had my private practice, prior to the school, the children started to teach me and they still do.
At times I felt lonely and not understood. I can remember the conversations I had with Steve Rother (The Group) about the school. He used to say: “I know you want to meet the other old Indigo’s so you can facilitate this project together and understand each other. I am sorry but they are still working within the system, they are not ready yet.“ So I had to go through the whole process by myself to recognize and learn how the process is actually working. I had to find out what the key is. This might sound familiar to you.
I learned to trust deeper and deeper and deeper. I learned that everything has a deeper meaning and is ok. I learned that LOVE is the keyword. I learned that all I had to do was just be. I learned what it means to be in Service. This year I learned what it is in depth to let go of old patterns and come closer to my pure Self. The process is still going on and I am still learning. On a deeper level I know how it is working. I am becoming more and more aware of it.
And so facilitators were coming and going; children were coming and going; parents and facilitators loved you or hated you; trusted you or distrusted you. And the children….. I dare say that they felt The Rainbow Bridge was the right place for them.
We had situations that parents took their children from school, because it was too much for them, started their own place, failed and came back. There were parents who stood right behind me/us and children who are thankful for the time they spent with us; there were parents who did not communicate directly to us and used the newspaper to get to us. I realize now it is all part of the game.
One of the parents told me lately that her daughter (12 years now) recently mentioned (in her own words) that “Children at The Rainbow Bridge were light already. They did not need a school anymore. The parents made a fool of themselves.” I talked to the parent to look behind the words and we both realized she is right. When the mother asked how the school should look like. She did not know. I understand because it is not about a school but a haven where children may grow and develop their talents in their own way. The environment of the school and we were not ready (like the article I referred to about the Yin Yang school) yet. The intention was there and we certainly have planted a seed. Not everybody was fully aware what it meant to be a spiritual guide. The intention we have for the future (whenever) is starting a center for children in the age of 0-100+ and not a school. It is more a center of consciousness.
Vision
Unity in Diversity
The Rainbow Bridge is a private initiative with a different approach and contents towards education.
A dynamic center created by and for children in the age of 0 – 100+.
The center is a bridge between people, organizations, religions and nationalities
Inside and outside The Rainbow Bridge, where all hundred colours of the rainbow
are One.
The Vision that everybody is unique is central to the daily processes of learning through experience .
The facilitators serve as spiritual guides and the children are the creators, masters in the art of living.
I do not mean to offend parents or people working with children by saying it is you who need to go to school. It is of great importance to open up and learn about who your/these children are and who you are.
The Third Wave
If we look into the history of education and now I restrict myself to Europe, we see that during the medieval ages the first convent schools were in service of the church. Before that time children were considered small adults. Philosophers of the 18th century discovered the child as a child. They pretended a special place for young people, separated from the worries of the adults. The other side of the coin was: the child was protected from the social reality, relieved from his own responsibility. Children were raised by keeping them small. There were pedagogues like Jean-Jacques Rousseau who came with theories about the development of a child. During the 19th century the attention was drawn to children.
Professor Lea Dasberg (University of Amsterdam, Holland) speaks of three waves of emancipation of the child in her book ‘Grootbrengen door kleinhouden als historisch verschijnsel’ (1984). “In 1750 the first emancipation of the child was showing a wave with the emphasis from society to the child; the second emancipation after the second world war was showing a wave from the child back to society. The Third Wave where the emphasis is neither only on the child nor only on society but is showing the integration of the two hasn’t been realized (yet). “
Are the children of today showing us the Way?? Like Jesus said: Follow the children!
A crop circle ‘The Third Wave’ was reported in August 2001 in Knap Hill, Wiltshire England and has been drawn as a hologram by Janosh. with the translation: makes you aware of your choice to be here on Earth.
For me the Third Wave reflects the meaning of what it is to live from the Heart. The Heart meaning the pure connection with our true! Nature. Many children of different ages reflect this way of living. For us to listen, observe and recognize what they are telling us. It is about a shift from consciousness to awareness.
Breaking the Walls
The world as it is today is one of rules and regulations, power and control, fear and chaos. We built it ourselves. We have come a long way from home. Aren’t we supposed to be the guardians of this beautiful water planet? Have we forgotten? It looks like it and the children of today are reminding us. They have come to help us change the web of social structures and ideas of what society needs. They change the ideas about parenting and the way we will earn our living. They are here to restructure old believe systems. The children create a new way of living, a new structure in greater harmony with the direction in which the human evolution is moving. They are breaking the walls. That’s what has to be done when we really want to change our way of living into one of Love and Peace.
Right now these children have to live according to the present system to which they cannot adapt. They will create new ‘systems’ of living who will not force them to change their way of living. They open the door for us to help re-connect to our true Self.
It is a difficult but challenging time for parents. Specially if they try to raise them according to old patterns of this disharmonic society. They follow the upbringing of their parents and try to pass on these patterns and believe systems. I love the way Kahlil Gibran used to say in his poem:
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you,
With his might that his arrow may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness
For even he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable.
Law and Order
In Holland the whole educational system is falling apart. Because a lot of children cannot adapt anymore to the present situation private initiatives appear and more and more parents choose for home schooling. The Ministry of Education is not happy about this. In our constitution there is an article speaking about Freedom of Education. The founding of a private school and home schooling are neither prohibited nor permitted in the legislation regarding education. Because there is an increase of initiatives and of parents choosing for home schooling over the last five years the Ministry wants to adjust the legislation in a way that they get more power and control. When we founded The Rainbow Bridge in 2000 we only had to do with the Inspection of Education of our municipality. Today you have to make a request to the Ministry of Education. The Law with regard to inspection of the schools is being extended (???) for private schools and probably also home schooling.
It is probably part of the process. We are in the middle of it and trying to find our way.
I am curious how this process unfolds in other countries.
Children as advisors
We have always been careful giving names like indigo’s, crystals, new age children, starchildren etcetera to the children. There are so many different interpretations of the names depending on which articles or books you read. If you ask children ‘Are you a …..’ most of the time they do not like to be named like that. Once at a presentation when a girl was asked the question if she was a new age child she answered ‘No I am an old soul’. I once heard a story from a man who used to live with the indigenous people of the Amazon river for a long time. It seems that when a child is born they know when it is an old soul, which they call a Day-1 child or a young soul. A Day-1 child has been on earth from the very first day humanity was part of this planet. These beings carry all the information about the history of Mother Earth.
In different countries there are these beautiful souls sitting on the front row with messages for the world. Do you remember the boy in South Africa who was HIV-infected and addressed the audience of a conference on Aids just before his death? It was broadcasted all over the world.
How about this young boy in the United States who has his own organization and speaks with the great leaders of the world about world problems in relation to children.
The other day I read an article in the newspaper of the area where I live in Haarlem near Amsterdam. There is this daughter of a congressman who told her daddy: When do you people finally start listening more to children? He took her seriously and started a competition for children of preliminary schools called “Because children are magicians, something can change in Haarlem” The children could express themselves in different creative ways. And…………. a couple of suggestions will be realized next year. All great examples of the role of children as advisor. Not only hear what children have to say, listen carefully and be aware, take them seriously. It will make a world of difference.
The next steps
To be honest there are no next steps actually. It is a continuing process. I trust that the next steps will unfold for me personally and for another project at the right time, right place and with the right persons. I am still in touch with people in the field and through this website with you who are reading this article right now.