X Factor:
New Models for Clinical Success
in Working with
Indigo Children

This is a talk I originally gave to a group of therapists who were working with Indigo children. There were also teachers, parents and some teenagers in the audience.

What's a real Indigo?

First of all, I'd like to state up front that my beliefs might be different from those of others. I state them here only as my views, and make no claim that I represent anybody other than myself. I think these views are important, though, especially when you take them in the light of other material in this field. My outlook comes from over 20 years of clinical and personal experience in working with Indigos, pseudo-Indigos, Indigo wannabes and their parents. I present this experience here for you as a way of broadening and clarifying the scope of our discussion.

What is a real Indigo? To really define Indigo, we need to define what is human and what is not. This might sound bizarre, unnecessary and even unwise or unethical. Yet I believe this question will become the single most important issue in our lives in the next 10 or 15 years.

Why? Even if the 'Indigo' phenomenon turns out to be a total bust, which it may, issues of genetics, bioengineering, cloning and robotics are going to fundamentally and permanently shift our self- image as humans. We're going to face personal choices of a caliber that we've never faced before. So get ready to get blown away.

The term Indigo became popular through an article that appeared in Omni magazine about 35 years ago. This article discussed the first known wave of Indigo Children that appeared in China around that time.

The children in that group all had verifiable super human powers. For example, some could read books at any distance, and could tell you what was on a given page of the book no matter where it was. Others had spectacular powers of telekinesis. There were many other feats that these kids could demonstrate. Their abilities were tested time and again under all conditions. This was the real deal, and it was a big deal.

There was some wondering at that time if these Indigo children were the beginning of a larger trend in human population. Was this something that might explode onto the evolutionary scene on a worldwide basis? If it were true, what would that mean?

Then for twenty years or so, there was no more word of the Indigo children on a popular level. These children have continued to appear, however, not only in China, but at various locations and at different times all over the world.

In the last fifteen years or so, there has been a resurgence of interest and chat around the Indigo children phenomenon. This interest has been mostly with the New Age crowd, who revel in things abstract, intangible and ludicrous. This group of New Agers was the gateway for the hopeful parents of another generation of children who were altogether different that the Indigos: The ADD generation.

Ever since that time there has been an unfortunate confusion at large between the real Indigo children and the questionable potential of this much larger group of ADD children. This reflects the general confusion in American society between imagination and reality. Although that's not the subject we're going to go into here, I believe it's important to keep it in the subtext of our discussion.

To be absolutely clear, there's nothing ambiguous about the powers of Indigo Children. They are real. Their powers can be demonstrated under a variety of conditions. They are powers that average human children do not have under any conditions.

Indigos are real. Who are they?

In a word, they have powers. Their powers include telepathy, telekinesis and many other features that our human minds we can't perceive or understand.

Current Models

Now that we've cleared up that issue, let's ask a more important question: When we're talking about the Indigo phenomenon, is anything different happening now than has ever happened before? Are the Indigos really coming more frequently than they used to? Or does it just seem that way because of our increased communication these days? In other words, do we just hear about Indigos now more easily than we used to be able to in the past?

When you get down to it, there's no way to distinguish if this group of Indigos really is growing, or our communication is just so much better now that it appears to be that way. We'll only be able to tell over time as we accumulate data.

And we'll need lots of data if we're going to figure this thing out at all.

For now, I think our first step should be to do whatever we can to discern what's genuine and what's not concerning the Indigos. We need to ask questions like:

- How much of this phenomenon relates to neurosis, psychosis and compensation in these children?

- What are real powers?

- Does it matter if a child is born with these powers or if they develop them later in life?

Every parent that has a child with a problem wants to think the child is special. As a therapist, teacher or parent, you need to assess accurately what is going on with the child. Parents need to get out of denial so they can see their child for who s/he really is as much as possible. This is the best way to do something that is actually helpful for the child. The child must be seen, as much as possible, for who they are, whatever that is. Being held in the light of truth without judgment or evaluation is far more useful and healing than being 'held in the light.'

