Are you making this mistake…
We project onto our children what WE want them to be, using our child as an extension of our incomplete self.
What really hijacks our relationship with our children is our own lack, our incompleteness and unconscious conditioning.
We all enter the journey of parenthood with pure good intentions, but unconsciously we burden them with our agenda, expectations, unfulfilled desires and unresolved emotional baggage.
We love our children, yet we unconsciously shower our love in controlling or manipulative ways. Hence, the children may feel loved for certain attributes but not for who they really are.
We love, discipline, control, demand, appreciate, criticize, and punish the child in parallel, but if a clear and reliable channel is not established, it leaves the child in a strange and painful dilemma. Neglect, criticism, lack of attunement leads to disconnection. Harshness and lack of nurturance directly impact the child’s sensitive nervous system, resulting in damage that affects the child for life.
Being harsh or unkind, owing to lack of patience and self-control prevents the loving connection to extend from the parent’s heart to the heart of the child.
Not knowing they are loved and lovable makes the heart grow cold and all the tragedy of life starts there. In adults, this wound shows up as insecurity, mistrust, resentment, guardedness in relationships and sometimes even leads to emptiness, anxiety, trauma or depression.
Much agony, self-imposed pain and torment could be avoided if the child grows up in a healthy, empowering and nurturing environment.
Our children need to be fully embraced and accepted. Enter your child’s life with presence, with attunement, with mindfulness. Do not control, shame or blame, don’t hold them responsible for your unhappiness (let’s take responsibility for our own happiness and release them from that burden). Instead, cultivate deep friendliness and inner connection with your child.
‘But what about respect, I want my child to be respectful’, parents often say. R-E-S-P-E-C-T see how it is loaded with righteousness, expectation, superiority, egoism.
Great enlightened master Paramahamsa Nithyananda explains beautifully:
Very often, love is confused with respect. From a young age, children are brought up to always show respect. We hear people teach the children, ‘You should respect your elders.’ You will hardly hear, ‘You should love your elders’. That is the problem. Respect sows the first guilt in you that you are something inferior. It makes you feel separate from the other person to whom you show respect. On the other hand, love sows the seeds of joy and unity in you. It makes you feel connected with the other person and with everything in Existence. With respect, there is fear. With love, there is authentic respect as well as the scope for deep understanding to happen. With respect alone, not much understanding is possible.
Respect creates distance between you and the other. Love bridges the distance between you and the other. Only because people themselves have not experienced love, do they give respect as the rule of acceptable behaviour. Respect is easier but not real. Love might be difficult only because not many know how to go about it, but it is real. With love, respect is automatic and authentic. With pure respect, the appearance of love is forced and may never be authentic.
– Living Enlightenment
We’re going to be parents for the rest of our life, let’s expand our love and heal our inner being so we can continue to inspire them with our inner effulgence 🙂
Spiritual Parenting Workshop
We, parents, try to put up a show that we are in control, but what if we aren’t and are actually struggling inside?
Is there a way out of this situation and farce that we, as parents, take part into varying degrees?
If we look at the factors causing stress, intrinsically it is the personality characteristics shaped by our childhood and life experiences. Personality flaws and negative tendencies develop over time and give rise to various problems and unhappiness in our life. Ego, anger, laziness, judgement, greed, irresponsibility many a time operates at a subtle level and causes us to be unhappy.
Our negative tendencies rob our mental energy, weaken the mind in terms of tolerance to life situations and stresses, and have a detrimental impact on the attitudes and behaviour of our children.
If we are dedicated to self-improvement, personal development or the higher goal of transmitting spirituality to our kids then we need to first actively seek to understand ourselves through self-awareness.
During this workshop series (2 sessions x 2 hours) you’ll learn how to identify the negative emotions, subtle ego and the personality characteristics that cause us unhappiness and learn how to maintain calmness of body and mental state including thoughts, actions, ideas, feelings and overcome negative emotions and reactions.
Life inevitably contains suffering and negativity, ability to overcome and stay free from negative emotions is the key to happiness. it’s our greatest responsibility to show our kids how to navigate through stressful emotions and circumstances and evolve into beautiful radiant beings.
Dates: Wed, 5 & 12 June; 19 & 26 June; 3 & 10 July.
Timings: 10.30 – 12.30pm
For more information email info@integratedmind.me
