The Ascension Garden by Keevin Doster

What Is an Indigo Child?

What is an Indigo Child? And why do we call them Indigo? First, the definition: an Indigo Child is one who displays a new and unusual set of psychological attributes and shows a pattern of behavior generally undocumented before. This
pattern has common unique factors that suggest that those who interact with them (parents, in particular) change their treatment and upbringing of them in order to achieve balance. To ignore these new patterns is to potentially create imbalance and frustration in the mind of this precious new life. The subject of this chapter is to identify, qualify, and validate the attributes of an Indigo Child.

There seem to be several kinds of Indigos, and we will describe them later in this chapter, but in the following list we can give you some of the most common behavioral patterns. Do these fit anyone you know?

Here are ten of the most common traits of Indigo Children:

1. They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it).

2. They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.

3. Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."

4. They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).

5. They simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for them.

6. They get frustrated with systems that are ritual-oriented and don't require creative thought.

7. They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and in school, which makes them seem like "system busters" (nonconforming to any system).

8. They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often turn inward, feeling like no other human understands them. School is often extremely difficult for them socially.

9. They will not respond to "guilt" discipline ("Wait till your father gets home and finds out what you did").

10. They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

We will examine some of these traits later in a closer way, but next we wish to let you know why these children are called Indigo.

Throughout the history of psychology, there have been systems of grouping human behavior. Indeed, often we all seem to fall into "clumps" of behavior patterns, sometimes fun to read about and identify. These groupings try to identify and correlate human actions in many different ways—undoubtedly searching for some formula that neatly fits everyone into a slot of some kind, helping those who deal
with the study of the human mind. Some of these systems are ancient; some are very new.

Right away, we would like to turn to a psychiatrist for a very brief validation of this fact, so we can begin on a solid academic footing. Richard Seigle not only is a practicing doctor, but also is extremely involved in human and spiritual studies within the Navajo Indian Nation.
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Human Categorizing Systems
Richard Seigle, M.D.

Throughout the history of Western civilization, we have had a strong need to explore, define, and judge. As we discovered new lands and peoples on Earth, our first thoughts were, Who is like us and who is not, and what can we take? Those people who were not like us in terms of color, belief, culture, and language were considered inferior throughout much of our history.

In scientific terms, we tried to categorize people by the shape of their heads, skin color, IQ, and so on. Anthropologists and psychologists have spent years evaluating how we think, feel, and act. Here are some examples of various categorization
systems:

• Intelligence tests, such as Wechsler (WAIS) and Stanford-Binet Personality.

• Personality tests, such as MMPI, MCMI, Type A, and Type B.

• Projective personality assessments, such as Rorschach, TAT, and SCT.

• Memory tests, such as WMS and Bender.

• Specific psychological factors. Factors such as the following have sometimes been used as a basis for grouping human behavior: family structure and customs; culture; dreams; self-psychology; bonding and attachment; myths; religion; conscious and unconscious motivation and thoughts.

• Recognized psychiatric theorists such as the following used various systems of personality typing: Freud, Jung, Adler, Berne, Fromm, Kernberg, Klein, Maslow, Peris, Reich, Rogers, Skinner, and Sullivan.

Gandhi said, "Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and test of our civilization." The end of this millennium signals a higher consciousness of love and acceptance of all people—something that we could have learned centuries ago from the native cultures, if only we hadn't perceived them as inferior.

Besides the traditional ones, there are also the spiritual and metaphysical grouping systems, which try to classify humans based on, for example, their birth attributes (astrology), their life energy, or their sacred animal association (Chinese and American Indian roots). Whatever you think of astrology and some of these other seemingly unscientific systems, they have been recognized and identified institutionally as some of the oldest sciences, having been found in many of the most ancient texts of human studies. All of these systems, ancient and current, exist to help humans better understand humans.

Nancy Ann Tappe authored a book in 1982 called Understanding Your Life Through Color. This is the first known publication where the behavior patterns of these
new children were identified. Nancy classified certain kinds of human behavior into color groups, and intuitively created a startlingly accurate and revealing system.Metaphysical in nature, the book is fun to read, and you can't help but identify your own traits somewhere in her system, laughing at yourself and marveling at how accurate it seems to be. Nancy continues to give lectures and workshops on human behavior throughout the world.

For those who think that classifying humans according to color groupings is weird and only for those interested in metaphysics, we would like to let you know about a brand new book called The Color Code: A New Way to See Yourself, Your Relationships, and Life by Hartman Taylor, Ph.D. This book has nothing whatsoever to do with the Indigo Children. We only mention it here to show you that the association of colors with human attributes is not just for the spooky group! Hartman's book deals with the Hippocratic or medieval model for typing personalities—sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, and choleric—and assigns colors to
them: red, blue, white, and yellow.

As we mentioned, Nancy Tappe's color groupings are intuitive, but are also very accurate, based on practical observation. One of the color groups in her work
is—you guessed it—Indigo. This color classification reveals the new type of child very accurately . . . and did so 17 years ago! (At least someone was paying attention.) We think Nancy is owed kudos for her insight and awareness of human
nature. If you are interested in such things as prophecy, chapter 3 will reveal a television personality who actually predicted the new "dark blue" children!

Jan did her research and found Nancy. She felt it was necessary to speakpersonally to Nancy for this book, and to interview her with some basic questions about what Nancy calls the "Indigo life color." We both felt that a good way to
start the discussion of the Indigo phenomenon was to present what Nancy had to say, since she actually identified and introduced the whole thing. Jan's interview with Nancy continues throughout this book, with portions presented as the subject matter demands.