The field of psychology deals with human models. If the Indigos are real, do we need post-human models? Do we need para-human models? I believe we do, and we'll start getting into that in a bit.

There are serious problems with definitions, categories and models. We need them and we need to not have them as well. In my experience, I've found that Western models, physical and psychological, contain biases that blind their adherence to the majority of reality. Science has turned out not to be science because we haven't been able extricate ourselves from our cultural and personal self-interests.

My method to get around these biases has been to look to other cultural models to help us out. It's not that these models are inherently better than ours, but the important thing is that they are different than ours. It's in the difference that the learning happens.

There are many other models than the ones I present here. All of them are good if you use them at the right time. All of them are bad if you use them at the wrong time. Indigenous models for defining and managing Indigos have some very valuable perspectives. I'm going to focus here on Taoist, Aztec and Tantric models because that's what I know best.

For example, in my acupuncture training, I learned many different classical models of acupuncture theory. As I learned each of them, I also learned to prescribe to none of them exclusively. If I observe that a patient in my clinic is conforming to a pattern contained in one of these models, then I'll use it. A model works well if the patient is trapped in a pattern that the model describes. But if the patient isn't in one of those patterns, it's useless and wrong to try to make them fit into one. I don't try to make it happen when it can't happen, but many practitioners do.

Most medical practitioners in modern medical disciplines are protocol-based in their treatment procedures. The whole edifice of Western medicine now requires those protocols to be carried out whether they're effective or not. This is the problem with models: they lead the mind to believe that it can handle everything in the world on its own terms.

Well, life doesn't work that way.

Indigos exceed the parameters of even healthy models. Protocols don't work with them. In fact, protocols are torturous and harmful to them. If you're working with Indigos, you'll need to extend and suspend the definitions you have of just about everything, including yourself. When you do, they'll find the gaps in your worldview and do their best to drive you mad. This is part of the healing that they bring, but we'll get to that later.

Indigenous Models

There are many Indigenous models. Each of them that I've seen understands that an Indigo must be identified early in life and given proper training. If this doesn't happen, things begin to go awry for the child, their family and the society they live in. In the absence of proper training the Indigo frequently goes wrong and becomes a liability, rather than a gift, for themselves and their community.

The Taoist model has an individual focus. It's about letting go of social conventions and boundaries. Its quest centers around discovering and embodying your true individual self and your place in the Tao. Then you let it all go. You learn to cherish and develop your powers in isolation and in connection with nature. This is a great default system because it's totally natural and doesn't cost anything. You just go off, do your practices and observe what unfolds. I've found that many Indigos do really well with developing themselves this way. Just leave them alone to do their thing.

The Aztec model creates a social system that serves the greatest unfoldment of all individuals. It focuses on interpersonal relationships and interchange. They understand how wisdom develops between individuals. The Aztec focus is to spend life in ceremony and do social work that is an outpouring of communication with interdimensional beings. It trains you to give everything you've got under all circumstances and to create all the beauty you can as long as you're here on Earth.

The Tantric model teaches you to develop an all-encompassing relationship with a qualified guru. It empowers the self while letting go of the self. Its focus is to serve the highest good, create as much positive energy as possible and focus on developing yourself to a state of perfection. All efforts go toward strengthening your relationship and direct contact with the supreme divine being. Yet ultimately none of it matters. You created your whole world anyway to realize oneness.

Each of these systems has their own methods to identify and work with Indigo children. Yet they all share the understanding that if the Indigo isn't identified as early as possible in life and given the proper training, trouble will likely follow.

I think it's important to emphasize that these systems have been around for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The Indigo phenomenon is not new. It may or may not be happening on a larger scale now than it has before. We'll never know about the past. All we can do is begin to observe and measure what we have in front of us right now, collect notes and compile data for the future.

