The Way to Enlightenment is Easy if we don’t Pick and Choose

Being our best Selves as parents is a worthy goal that benefits all of our children and the world.  But loving our children and the world as they are, right now, (rather than changing them) is a path to happiness and good feelings that truly last.  And out of a truer seeing and relating, may come organic change and truer happiness for parent and child alike.

So, whatever issues or struggles you personally face today, and which we face as a collective world, if we can consciously decide to LOVE what is, we align with Truth, and are present to the eternal now.  This may seem a bit “new age,” but its extremely Old School.  It may seem a bit philosophical and esoteric, and that is the beauty of parenting because it is both earthy and continually in our faces—the perfect opportunity for true enlightenment.

Let’s say your kid is in a snit about wanting to kill more “Aliens” in some on-line electronic game that you wish you’d never bought for them, that somehow works for you kid like a martini after a day at the office—often leading to more martinis, blurry eyes, decreased focus and sour moods.

If we save discussion about the toxicity of violent games and what this may, or may not be, all about for another day, we can instead strive to simply observe where things actually are right now.  

Conjure your child, and her latest annoying and concerning obsession, in your mind’s eye (or better yet, take a moment to go watch them).

Consider, without judgment, like an artist ready to paint a scene.  Observe, perhaps, how skilled our child has become at killing “aliens” or Nazis or Raiders in the game of the moment; watch them on their head-set, working like air traffic controllers to coordinate mass activity; see them assert and exercise that human Shadow of aggression, that Lord of the Flies darkness that is, and remains, part of our human condition.  Notice if he is teaming up with other virtual players around the world; admit if we have no idea whether those players are possible predators, stunted grown-ups or maybe just regular folks having a good time in a manner that personally eludes our understanding or intuitive appreciation.

Meditate on your kid (if not at her gaming, then at her texting, or junk food eating, etc.).  Try to see the Self, and the cosmos in her and her actions—in the mysterious and powerful perfection of what just is.  As Oscar Wilde quipped, “If you haven’t seen the beauty in something you haven’t seen it.”  Practice seeing without wanting to change anything, without jumping to judge, limit, “help” or “fix.”  See even suffering, the possibly misguided, futile and addictive compulsions without fearing that our kids will end up in a bad place, instead noticing that they are safe, alive and simply themselves in the right here and now.  

This sort of LOVE, of seeing with understanding and compassion, creates real relationship—sacred relationship—between the essential spirit in ourselves, and that sacred spirit and eternal beauty in our children, and in each other.  This sort of relating is extremely difficult to achieve, and even the most Zen amongst us will fall back from it again and again.  But it is worth trying.

After all, if we touch the sacred, we open our most illuminated, conscious, loving and fun-loving ways of existing.  Perhaps this is why we are here, in bodies, searching each for our meaning:  perhaps just actually being here IS our meaning and our purpose?  Perhaps our children, in evoking a love so profound and transcendent, are our perfect teachers—our “Buddha’s” of no fear and no desire, our bringers of “Christ Consciousness” or “Messiah Consciousness” (Christ means Messiah in Greek), perhaps our teachers of no words, true “Non-Prophets,” helping us transition out of an overly literal consciousness, trying to blast and text and IM our world out of its torpor of too much materialism.  

Perhaps today we don’t need more money, or more energy; perhaps we lack nothing; perhaps today we will see our children with soft hearts and feel the way our soul longs to feel—loved, loving, trusting, safe, connected, awake, right-path… for lack of a better word, enlightened.

That is how, and why, thanks to our children and our love for them, that the light in me recognizes the light in you, and in all our collective children.  

Namaste, Bruce