Spiritual Parenting

Originally all of these posts were supposed to take the path of spiritual parenting.  The thread is still there somewhere.  In spite of all the tongue in cheek complaining that I do, I haven't lost the mission that I set forth with.  

The definition of spiritual progress always includes the process of waking up.  Waking up is not the most glamorous stage in the process. I have never witnessed anyone at their best when they are waking up.  It is the moment when you are practicing on your mat or cushion or during a temper tantrum that you realize that you have built your reality around a lot of false ideas.  It is that moment during a day long meditation that you follow anger or jealousy for several hours and then feel that jolt when you realize that you just spent half of your practice wallowing in self pity. Those are the moments when you have the true chance of clarity.  That is when the real work begins.  

With children sometimes, you just want to stay in that mind-numbing place where all of your false ideas are not necessarily comforting or useful, but they keep you from feeling the raw feelings that have been pushed down your whole life.  

Parenting as a spiritual practice is allowing those ugly moments of waking up to be what transforms your future behavior.  Rudi used to say that you have to get to a point in your life when you are so disgusted with who you have been up to that point that you have to truly embrace that and move through and beyond it.  It is those aspects of your life that force you awake and prevent sleep, that will make a true spiritual transformation take place in your life.

Children have an amazing talent for forcing you to look yourself in the eye and either closing your eyes in despair or meeting those eyes and challenging transformation.