My Model

I can say that in my experience, treating these children with herbs and acupuncture has been very helpful for them. More than anything, Traditional Chinese Medicine can meet them at their level and give them something that is real. For many Indigos, this touching of something real can give them a sense of hope that they've never had before. That thread of hope can open incredible doors for them.

Because I've treated a number of Indigos and a lot of pseudo- Indigos over the last 20 years, I too have my viewpoints on the subject. I've resisted the urge to create a model. This is more of a catalogue of observations and impressions that have evolved through my experiences in this field. It's incomplete, but it's a good start and I think it's helpful for now. I hope that we'll evolve many tools and models over time as we gain experience in this arena.

Here we go:

Human

Normal human. This person rides in the middle of the road in life. S/he has a wide range of abilities, is adaptable to many situations and can develop in a variety of ways over time.

Compromised human. There are many levels of compromise. A person can:

- be born with it

- s/he can compromise as a response to trauma, or

- there may be latent inborn issues that you only discover as the child develops. These can include physical, emotional mental and social disabilities.

Most of us do things to compensate for our disabilities. Compensations can move in a variety of directions. When it all boils down, we can view it like this:

- Does our compensation make the problem worse?

- Does it make the problem better?

- Does it create a combination of worse and better?

One way to deal with adversity is to compensate by developing yourself to extraordinary levels. One example of this is field sensitivityin chronically traumatized individuals. This means that some people who go through trauma develop a very heightened awareness of what's going on around them. They can read other people's emotions and intentions quite well. In the brain wave world, they call them Delta Wave people. Delta Wave individuals can be excellent shamans and healers. They put a Delta brainwave into their environment like a bat's sonar and they read it constantly.

Highly compromised humans can compensate their way to Indigo status over time. These individuals are usually real characters with a strong dark side. They need a lot of discipline and role models that they genuinely admire. They can act out against others in flamboyant and dangerous ways. One of their chief values is that they really understand and anticipate human motivations and behaviors. Nobody can lie to them and get away with it. This differs in a big way from true Indigos, who are total suckers and want to believe the best in people at all costs.

Even in Marin County, California, the vast majority of people that you will meet in life will fall into the Human category. This majority is so vast that it doesn't even really make sense to have any other categories. Except that when and if you encounter a person from one of the other two categories that I'm about to mention, your entire paradigm may need to shift...

Post-Human

These people are born with extraordinary powers. The origin of these powers and the reasons why it happens is speculative.

I call these people true Indigos. They are pretty much human, but they can do things that ordinary humans can't do. They have normal human needs and desires, but their sensitivities and emotional demands are amplified. They need to learn how to use their powers constructively and appropriately.

Post-human Indigos tend to be idealistic and trusting. Because of that, they get hurt more than normal humans. Their pain leads to compromise. This compromise leads to repression, suppression and compensation of the personality. This ultimately leads to physical, emotional, mental and social illness and/or acting out if you don't deal with it creatively. Their process isn't any different from the rest of us, except that it happens on a super- human scale.

Post-Human acting out happens on a tragic scale. Usually the acting out involves acts of self-deprecation and self-injury rather than harming others. If they get hurt enough, their ideal can finally get damaged. That's when they go awry. When this happens they'll despise all humans or a particular group of them. They may become bent on revenge. This is because the violation of their ideal is so traumatic to them that it becomes the center of their world.

The thriving Post-Human is usually very successful in their chosen profession. People think that Post-Humans have a certain magic quality that others in their field lack. It's true. Post- humans tend to be altruistic and to create grand works of refinement. They bring humanity closer to the future by invention and example.

Post-Human Indigos are bored and often dismayed or sickened by human society. They want to see something better and often take steps to make it happen. They suffer and go existential when they encounter human inertia, lethargy and resistance. They often resign themselves to a small, comfortable niche in life and take themselves down slowly through indulgence. Life for them is often bittersweet.

