I’ve believed my child to be the one obstacle between freedom and myself. It feels like I can’t be free and be responsible at the same time.
This is the great fear of a parent. Isn’t it a joke? We have considered freedom to be freedom of the body, and we imagine freedom of the body as the following of the desires of the body. Yet we know that following personal desires is very often narcissistic indulgence. As you know, bondage to personal desires causes enormous suffering.
What is inherently free is who you are. Who you are does not become free. It is free. In recognizing this, there is naturally the ability to respond. Before that, responsibility is a concept of duty or of something to be shouldered. It may be tempered with love and care, but it is also something to be borne. Therefore, your child becomes an objectification, a separation between you and that which you really are. This is a deadly joke. You are this very child! Recognize this and you are not searching around for personal freedom. Then nothing can be an intrusion.
Your child crying or exhibiting infantile behavior may not be pleasant. I am not advising you to foolishly smile and say, “How precious.” But you can recognize that behavior has nothing to do with the inherent freedom of that child. In your clear recognition, it is much easier to be a responsible parent.
Right action is not usually preconceived action. It is fresh and clear. It is stabilized in the confidence of knowing the difference between what a child must be taught and confirming for them the inherently shining truth of their being. Your child will be very happy to receive this transmission.
The duty of the parent is to first transmit truth, and then to transmit skills of survival and the accumulated lore of a particular culture. Then the child’s body will not be experienced as a burden to you or to themselves. Nothing will have to be forced to prove “I am.”
Obviously, children need directing. They need some conditioning. But when you point to that which is untouched by conditioning, then certain skills like how to use a fork, to look both ways to cross a street, to be in a public place, to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or parent, are all recognized as secondary to who they are in the depth of being. This pointing is what a true parent gives to children.
Conditioning can be very useful, but if the conditioning teaches that you are the conditioned, it is a gross mistake, and it results in unnecessary suffering.
Recognize freedom in mother and child, father and child, friend and friend, lover and lover, husband and wife, student and teacher. All these relationships of oneself are to be recognized as refractions of truth. Then there can be useful discipline and teaching and conditioning.
The childish idea of freedom as an expectation of every desire being met comes from the mentality of a two-year-old. This is not freedom; it is suffering. It is imagining that fulfilling your personal desires will give you freedom. Spiritual maturity is seeing the result of the trap of expecting objects of desire ever to provide what is truly wanted.
What is true mothering?
You and your child will teach each other what it is to be a mother and a child. A direct line of communication takes place in the most unexpected, spontaneous, and mysterious ways, whether it involves vaccinations or school crossings or the transmission of love, beauty, and trust. You have nothing to ask me about that. Ask the inner wisdom that abides in your heart and in the heart of the child. It is the same source. If an external authority is needed, let your heart guide you to it.
When I’m with her, everything that you talk about is so present. I guess I just hope for her that she doesn’t have to pretend that she’s not that.
Don’t burden her with your hopes.
You are saying that when you are with her, it is satsang. What is the real boundary between you and her?
I know there is no real boundary.
When you recognize it is impossible to not be with her, truth will be transmitted. She will not grow up taking the appearance of separation to be reality.
Isn’t this shred of distrust ridiculous in the face of your experience of satsang with your daughter? If you feed distrust, it will lead you into speculations of what might happen to her or might not happen to her, and then you will be dismayed to discover that your time with her is strained and awkward. Don’t feed and then transmit distrust.
Parenting is a great role in the mysterious play of one self. Let it be that. You cannot control it. Don’t confuse yourself as the role you play. Then you are not burdened by motherhood, and she is not burdened as “your” child. Play the role fully and completely as a role. Trust yourself.
I have a four-year-old son, and I feel he looks to me for boundaries and for understanding who he is. I don’t want to mess him up the way that I’ve been messed up.
Maybe you are not messed up.
Maybe not, but I feel like I am.
Yes, I understand you feel like that, but that is probably because your mother felt that she wasn’t going to mess you up the way her mother messed her up. Then “messed up” is the message that gets transmitted.
Then could you give me some advice?
Yes. Relax. As you naturally teach your child what is appropriate behavior and inappropriate behavior, don’t add on to the teaching that he is the behavior, that he is “bad” or he is “good.” Then perhaps this child will pick up the truth that behavior is simply behavior, and certain behavior is appropriate in certain situations, but he is truly consciousness itself.
Before he has any possibility of picking that up from you, you have to realize it yourself. Begin by stopping this story, “I’ve been messed up.”
You’ve said how important it is to accept children for who they are, in the same way that we ourselves want to be accepted for who we are. My children are coming into adolescence. There is tremendous anger and a pushing of boundaries. They are doing normal teenager stuff, but I don’t want to see them do something that might cause serious trouble. It brings up all kinds of questions in me about how to accept them and yet also be a responsible parent.
