Changes or transitions have always evolved, and in the past we were able to accommodate them without feeling threatened by having to abandon old traditions or ways of thinking; however by the 1950s change exploded into a geometric progression introducing a radically new world that only those born in the past few decades can fully fathom or relate to. As products of the technological society, the brains of this new generation are in some ways wired differently than the rest of us, and trying to identify with or approach them solely through our past conditioning is both futile and counter productive.

Many churches and religious institutions are scrambling to find ways to appeal to the young, perhaps because of a diminishing bottom line as the old die off and the young are not around or inclined to contribute to the financial overhead or subscribe to the organizations publications. Most traditional institutions try to lure the young by beating the old drum harder not realizing that the young listen to a different drummer.

Whether we are aware of or feel threatened by our inability to attract the young we have to face the fact that they are not the individuals that our current systems are designed to teach. Today's young are no longer primarily products of our institutions but rather of our technology.

If we are tempted to think that technology has become some kind of villain let us remember that God (infinite intelligence) created it as well and when we look behind the surface we will see spiritual implications in all the new inventions that can help us enliven eternal truths. As extensions of consciousness, our nana-technological products are now making the three words we traditionally associate with God a technological reality - omnipresence (the ability to have a presence everywhere through cell phones etc), omniscience (access to all knowledge via the internet), and even omnipotence (unlimited power) possible for everyone.

We begin our leap into tomorrow when we face the fact that a predominant percentage of today's young in America are the first generation who have grown up with modern technology that literally operates as extensions of their very being. Computers, the internet, E-mail, I-pods, and cell phones are as much an integral part of their physical, psychological, and even spiritual being as are their vital organs.

Whereas, we older generation valued and spent a significant amount of our time reading with a book in hand, now, with hands gripping I-pods, fingers on computers, eyes watching television, and hours spent playing video games, for most, book time is out of the picture. What reading time there is left takes place on the internet sitting before the computer with the possibility of accessing infinite information condensed into as few words as possible. Accumulating knowledge has taken second place to being able to technologically access it when desired.

Presently, through technology, fantasy has now been replaced by virtual reality, and, as a result the line between reality and virtual reality has been obliterated for many of the young. As a result, without having to be taught it, they have arrived at the message the sages of all time have tried to get across - that the human scene is illusion or virtual reality. Because all reality is seen as virtual in this new day, the consciousness that each vision of reality "symbolizes" is more relevant than literal fact or intellectual dissection.

What's more, the digital generation centers on the moment and instant gratification. However, it would be a mistake to believe that instant gratification means that they are just self indulgent. Ever faster computer programs, instant E-mail, text messaging, immediate cellular phone contacts, and ever more instant transportation satisfies their ability and capacity to stay in the "now" and not linger in the non-existent past or waste time thinking of the unpredictable future.

In his illuminating article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Marc Prensky outlines our basic problem and proposes a difference that we of the older generation must now recognize if we have the slightest hope of building a bridge to the future. He sets it up by saying, "It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today's students think and process information fundamentally differently than their predecessors."

Prensky calls this digital generation "Digital Natives." Having been born into digital land they are at home in it. He calls those of us who were not of that day "Digital Immigrants." We may visit the digital world, be fascinated by it, and involved in it to some extent, but we will never be quite native to it. Just as we have heard that a novelist may have his or her successful books translated into a foreign language, it seldom happens that one can become successful writing in a language that was not spoken in their home during their formative years.

We, digital immigrants, who fumble around our technology punching buttons until amazingly something works, need not despair and believe we are obsolete and unnecessary. We have an important job ahead. Apart from our helping financially to supply our digital natives with the technological tools that are integral to their wholeness, if we bridge the gap by applying even a modicum of understanding as to how the new brains function we can illicit their attention and reveal age old truths in a way that they can and will accept.

