Spiritual Parenting

One thing that I have noticed while seeking different types of spiritual knowledge is there isn’t a lot of talk about spirituality, the spiritual path, and parenting. It’s probably because by the time a person reaches the level of enlightenment, their kids are often already adults.

This is not the case, when it comes to me. I have five kids and only one of my children has reached the legal age of adulthood. Being a “Spiritual Mom” has had its own set of crazy circumstances. I don’t feed into emotions so when there is a cause for anger, I am too zen to freak out. Sometimes my kids need the “freak out” and it not in me to do it. They ABSOLUTELY take advantage of this. I have to always be mindful that it is my job to raise them to be productive citizens that fit into society, not just tree hugging, crystal toting, mini hippies.

I realized, early in my spiritual journey, that we are all souls who come to Earth to have this experience for learning and spiritual growth. Earth is a class room and we learn spiritual lessons. A big revelation was that this truth also applied to my children. There are not mine, per say. They come through me, the vessel, to have their own experiences on Earth. They are souls.

When I started practicing the Buddhist principle of non-attachment, I, eventually, had to apply these doctrines to choices concerning my children. Let me back up a little and explain non-attachment. It means that we own things, acquire things, and have things without developing an emotional attachment to them. We have possessions, but we are not possessive about our possessions. This is a hard rule to follow because the ego is rooted in I-I-I, Me-me-me; my car, my kids, my body, my life. We cannot even speak without using a possessive pronoun to refer to ourselves or our belongs.

When practicing the art of non-attachment we must allow and accept whatever comes and whatever goes. So, applying this to the idea of having kids means those little souls don’t belong to us. We bring them into this world, nurture them, guide them and then let them have their own experiences. It is not for us to decide how they turn out and what they do with their lives. That is hard thing to swallow as a parent. We carry them in our bodies, feed them, clothe them and then just let them go off into the world all willy-nilly like?

Not exactly, but as parents we can’t judge them for having their own experiences. We guide their path, not decide their path. That is their God-given right and God-given free will. If they want to squander this experience we call life, that is their right. This is hard to accept. We want the best for our kids. We know the perils and the consequences of making bad decisions and we want our kids to not make those same bad decisions.

Their egos have to develop and they have to experience all the conditioning before they can transcend their egos and un-condition themselves from the things they have been taught. My twenty-one year old is in the midst of ego expansion and you cannot tell her she doesn’t know everything there is to know. She will go toe to toe with me and argue her stance and be wrong as two left shoes. My twelve-year daughter thinks she invented the wheel. Every horrible idea that pops in her head, like hide her report card, she thinks she was the first person that thought of it.

Our fears of where they will end up, press us to act out of our emotions and impose our emotions onto our children. We are proud when they are doing the things we want them to do and angry when they are going against what we want them to do. We are teaching them how to be controlled so it should be no surprise when society controls them as adults.

If you want your children to be free then it is YOU who has to free them, parents. Accept them for who they are. Their life is not your life. It is theirs. If you raise them right, morally, then you have done what you were supposed to do. You cannot control their decisions after a they reach a certain point anyway. You have taught them about the consequences of their actions. You have provided boundaries. You have showed them that “cause” and “effect” are universal laws. You have to trust them to be the people you have raised them to be and trust God/the Universe to guide them through. Remember, everything happens for a reason. If it happened, then it was meant to happen.

They are actors on a stage, as we all are. We forget our divinity once our spirits are encapsulated in these bodies. Fear and frustration will not make them conform to our standards of thinking. According to the law of attraction, fear will just attract more fear. Fear of bad things happening will, literally, bring that bad thing to fruition. This is the secret as to why you see awful kids with great parenting. It was the teaching that messed the kids up, it was the parents energy vibrations.

So, relax, take deep breaths and approach parenting with unconditional love and compassion. And have a drink…or twelve. Lol. And don’t forget to meditate, focusing on what you want instead of focusing on what you don’t want.  I am not going to lie, if it had not been for meditation, I probably would have killed one of my kids by now. Good luck!

 Namaste’, Compadres!

- Aisha The Goddess