Responsibility is not found in a formula. It is free and comes from the willingness and the courage to respond appropriately. The appropriate response is unknown beforehand. It cannot be rehearsed.
Most people are still stuck in an adolescent frame of mind. You must discover if there is some of your own unresolved adolescent experience manifesting by wanting things your way. Adolescence is like a larger version of the two-year-old, only now it is about more power and more dangerous toys. It is further complicated by the torrent of hormones and all their emotional and physiological imperatives.
I don’t want to make light of this. The truth is, many adolescents do get killed or kill themselves. It is a turbulent time. It is obviously one of the big shifts in life.
Adolescents push parents, and in that push, whatever is unresolved can be seen. If you are willing to actually experience the fear and terror and anger that may be evoked in this relationship, if you are willing to experience these emotions without indulging them and without blaming your children or letting them walk all over you, then there arises an appropriate natural response. It may not always look appropriate, since natural often does not conform to normal.
True responsibility is intuitive wisdom and the courage to be true to that.
Will that letting-go process aid the child in moving through difficult times more rapidly?
Some things cannot be known. You cannot know what it is a child has to resolve in this life. You can only be there as the truest kind of support. True support does not rule with an unloving, iron hand. It doesn’t ignore the child. It doesn’t say, “Oh honey, sure, whatever you want.” It is true to the moment, ruthlessly true.
It is also important to be willing to make a mistake, and to be willing to see when a mistake has been made so that it can be corrected. If there is no willingness to make a mistake, there is no possibility of spontaneity and appropriate action.
But I find that when I’m on my own path, away from my child, I’m able to feel peaceful.
Your child is on your path! Doesn’t he show up on your own path?
But it brings up anger and fear and despair.
Yes, of course it does. What can be harder than being a parent or a child? Those are the two most demanding roles to play because they do evoke anger, fear, and despair.
When you are willing to stop practicing your own neurosis, the transmission of neurosis is finished, and the finishing is retroactive. It permeates every cell of your ancestry in both directions. Even your child’s potential unborn child is affected by your awakening. The acceptance, the willingness to see everyone as they truly are, spreads like a wildfire. It is the truth, and it penetrates all the disguises and lies. All anyone wants is to be truly seen as they are. That is all your child wants, and that is all you want.
Seeing doesn’t mean you have to like his terms. True seeing is to still see him through all the difficulties. When you are seen, then you can see, and seeing gives birth to true responsibility. Not from some textbook, not even from what worked the last time, but freely responding. Isn’t this what you want in your life? Don’t you want people to respond to you freely, and don’t you want to respond to people and events freely?
Yes ... it is what I want for myself and for him.
You cannot wait for anybody else to see you. First be still and recognize your own completeness. Then you are able to see everyone clearly.
Of course, if you are concerned that your child have a good position in the world, that everyone accept him, or that he lead a safe, predictable life, then you are simply supporting him as a robot.
I just don’t want him to kill himself.
Yes, certainly, but the hard truth is, he may kill himself. Before he kills himself, if he does, you can be with him fully, completely, so that his life will not have been a waste. If he lives to be a hundred and five and he has not experienced being seen and therefore is unable to see, his life will have been a waste.
His life is not separate from your life. He is not an interruption of your life. Parenting is a catalyst that breaks up any crystallized ideas of complacency or comfort or knowing what things will look like. The parent/child drama is a beautiful plan, divinely ordained. It is not meant to be comfortable all the time, even though, of course, many times it is deeply joyous. If played fully and truthfully, it is humbling and heart-opening.
I’m about to become a grandmother again, and my son is suffering a lot. He wasn’t nursed, and I feel this may be why he has a lot of problems.
Don’t believe this story about why he suffers. Plenty of people were nursed, and they are still miserable. I hear from many who weren’t nursed yet still received what they needed most from their mothers. Often what is given with the mother’s milk is not nourishing anyway. True nourishment comes from the open heart, not the milk. Most mothers are children still looking for true nourishment when they have their own children.
Let your story about why he is suffering be finished. It is the past. The sooner you can drop it, the sooner the possibility that he can also drop it.
I used to firmly believe a particular story I had about my daughter. I had been neurotic and afraid, and I hadn’t known how to be with my daughter. Her behavior reflected that, and we had a difficult time for some time. I finally recognized that the entanglement going on with this person I called my daughter was wrapped in guilt. In coming to face the guilt, by some grace, I was able to let the whole story go.
In the joy of release, I took my daughter out for dinner, and I said, “I want to ask your forgiveness for all the stupidity that I perpetuated as a mother. I simply want to ask your forgiveness.”
She looked at me strangely and said, “You have asked me that about a hundred times. It’s over! I forgave you a long time ago.”
It was true, yet I hadn’t been able to see her forgiveness and openness. I was too caught in my own story of guilt. In my story, she was an extension of my guilt, some proof of my failing. The moment that story was cut, I could see her. I could see this being for who she is and not just as some projection of mine. Not as “my” daughter, not as “my” object, but as who she is. Then we could be together truly.
