Sumedha Bhise
Transpersonal Regression Therapist
Trainer – Teacher – Hypnotherapist – Counsellor
HSI – Bangalore
“Your children are not your children They are the son’s and daughter’s of Life’s longing for itself They come through you but not from you And though they are with you they belong not to you.”
Kahlil Gibran
The story goes that a woman holding her infant child approached and asked Gibran to speak about children. The beautiful evocative words that follow are true advice for all time – they are well known throughout the world, and yet, around a century later we still don’t apply this wisdom to our children.
With the birth of a baby our expectations begin. We are glad or sorry that it’s a girl or a boy. We expect the baby to be perfect in body. We want the infant to look like he or she belongs to the family – “OH he has his father’s nose; OH look, his eyes are just like his mother’s!” We want a baby who sleeps through the night – “such a GOOD child”.
And as the baby grows, our ideas of who the child should be grow also. The baby must “graduate to solids”. If the child does not finish all of the food arbitrarily measured out into the plate or bowl, the label “fussy eater” is quickly stamped on her psyche. The luckier children manage to throw off the label by the time they are 11 or so; many live with it throughout life.
We decide that the child is ‘talkative’ or ‘quiet’; ‘mischievous’ or ‘timid’; ‘smart’ or ‘slow’… Today we have added on even more truly noxious ideas. “Your son is hyperactive”, says the teacher of the 2-year old who can’t understand why he should sit still in ‘class’. The anxious parents rush him to a psychiatrist or counsellor. “Your daughter is not academically inclined” and the 6-year old is now stuck in ‘tuition class’ after school.
We feed the child a steady diet of You Musts and You Shoulds, while frequently ignoring the real need of the child to be heard, to be attended to, to be validated. The hurts of childhood are ignored as being small and petty; but how many of us have forgotten the teacher who humiliated us in front of the whole class, the bully who made a nightmare of the school bus ride, the betrayal of the best friend who suddenly found someone else’s company more exciting? How many childhood hurts still haunt our waking hours out of our conscious awareness?
What if, instead of our unhealthy need to prove ourselves to be perfect parents by creating perfect children, we were instead to recognise each child as the desire of Life to be born?
As the infant was placed in our arms for the first time, we would look into those beautiful eyes and say “Welcome”. If the baby woke in the night we would remind ourselves that time as yet has no meaning and give ourselves permission to sleep during the day instead of frantically dealing with chores.
As the child explored this amazing world, we would gently direct his attention away from dangers. We would notice how often and how much she likes to eat. Recognising that the child is ‘with us’, we too would be with the child. We would learn the limits of his exploration, the boundaries of her ability to interact with outer reality which we call ‘learning’. We would be willing to suffer with our children the hurts and pains of relationship unafraid that we are re-opening our own old wounds.
In a workshop recently, one of the participants told me of her grandmother. As a small child, she asked her granny – ‘Where is God?’ and the grandmother answered ‘God is you. And so, God is here.’
If we remembered Life’s longing for itself, if we remembered that every child is God, we would remember to look more often into the eyes of our children – windows to the soul. We would worship our children with kind words, with praise, with love. We would find every day some small act of beauty in every child. We would learn the art of allowing them to grow through us without insisting they reflect us.
Every baby at birth is already perfect. It’s our privilege to help them remain so. vetica~�as�ߋ} olor:#333333′>
Together, science and spirituality will thrive in a symbiosis offering the most profound insight into fundamental Truth, yielding unimaginable power. The keystone is in global progression of individual conscious awakening.
Many in both the scientific and religious (or spiritual) realms must denounce their addiction to prejudiced, closed-minded, dogmatic beliefs, in order to open our awareness to this novel synthesis of understanding Truth.
By probing deeply into our own consciousness, we transcend the limitations of the human brain, and of the physical-material realm. The spiritual realm is real. Seamless blending of science and spirituality will occur.
His journey was profound and his recovery magical. There is a lot more that we human beings need to understand. We are more than just the body. If we realize this, we could together take our “World” to another dimension – a new consciousness of unconditional love which is a blend of head and heart or as we put it – a synergistic balance and harmony of the “Soul, Mind and Body”.
Albert Einstein said: “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be”
Blossom Furtado