Para-Human

Like it or not, there are some individuals around who just aren't human. I can say that I've worked with a number of these individuals in my acupuncture practice. They seem to operate from a completely different set of rules than normal people. They are also true Indigos, but maybe for different reasons than individuals from the other groups.

Para-Humans suffer at the hands of humanity worse than any others. This is because humans can sense these individuals are non-human and do whatever they can to take them down. The process begins in childhood and never lets up. Even after the person dies, humans continue to revile and ostracize them.

Para-Humans have no understanding or way to relate to human behaviors. At the same time, they have genuine social needs that far exceed those of normal humans. Ouch! The formula for these individuals is :

super sensitivity + a sick environment + a lack of understanding= Personal Disaster.

Para-Humans compensate in similar ways to Post-Humans, but usually find soothing in the esoteric. What keeps them going is the hope that life exists in a better form somewhere else in the universe. They frequently get into astrology, astronomy, biology and other sciences.

Para-Humans become isolated super-geeks, artists and inventors. They typically remain unsung for their entire lives. Their work usually isn't discovered or understood until long after their death, if at all. They come here, do their piece, suffer and leave. Their lives are lonely and stark. Nicola Tesla is a great example of the Para-Human tragedy. If you want to know what the life of a Para-Human is like, see The Man who Fell to Earth with David Bowie.

On the upside, Para-Humans get some of the greatest benefits from an increased social network of Indigos. This is why they're so excited about the Internet.

Early Identification

Each of the systems that I've studied places a very strong emphasis on identifying Indigos early in life. When the community can identify an Indigo, then it can get the Indigo proper training and discipline to cultivate his or her energy in the best ways possible. In the absence of this cultivation, the Indigo's energy inevitably goes wrong and becomes a hazard to themselves, their family and their community.

In other words, it is toxic to raise an Indigo as if s/he is a normal human child. Attempts to do so will fail, and nobody will benefit from the Indigo's gifts. To the contrary, these gifts will slowly turn into liabilities for the entire community.

How do you identify an Indigo?

Infancy

- Shen in the eyes. In acupuncture terminology, the term Shen means spirit. True Indigos have an extraordinary quantity of this quality in their eyes right from birth. The quality of Shen is not a woo-woo concept. It's a clinical observation that a trained individual can learn to discern.

- Use of whole-body processing and expression. Indigos seem to use all of their neurology in their efforts to communicate. Compared with normal children, Indigos are the ones who are dancing, singing, painting, drawing and speaking their expressions all at the same time.

- Early Verbal.Some Indigos can speak from the moment they're born. The language they use can either be the language of their birth parents and culture, that of another, or some other language all their own. Whichever it turns out to be, they arrive in our world speaking, naming things and questioning the rules from the get go.

- Powers. This is the most obvious and definitive mark of the genuine Indigo. Strange occurrences, bizarre coincidences and general poltergeist-like activity in the baby's general vicinity all point to a little bundle of Indigo in the family. These demonstrations tend to fall on blind eyes in modernized cultures. In more traditional cultures, they are the signs that it's time to call the shaman.

Childhood

If an Indigo isn't identified as an infant, there's often a lot of compensation going on by the time s/he gets to childhood. The sheer effort that the Indigo needs to exert just to relate in any way to his or her immediate family can exhaust them within a year or two. As a result, s/he will carry a psychological load that can be immense.

- It's easy for them to get overwhelmed.True Indigos develop symptoms and signs like any other kind of post-traumatic shock patients. For them, the trauma has been in the effort to communicate themselves to normal humans, who lack the subtlety and capacity to understand who they are. What is a pleasant environment for normal humans can be a nightmare of disharmonies for a true Indigo. So they suffer from a chronic level of over stimulation and frustration that seems to be wildly out of proportion to what's going on around them.

