Reflections on detangling from One Year of Parenting

 I wish to ask, "How are you?"

                And more so, "Who are you?"

How do we define ourselves?

   How do we deal with those who may consider, like it or not, that we are on a Spiritual path, and no matter how much we learn, the challenges and unresolved patterns continue?  Or do the patterns sneakily change shape to occur in our mind and emotions barely detectable?

Are we living at the helm, or blown by the winds of life and our emotions?

Is there room for mystery and majesty at your dinner table?

I find myself in the role of parenting, and notice both the upheaval of mental perceptions of my role as not only a parent, but as a husband and friend, a provider, a citizen, a teacher, and social human.  Sometimes even an animal as instinctual as a fox, timid as a deer, or fierce as a lion.

I notice my expectations of our roles as parents dissolve in the love that Anjali, my daughter, showers forth in a spring of spontaneous beingness.  To love her is to respond: 

To hug when she wants,

To let her go when she wants,

 To lift when she wants ‘up’,

To watch, carefully watch and be near when she wants witnessing. 

It’s her world, and I become simply a shepherd trying to keep the grass green around her.

The role of husband and things the way I thought they were or the way the world I think it should be dissolve if I let myself love unconditionally.  To love my wife trust this blessed mother of this sweet child with all that she is.

This means admitting my own part in becoming entangled in the limbic system of our human bonds, teamwork and role-playing of parents.  To love my wife during anything situation that frustrates me, as my own part in losing my own center.  To let go of my own expectations of making it easier, and being courageous and clear enough to simply admit any feelings of hurt, sad, or angry as my own responsibility.

 No one actually causes pain inside myself but my own self.

This human-ness is stark, raw, and a challenge.

To trust that I am held by something bigger is my Spiritual path, that I am indeed sourced by a mighty force that spins the Earth, created the cosmos, and orchestrates the life of everything thing on Earth.

That if I can trust that I am held by that,

only then can I trust that my wife is, too, and what’s present in her is her karma, and probably reflecting in some way my karma that I am working to heal.

Only then can I trust that my child is perfect in every way as well

She is my teacher,

              As she listens and responds to her own innate beingness

To shed the roles and expectations is to be present for me,

              To keep facing the hurts inside and befriend them,

Lest I suffer to chastise myself or others.

This is the surrender to truly “know” less, and be present to the Wisdom of Love that is trying to explode from my skin, and trying to cleanse all within me.

This unknown was not my father’s cup of tea, nor this culture I grew up in.  So I learn, grateful for the dedication of my wife, whom amongst few I’ve met, tenaciously seeks what is unhealed in her.  Sometimes she ruthlessly finds and reflects it in me, within the chosen agreement we have to evolve in this way.

To evolve to actually realize our selves without these patterns of small self that hide, protect, confuse, or otherwise veil who and what we truly are.

Could it be that we are vast and luminous as illucidated in Nelson’s Mandela’s speech in 1994?

Could it be that what the Buddha tells us, what the Christ frequency points to, is enlightenment to the light, love, and reality of oneness that is the spark inside every small creature to the largest star.

To dedicate oneself to discover this, for the good of all beings, that others may benefit from our own eradication and purification of our own obscurations from this truth;  This is the Spiritual path.

So, yes, more and more I must surrender my armor and my weapons to feel the hurt that’s underneath, to trust my wife, my beloved partner in this journey, to her feminine wisdom and utter connection to the earth and this pulsing life force, and winds of emotion.  To show me in the mirror my own disguises.

Gratitude in waves that soften the stone of my resistances

Tears of old ways washing away

Under her love that works to accept me

As I am, faults and all.

This is the spiritual path.  To be with what is with the wisdom of the vastness to hold it all, like the ocean.

To breathe new life into this body shedding the old costumes that don’t serve, and trust this Love unfolding in all things and all ways, beyond even my own birth and death.

Trust your heart

    Trust your heart

In its breaking, mending, and singing

Like the dew,

 A stream,

Or torrents of rain.