《Working with Anxious, Nervous and Depressed Children》

译者： Joshua @LeZhi （hillfree@126.com）

I.FUNDAMENTALS OF A SPIRITUAL-EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE .（从灵性层面的教育实践基础）

1.5 A COOL HAND AND A WARM HEART

1.5 冰凉的手和温暖的心

Now, since I’m not giving a series of recipes, let’s take a situation from life and say that you suddenly become uncomfortable over a fact that you previously greeted: your child is uncommonly bright; you used to comfort yourself with it when the going got hard, saying, “Well, in spite of everything, I have an unusually brilliant, talented child. At age five, she can add two-column figures in her head faster than many children years her senior.” You were proud of this until now, and your pedagogical efforts tended largely in the direction of appealing to the child’s mental powers, explaining and giving reasons for everything. That may have helped on some occasions, but not on others.

因为我并不打算给出一长串的技巧（食谱配方），所以让我们从生活中列举一个例子：比方说你突然对一个之前就了解的事实感到不安：你的孩子特别聪明。你习惯这样安慰自己：“哦，不管怎么样，我有一个异常聪明、有天赋的孩子。五岁时她就能心算两位数加法，速度比很多大孩子还要快呢。”直到现在，你一直为之骄傲，你的大部分教育努力多是围绕着孩子的智力发育，告诉他万事万物的运行道理。这可能在某些情况下有帮助，但在另一些情况下却没有帮助。

Now you suddenly feel it is an untrustworthy procedure. You note, as you read books and newspapers, how consistently you encounter statements linking purely mental insight with a cold approach, and how well-founded the term “intellectual coldness” is. You cannot get over the feeling that the constant peripheral chilliness your child evidences may well have to do with the fact that such exceptionally bright children suffer from a stunted development of intellectual coolness.

现在，你开始觉得这样的过程有些问题了。你注意到，当你读书或读报时，那些和纯智力洞察相关的表述总是伴随着“冷却过程”，也开始了解“智力冷漠”这个术语确实有些道理。你确实感到孩子对周遭事物的冷漠与超常儿童的“智力冷漠”发展紧密相关。

It is certainly not my intention to say anything in the least negative about analytical thinking; it is an accomplishment, the not-least-significant aspect of which is that the soul element, the whole sphere of emotions and moods is as though repressed and held back in the thinker. That is the only way the thinker can succeed in doing it.
当然，我并非想表述分析式的思考有什么不好；那是一件不错的事，但在其中心魂要素并非最重要的，事实上思考者的情感或情绪的部分都被压抑或抑制住了，只有这样思考者才能成功的思考。

To think clearly and logically requires inhibiting feeling and confronting the world in a focused state. Popular talk of “a cool head” is a way of saying that rejection of the warmth activity that rises from the emotional sphere to the head, that is, to the sense organization, is essential to orderly thinking. Mental clarity demands a distancing of oneself from one’s own soul life, on the one hand, and from one’s surroundings, on the other. Just try to grasp a clear thought with your hand touching a hot light bulb, or to form a distinct picture of what is going on around you.

要进行清晰和富有逻辑的思考确实要求排除情感的干扰，从而能以一种专注的状态来面对世界。通常所说的“冷静的头脑”也算是一种侧面的描述：头脑拒绝从情感领域生发的温暖化过程，从组织的角度来看，这对于有序的思考是必要的。智力的清晰需要和心魂生活保持距离，包括周围的环境或他人。当你的手摸着一个温暖明亮的球，试着去做清晰的思考或者对你周围的事物形成一个清晰的图景。（最后一句是何意思？）

It is absolutely essential in life to master our feelings and to learn to confront the world outside in a focused, gathered state of being so that our heads can function freely. That is a necessity not to be scorned. But the process cannot be described without picturing the setting up of a cold zone between the world and oneself founded on suppressing emotional warmth. That is an inevitable accompaniment of the intellectual process.

掌控情绪、用专注的状态来面对世界从而使我们的头脑能够自由的工作，这在生活中是非常重要的，也是必要的。但这个过程只有想象在世界和自我之间设置了一个抑制情感温暖的“冷却区”的图景才能更好的描述。这是智力活动过程中不可避免的情况。

So when children are prematurely involved in the intellectual realm, you have continually to overcome the chilliness that stands in the way of contact with their surroundings. And when you also consider the fact that younger children are more open, immediately their soul-spiritual condition expresses itself in their bodily functions (and vice versa); then you will find yourself dealing with chill-related problems of restlessness and cramping that most assuredly go unrecognized in today’s academic lexicon. You begin to realize that there are age levels in which the described suppressing of soul warmth is extremely damaging. It works directly counter to a child’s developmental needs.