- It's easy for them to get lost in the system and socialization. Normal schooling is nothing less than cruel and unusual punishment for true Indigos. Paradoxically, the human system is so toxic to them because it takes away all humanness. Real Indigos need to stay connected with what is real. When they're cut off from that contact, they begin to starve, wither and die.

I remember a Native American Indigo that I once worked with. The day before he was forced to go to school on the reservation when he was a child, his elders took him to their ancestral fire and wailed over all that he would lose.

Often by the time you find out a child is an Indigo, a lot of damage has already been done. This is one reason why I want to push for early identification with these kids. I believe we have a responsibility to protect them and get them the training they need. In my opinion, this is the greatest single investment we can make in our future.

Difficulties with Socialization

- Genuine Indigos just don't relate to human children at the level of their peers. At the same time, they have a genuine need for love and socialization at an authentic peer level. The problem is that they can't get these things with normal human children. This process creates a rift of loneliness and alienation in them. They progressively give up hope of finding real connections as they build their portfolio of failed relationships. They frequently carry this rift with them through life, feeling that they are the only member of their species on a hostile, alien planet.

Often they try to heal this rift of loneliness later in life through the default self-soothing mechanism of sexual experimentation and behaviors. Indigos frequently find a certain level of comradery in the gay world, even if they aren't gay sexually. People who are different from the norm can find comfort in others who are also different from the norm, even if they don't really have anything else in common with those people. Adjusted Indigos learn to find companionship wherever they can, even if it's a compromise on some or many levels.

- It can be very liberating for an Indigo to learn to discern what his/her real feelings and identity are, rather than just being different than the norm as a basis for his or her identity.

Difficulties in School

- Indigos are often harmless troublemakers. They usually don't hurt or violate anyone, but they often go beyond the boundaries of the system and get in trouble. More often than not, they sacrifice themselves in these behaviors as a way to teach both the teacher and the class a meta-lesson or a whole package of meta-lessons. These lessons are often powerful, and can permanently shift the ambience of the learning environment.

- Indigos are frequently smarter than their teachers. Ego conflicts arise with the teachers as the Indigo teaches them about the limitations of his/her mind and reality constructs.

- Indigos often come up with the right answers through radically different methods. For example, I've known several Indigos who've done great in school by simply looking into other kids' minds to get answers on tests.

- If you can get an Indigo to buy into the gaming aspect of school, it can save his or her life. Be real with them. Let them know that you know this whole school thing is just a game. None of it matters in the least, but the results of the game do have long- term consequences. If they don't do well with the game, it's going to limit their freedoms. Indigos respond well to meaningful and wisely applied discipline. Use it.

Difficulties in Relationship

- Relationship with self. They know who they are, but their identity is so different from those around them that it creates a crisis of being.

- Relationship with parents. The Indigo's parents may or may not understand who their child is. Indigos have to get through the PPPs: Painful Parental Projections just like we all do. It's rare to find an ideal situation.

Even if the parents do understand what's going on, the situation can still be problematic if the dynamic descends into an us-and- them scenario with the family versus the rest of the world. Even if the parents understand their Indigo child on some level, they still probably won't have the tools to deal with the power of the situation. It's important to call in reinforcements. Holding a loving space isn't enough. These kids need boundaries and discipline that only high-level masters can give them.

- Relationships with friends. It can be difficult for Indigos to find true peers. Attempts to do so can create more harm than good. This desire/disappointment cycle can lead to permanent identity issues. This is why I believe the most important thing we can do is to create an intentional community for these children to communicate with one another to become friends and worthy adversaries.

- Relationships with teachers. Although I've already talked about this dynamic, I want to mention that teachers are very important for these kids. Often teachers are the first non-parental authority figures for Indigos. They look to their teachers to fill any gaps their parents have created. So there's a sense of hope and expectation in this relationship that is extremely valuable.

On the other hand, this relationship can sour very quickly when those expectations are not met. If the teacher has any personal issues whatsoever, the Indigo will identify them and precisely drill these tender spots to the point of madness.