To begin with we must realize digital natives have the ability to cluster think, to multi-task without confusing issues. For instance, I spoke to the youth of Unity at their annual conference a few years ago. Addressing the subject of multi-dimensional living - of being consciously aware that we exist at the physical dimension, the mental level, the spiritual vibration, and a number of other dimensions as well without jumbling them all together. I said that when I was a child my mother wouldn't let me listen to the radio at study time. When I did, a young girl jumped up and said, "When I have the stereo going and the TV on it frees up part of my mind so that I can study." As digital immigrants, our linear way of approaching study, and everything else for that matter, makes her statement foreign to us.

As my main interest is in finding meaningful ways to convey age old spiritual truths in a way that the young can identify with, similar to the problem our educational institutions are facing, I have found three significantly important areas for us to recognize and find practical solutions for.

First, the now generation will not accept long drawn out build-ups to a proposed premise, spiritual or otherwise. This means we must begin by thinking of immediate ways that induce an experience of a truth rather than a word-choked explanation of it. Perhaps that is why the churches that do attract many young offer them a charismatic experience rather than a lot of theological jargon.

The young will line up for hours to spend hundreds of dollars for the latest technological games where they actually participate with the images they receive. I am not belittling or denigrating the importance of our beliefs when I say this, but if we can frame them in a challenging game like and more personally involving fashion they might be more readily accepted and contemplated.

Then too, I was fascinated by one such experiential example at the Unity youth seminar. In order to create an experience that would break down the gender gap, one evening the boys all came dressed like girls. It was quite a shock to see a girl/boy with his arm around a girl/girl, but it did the trick. Any experience that does away with anything that smacks of racial, color, or sexual judgment is readily approved of by most young today. If that isn't a spiritual goal I don't know what is.

Though visible, the power and purpose of most technology lies in its invisible nature and the digital age comes closer to giving the visible and invisible equal status than we did before. In other words, ever since society began visible results were more valued than their invisible cause. Politically and socially it was accepted that the ends justified the means. It's not the same today. Having the ability to distinguish between cause and effect, the young are capable of a greater honesty than in the past, and they spot hypocrisy more readily than we did. If we older generation want to be listened to we have to "be" what we "say" or shut up.

If we want to be heard we have to listen. Coming from a sense of oneness balanced with self-value, rather than division, the young check out when they are denied their voice. When feed back is encouraged and the instructor is authentic enough to share his or her own personal experiences as well, there is a link-up with the instructor and it opens the gate to mutual understanding.

Finally, of all the methods the one that is most needed in order to close the gap between the past and the present is the need to re-language old beliefs and truths. Until we take our text books, such as our scriptures or our founding father's writings, and translate them into less formulistic language we won't get to first base in bringing youth back into the church or institutional fold. Oft repeated spiritual platitudes are tuned off within a few words.

Take the most significant word in our vocabulary, "God," for instance. That word is so loaded with meanings that range from A to Z, and is so commonly accepted as being something inaccessible off in the clouds apart from that which is actually within each of us that the second many digital natives see the word they turn off. If in our conversations, our writings, and our attempts to communicate we can, at least temporarily, replace or add to the word God with what is stands for subjectively rather than objectively. When a less conditioned and more impersonal meaning is presented, they will more likely listen. If every time we want to use the word we substitute it with "your higher consciousness," "the spirit within," or "infinite truth," or other spiritually designed synonyms then what we want to express becomes something they can personally identify with.

This new generation is the product of the marriage of science and spirit. As such, science and its spiritual wing, quantum mechanics, has freed us of superstition. To the degree that we try to pass on a supposedly faith based "God will do it" superstition rather than the self-actualization Jesus implied when he said, "Your faith hath made you whole," we shut the door to future co-creation with tomorrows leaders. Today's youth spot contradiction, and even when we claim that God is with us there is a lingering sense of duality, but when we say, as Jesus did, that God is "in" us or appearing "as" us, contradiction departs.

If we hope to share we, of the older generations, must look deep within ourselves to weed out unintentional hypocrisy, walk our talk, and offer what we have without any price tag. Rather than our trying to turn the clock back, let's let the young pull us into tomorrow. It's a wonderful day.

By Walter Starcke

http://www.walterstarcke.com