当孩子过早的涉及到智力领域，你就需要经常去处理那些阻碍他们与世界连接的那些“寒冷”。当你意识到年幼的孩子更加开放，所以他们的心魂状态总是在他们的身体功能中表现出来（反之亦然），然后你会发现你所面对的与寒冷相关的多动和抽动问题，大多还没有出现在的那些学术术语中。你开始意识到在一些年龄层次中，这种对于心魂温暖的压制是十分有害的。它直接阻碍了孩子的发展需求。

You may come to see that providing external physical warmth alone does not fill the bill. You’ll need to think more about soul-warming educational approaches and attitudes, putting affectionate bodily contact ahead of verbal communication, involving the child in creative activity, singing together, playfully transforming his tendency for cramped movement into pleasure in musical-rhythmical motion.
你也可能开始明白单纯靠外界来提供物理上的温暖是不足够的。你需要多想想运用温暖心魂的教育方法和态度来工作，将充满爱意的身体接触置于言语沟通之前，让孩子做一些创造性的活动，一起唱歌，用游戏的方式将孩子笨拙的运动倾向转化为音乐律动与运动的乐趣。

Or, instead of “sensible” instruction, make stories full of rich pictures that develop insight by means of fantasy rather than of intellect. Fantasy warms even the fingertips, whereas reason chills. If it is a child’s desire to go beyond the narrow boundary of his bodily being with his impulses for fantasy and creativity, we shall not encourage elements that make that boundary only the more immobile. Your job is literally to entice the child’s inner warmth forces right out to his skin, into his fingertips.

或者，去掉那些“明智清晰”的指令，用富有图景的故事来发展基于想象力而非智力的内在洞察。幻想与想象给予温暖（直至指尖），而理性则带来冷意。如果孩子渴望超越他身体的狭小边界，用他的幻想和创造力的冲动，我们就不应该强化那些使边界更加僵化的因素。你的工作就是引导孩子内在的温暖力穿越皮肤，直达指尖。

I wanted to illustrate with this example what progress you can make if you approach matters as described, with courage born of insight, and pay attention to the inspiration you receive. These are reliable guides, provided you have crossed sleep’s threshold with both a clearly formed question and a distinct image of the child. Three things are essential in seeking collaboration with the child’s angel: your own thoughtful effort in forming a concept of the course of human maturation; exact observation, carried on with veneration for the child; and lastly, relegating night after night, the fruits of these efforts to sleep as you prepare for it, trying yet again to combine what you have observed with insights you have arrived at.

我想用这个例子来说明：当你遇到类似的情况时，如何带着与生俱来的洞察和勇气，留意你的灵感，去一步步处理取得进展。这些是一些可靠的指引，只要你确实跨越了睡眠的门槛，即带着清晰的问题和鲜明的孩子图景。在寻求孩子天使合作时，有三件事是至关重要的：你对人类成熟发展过程的深思熟虑的理解；带着崇敬之感，对孩子的精确观察；最后，通过夜复一夜的努力，最终你会收到这些努力和富有洞见的观察带来的成果。

Let us avoid any misunderstanding. It is certainly wise, occasionally, to seek a pediatrician’s or educational consultant’s advice when some aspect of your child’s behavior makes you feel unsure of yourself. On the other hand, every achievement of independence from the “experts” who are available nowadays for help in every conceivable kind of problem means a significant gain in freedom, self-confidence, and a calmness that is transmitted to the child as well. And I am convinced that “experts” in educational matters should undertake each job with a conscious intention to make themselves superfluous.
这里请你们不要误会，当孩子的一些行为让你对自己感到不确信时，寻求儿科医生或者教育顾问的意见当然是明智的。另一方面，从那些“专家”那里获得的每一次单独的进展，都意味着获得自由、自信和平静，这些也可以传递给孩子。而且我深信，这些教育问题的专家应该有意识的去努力去工作，进而使他们自己成为多余的人。

Please take what I have been saying as offered in just that sense.
请把我所说的一切也从这个意义上去理解。