The teacher can be a very important bridge to self-reliance if s/he can handle the situation properly. If you're an Indigo parent, or an Indigo's therapist, you've got to work with your child's teacher in a big way. If the teacher is hopeless, you'll need to find a way to get your child free from them. A toxic teacher can drive your Indigo into extreme behaviors faster than you'd like to think. School can create PTSD in Indigos because it's a sustained traumatic event that they're powerless to escape from. The most important thing you can do is help the child get what she or he needs.

- If the teacher can't be the bridge, you need to be. So the role of the therapist is potentially a very important one in the Indigo's life. You get to:

- Clean up the damage. - Do damage control. - Point them in the right directions.

You need to do this all on levels that are probably outside the box of anything you've ever learned, believe in or have credentials for. Good luck!

- Relationships with mentors. This is the most important relationship an Indigo can have. The mentor can provide the structure, discipline and direction that the Indigo needs. Indigos need the same basic things that all kids need, but at a level that often goes beyond the boundaries of what their local community can provide.

Indigos need their own community with its own rules. At the same time, they need to learn the human rules and how to play by them, or they aren't going to make it in the world. The question is how to keep the relationship between the Indigo and human societies a positive one. If you don't focus all of your efforts on this fact, the Indigo's mind and energy will go into compensations that will probably not be pretty.

Adults

- Adult Indigos often wind up on drugs and in jail. A few make it through to become wealthy visionaries. One thing is sure: nearly all of the potential of the Indigos as a whole remains unharvested. On an individual level, the stunning potential of an Indigo usually turns into its opposite and festers for a lifetime under layers of compensation. Rather than helping the world, they wind up doing no good to themselves or others and live lives of tremendous suffering. They can also create tremendous suffering for others in this process, especially the people who care about them.

As a therapist, you'll want to help them to

- integrate with self.

- integrate with society.

- Do damage control while somehow surviving the process yourself. Heavily compensated Indigos often present like borderlines. They want to find someone who understands and can help them, but the pain of their desire/disappointment cycle leads them to push those people away when they start to get too close.

Vaccination Issues

I want to talk about this special case. Vaccinations slam kids' nervous and immune systems. Acupuncture researchers believe that vaccinations go into a state of latency deep within the body once they're injected. Much later, the illness can emerge again in a variety of different forms. I believe that Indigos suffer more intensely from these syndromes because their nervous systems are more highly developed than normal children.

Another reason I want to address this issue is that Indigo kids also keep good things in latency. A 4 year old Indigo told me the other day that her full powers couldn't come out until she becomes an adult. I see no reason to question this.

Medications

Medicine is another important bridge for Indigos. Medicine can be a very specific kind of mentorship.

Yet even the best medicine can be rendered useless by a bad practitioner. The opposite is also true: A great practitioner can turn any modality into a miracle factory. That's why it's not that important to talk about different kinds of medicine, but it's very important to focus on the quality and style of your practitioner.

Indigos respond very powerfully to the side effects of all medicines. Taking Western Medicine without balancing it out in some form is downright poisonous to them. Be very careful. These kids have highly advanced nervous systems. They need to work with a practitioner who really understands their situation and can work with it.

This is especially true with psych meds. These medications can permanently screw up an Indigo's brain chemistry. The nervous system of a child is delicate. This is especially true of Indigos, who will be at the top of every response curve in the pharmacological arena. If the literature says that one person in 50 million will experience an extreme side effect, the Indigo will be the one.

Alternative medicine can also be problematic. It all depends on the practitioner. Homeopathy is particularly tricky, but it can work wonders in the right hands. I like acupuncture, because even a moron can help people if he or she follows the rules. But when you're working with Indigos, you really have to know what you're doing and adjust your style to worth with them at their level. It takes skill and sensitivity to work with Indigos in a way that is truly helpful to them. In my experience, it's been well worth going the extra mile with them.

