I don’t mean lighting a lamp before a deity or folding hands for prayer or even inculcating a sense of a “God” in our children when I say being spiritually present. It’s funny how when we talk about spiritual it’s almost synonymous with teachings or a guru or a church temple and anything else coming from a religion even dogma or instruction.
Spiritual here is meant very literally just of spirit, of the inner core the very insides of us that we know is there but perhaps not tangibly so although one might say that all we see as manifest is spirit in form. It is that feeling we have or a sense in us of being able to observe ourselves as we carry ourselves through life. Have you ever been really sick yet you could watch yourself be that way and have an inner voice or a very salient part that was unaffected but just there? It’s what never changes and remains as is.
How do we parent from a place of spiritual awakening? Do you have to have a spiritual practice or a ritual or anything symbolic to bring your awareness to that part in you? Or can this be a part that is as much at the fore of your consciousness as is say your mind and your body? And must one have experienced a spiritual emergence to be an awake alert and whole person to a wholly parent?
What does that sense of being more than just the body and mind being into our lives? A sense of purpose? Maybe humility as just how small we are in the bigger gamut of things? Or could it be an amazing recognition of our innate ability to create and paint our life canvas in the colours that sing to us?
Imagine being able to parent from a place of wholeness and simply knowing what to do when to do. To be able to just know what your infants or child’s needs are and just know what to do. Imagine not having to seek advice or even seek acceptance of how you parent from other parents teachers advisors spiritual masters and more. You can tap into your very own signature if you dare to really see yourself just as you are and accept that without any expectations of the type of experience you will have or should have. Just being able to live wholly will bring with it all your gifts of being spirit incarnate and spirit in body and spirit with body with mind gifts of your totality of being.
You can do this and there is no validated spiritual awakening you need for this because spirit cannot be awakened; the awakening is happening when your body mind and brain awaken to another part of you. Spiritual awakening is an oxymoron. Spirit can’t be awakened. It’s always awake always there. We simply need to tap into that and spirit will decide when we can tap into that wholesome nutritional manna that comes from knowing we are spirit too. In fact you are that very same spirit, spirit is you, and it’s you that will steer the boat of your life.
Being aware of our spirit self can do some wonderful things with the daily ego teasers and triggers that our little ones scatter all over the living room floor for us to pick find and decide how to respond. Do we take the road that’s very known to us and very us shall say because it’s so automatic it becomes us or will it be the road less travelled and one we know will not be so automated might take a bit of getting used to but the results will last you a lifetime and certainly enrich our child’s formative experiences as a child.
How do you respond to your toddler:
- throwing things down the stairs
- squeezing and spreading paint out of your professional painting kit all over the furniture
- Repeatedly throwing the water on the wooden floors off the doggies water bowl
- Handling the little doggies when they might not have asked for this
- Pulling hair pinching biting
How do you respond to your child:
- saying “no”
- Lying to you
- Sneaking out
- Speaking out
- Bunking off school
- Getting their body pierced without you knowledge
These are just examples of the practical day to day stuff that parents might face. It’s brilliant to be able to read a book and keep that book on tap and maybe refer to Instagram posts from time to time but the real shift arrives when you stop looking outside of you and simply get present, down to the root of how you parent and where the resistance to our children’s choices and how they act on these, comes from. Remember how they are as children will have had some input from what was modelled to them as infants.
“The sooner we get in touch with spirit the less of a struggle it becomes as parent”.
You will just know when you might have crossed the line and gone from parent to dictator; from you the parent to your mother father the parent that you promised you would never be; from the I want for you to be who you are and retain your true self parent to you will do as I say because that’s how it is to that is my house my rules to you can do as you please when you are no longer under my roof to when they do leave to shaking your head parent wondering what went wrong to regrets and real anger shame parent.
The shifts that really matter and of any real impact are those that will come from within and will not require a psychologist to validate or another parent or just anything outside of your own signature. We can cure our automatic style of parenting and living when we take a drive in a very old car that’s manually driven and one that will need to be restructured refitted several times until the original version of that same car is restored it looks brand new and no more tweaking is required.
No doubt advice and affirmations are useful but only limited as they cannot meld you into you unless there’s a conscious effort on your part to want to do that and when you do, you will not need to be told what you your spirit always knew. We don’t need to hold the same version of spirit either. We are all spirit yes, but we don’t need to have had the same experiences that awaken us to that which has always been there.
What’s stopping you from trusting your gut? Your own spirit? Your self?