Diet

- Diet is very important for all Indigos. Forget normal food. It's poison to an Indigo. Indigo food needs to be pure.

Indigos have special dietary needs that go beyond those of normal kids. Sugar and preservatives are especially dangerous for them. This is really tricky, because sugar can be a big draw for them. It's soothing, it shuts down their sensitivities and therefore their pain.

There's no question that sugar leads to harder drugs later in life. Be careful with it.

Indigos tend to have or develop food sensitivities. They may or may not be 'allergic' to a food per se, but they feel the effects of the foods more than other people do. The good news is that Indigos are very powerful natural scientists. If you can train them to pay close attention to what their bodies are telling them, they can ferret out an amazing amount of information about all kinds of things.

Don't get hung up in any particular dietary model. Keep your Indigo away from sugar and let them eat naturally. Teach them to listen to their bodies and their real desires. It's a great training that extends into a positive relationship with nurturing and their relationship with the world in general.

Culture is an important part of diet. You'll want to include in their diet any input into their system: TV, computer, digital sound, friends and associates. Think of it all as food and nutrition: garbage in, garbage out.

Let your Indigo watch noble movies. Expose them to super heroes. They can relate to them in a big way. If s/he is into reading, let them read whatever they're attracted to, but make sure that the field of choice is wide and wise.

- Indigos can be very empathic. It's important to help them understand the powerful influence that others can have on them. Helping them to understand and be in touch with their own feelings will help them to discern between their feelings and the feelings of others.

Security Issues

As individuals. I believe that Indigo children need protection. They need to be protected from society and it's cruelties. Indigos are and will continue to be outcast and persecuted. If it turns out that the Indigos are an actual biological trend and we see more and more of them coming in, be assured that Indigos will experience an extreme level of discrimination on a mass scale in the future. There have been few, if any, positive changes in human behavior from the days of the Inquisition and the witch hunts.

Indigos need to find and work with their peers. They need to be sheltered from the human world until they can be trained to interact with humans in unconditionally positive ways.

The government. I don't know the extent of government involvement in this issue. I would love to work with intelligence to find the real Indigos and work with them in the best ways possible. This is what is happening in several other countries like China, Russia and Thailand. We don't need to reinvent the wheel on this issue. There are at least 30 years of data on Indigos and the Indigo phenomenon. We just need to find it.

Are there serious potential difficulties with this plan? Maybe, but I think it's better than what we have now.

Corporate. Indigos need to value themselves so that corporate and/or governmental entities don't exploit and abuse them. If we handle this situation properly, Indigos can form a very useful sector of society. I think it's a necessary one, and one that's in line with indigenous models of having the gifted ones guide the society along the most enlightened path.

Could this trend turn democracy around from where it's gone in serving the lowest elements of society? Precisely yes, and that is very much against the current trend. We are in our own cultural revolution, where the bottom rules. Our society has built itself around that lowest element. We have a cultural expectation that serves the same end. The Indigos embody the opposite impulse. We can expect a cruel backlash against them. They need protection.

Protection. What's the best protection for Indigos? The best is probably what it has always been: secrecy. But now there's a technology-driven impulse for Indigo externalization and communication that is unprecedented. We now have the technological means to take the Indigo phenomenon to a new level on a planetary basis. I think it's worth a try, whatever the consequences might be.

Discrimination and rejection. I think we haven't begun to experience these issues on a group level yet, but that is coming. If we can get the Indigos linked up, then the individual suffering they go through won't be so painful. It will create a new and empowered social context for them. This will give them a strong emotional base and a foundation for a healthy identity that will serve everyone in the long term.

What are the Solutions?

I believe that every generation is born with a greater potential than the previous one. This is simply because our accumulation of collective knowledge and experience becomes greater over time. You don't need a cosmic reason for it. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and benefit, usually, from all that has come before us.

What makes this interesting is that there's also psychological, intellectual and material baggage that comes along with that accumulated knowledge and experience from the past. Potential is partially aided and partially opposed by legacy.

There are differences between potential and reality. And contrary to many popular cultural myths of our day, there are also significant differences between imagination and reality. Potential is only actualized through consistent, disciplined technique that lovingly acknowledges and embraces an individual, his/her process and his/her progress.

Everyone is unique. Not everyone is special. I have a technical definition of special. Special means exceptional.

There's negative special and positive special. The special we want is someone who gives more than they take. We want to cultivate individuals whose contributions make up for all the middlers and negative specials.

Of course, we can never really define this evaluation of special, because we can never measure the value of a person's contributions to life and humanity. Having said that, you still know exactly what I mean by positive special.

A degenerate is someone who takes what's been given to them and squanders it. The life force that was invested in them goes unredeemed. No new life comes from the investment. The system runs down or ends.

A regenerate is someone who's in a state of healing the damage done by degeneracy. Regeneration is by nature multi- generational.

A generate is someone who is more than 'green' or 'sustainable.' Generacy creates an abundance of life and opportunities. It creates multiplicities of new potentials. It creates disruptions to degenerate systems and turns them around into living systems. It creates a redundancy of options and becomes fail-safe.

We've become a degenerate society. I would like to turn us into a generate society. Are Indigos arriving to help with this process? From the experiences I've had, I would say yes. We'll learn if this is true over time, but I believe we need to assist the Indigos to do what they're coming here to do, and we need to do it right now.

I'm confident that the answers to these issues will come from the Indigos themselves. But at this point the individuals have suffered so much personal damage that there are major obstacles to overcome from within. This is why the therapeutic community plays such a key role in the bridge to a new Indigo identity and community.

How can we best serve this fractured and precious community of truly special individuals?

Listen and observe. The wisdom here is profound. But it will take all of your skills as a therapist to take these diamonds in the rough to a polished state of excellence. Damaged Indigos often present as borderlines with remarkable powers of perception. You can be assured they will level these powers against you on their path to healing. It ain't pretty when it happens.

De-pathologize. It's important to discover and weed out the Indigos from the communities they've become involved in and the negative identities they've taken on. Early detection can save their lives and a whole lot of work. It may also save us from a scenario where an Indigo goes dark and does social damage on a massive scale. This would be the event that could trigger a human backlash quicker and more violently than anything else. We have to do everything we can to prevent or delay it from happening.

Drop your training. Indigos may take you into areas of experience where your training no longer serves you. They will show you blind spots in your perceptions and thinking. You have to be able to let go of your agenda and your ego when that time comes. Learn from them.

Connect with other therapists and healers who are involved with this project. We can amplify our knowledge base through networking our collective wisdom.

Find mentors in this arena. The mentors are there. I suspect they may come from a variety of disciplines. This will clarify as we organize and move the project forward.

Be assured that your work is extremely important. The Indigos want and need to come forth with this new empowered identity. You are the only bridge they have right now to that next level. The rewards are difficult to attain, but sweet when you get them.

Goals

These kids need to get healed, in communication with each other, educated and financially empowered. If we can help them to achieve this, our work will be done and they'll take care of the rest.

#1. We must get Indigos communicating with each other on a regular basis via the phone and the Internet.

#2. I believe the most important thing we can do is to create an intentional community so these children can communicate with each another and become friends and worthy adversaries.

#3. Create an online architecture so Indigos can find each other and begin to dialogue.

#4. A summer camp experience would be the next step.

#5. Jamborees of different camps can then begin to integrate groups of Indigos on a wider level.

#6. An Indigo school or schools.

#7. A business vector to help these kids put their skills to positive use in the world and stay integrated with each other's efforts over the long term.

I hope these observations, suggestions and ideas are helpful to you.

Indigo Parents: From Coping with an Unknowable Unknown to a Happy, Healthy Family

Articles and Interviews

John Mini, M.S.C.M./L.Ac.