Guilt is a saboteur, and there comes a time to say no to guilt. I don’t mean to cover it. There may be apologies that have to be made, but let guilt be finished. When the guilt is finished, you can directly experience the pain that is under the guilt—the suffering, loneliness, fear, and sadness. In being willing to experience emotions under the guilt, you are willing to get to the basis of the relationship.
I don’t know what your relationship is with your son, but you can refuse the relationship with guilt. Guilt is a nasty and abusive relationship. It is a denial of the love that is there and has always been there.
Maybe you don’t even like your son. This happens sometimes. But the love present is always present because it is really self-love. The moment you objectify him as “my” son, the truth is overlooked. Then you begin to believe that your object should look a certain way, act a certain way, or react a certain way. If the object does not look or act the way you want it to, you may try to force it. If it won’t be forced, you will probably blame yourself or your child. All this unnecessary suffering overlooks the truth at the basis of the relationship. Love is the basis, and true love is free of objectification.
When you mention guilt, I feel like that is what keeps me in relationship with both my children and my parents. It must take courage to let it go.
Do you have this kind of courage, even if it means losing the relationship? When it is a distorted relationship, keeping the relationship doesn’t necessarily serve truth. You actually serve your children more by severing a distorted tie. Then there is the possibility of coming together as being to being, not victim to victimizer. This means being willing to lose everything.
Freedom means being willing to lose everything, all suffering, judgments, ideas, concepts, expectations, images, experiences, and identifications. Guilt cannot exist without all those components.
Is facing guilt the same as with the other emotions?
Guilt is not an emotion.
Does it cover up the other feelings?
That’s right. Guilt overlays emotions with images and stories and violence, either internal violence or external violence.
Guilt is perpetuated, self-inflicted violence. Put an end to the violence. You cannot meet any emotion in violence, and guilt is violence. You can only meet in openness. In openness, there is no guilt. Peace is in the openness.
Are you saying guilt is a justification for continued violence?
Yes. I am saying to stop this horrible game of torture. Guilt is a learned torture. It is the same with doubt. Guilt and doubt are not pure emotions. They are both used to deflect attention from what is feared to be experienced.
My mother is much more than my mother. She knows the truth as much as anyone else, and she’s so simple.
And who would have expected it there!
Yes! We were both so surprised about that freedom.
What good fortune that this discovery happened while she is still alive. When a mother discovers it in her child, and a child discovers it in a parent, then it is seen everywhere.
Maybe the vastness of self can be seen and experienced more easily in the ocean. Maybe it’s not so obvious in the little spider scurrying up the wall. However, once you have clearly seen truth, then it is seen everywhere. In the tiniest little ant, there you are. It is not by some mistake that this spider appeared in your path. It is not by some mistake that you find yourself in the middle of the ocean. Make good use of everything for deeper investigation into truth.
Thank you!
Allowing yourself to be seen is the thanks. You are seen, and then you see. Let yourself be seen, and let yourself see. Then you will see through apparent differences. Whether mother, daughter, father, son, cousin, uncle, spider, or ocean—see through the differences to what is eternally the same. Then your response is natural. It doesn’t need to be rehearsed.
My nine-year-old son has no interest in the academics that he’s being pushed into, and yet our culture so strongly supports that. I know there is no real rulebook for parenting, but I would love to hear you speak about that.
Do you know how upset Ramana’s mother was when he ran away from home?
Yes, that’s right!
She came and pleaded with him and begged him to come back home, and he wouldn’t even speak to her. His brother also came and said, “You aren’t being responsible. You have a family. You have a culture. Our father’s dead, and you are responsible for your part in the family. What are you doing sitting here like a beggar?”
Isn’t there a way to do both?
Maybe, but it’s not for you to say. See what you want for your son, finally and above everything, so that when you are long gone, this is what he will have.
I want to be of the truest support to his development.
In the final say, the best that you can give him is the encouragement to be true to the depth of his being, and the sooner, the better.
The reason people flock to gurus is because they did not have spiritual parenting. I call Papaji “Papaji” because he refuses to let me be untrue to truth.
Of course, there are differences in styles, personality, and destiny, but of primary and universal importance is to be true to the truth of who you are and the truth of who he is.
Ramana wasn’t an outstanding student. He liked sports more than anything else. He was versed in religion, but he wasn’t a religious pundit, and this is all to our benefit. Had he been immersed in religion, maybe he would have believed that religious education led to his awakening. Instead, out of the blue, as a sixteen-year-old boy, by some mysterious, causeless intervention, Ramana was able to directly experience his fear of death, with no one apparently guiding him. That innocent, immediate, causeless awakening is the promise to all of us here and to all of those who are touched by all of us. This awakening spreads infinitely.
The challenge is to be true. Being true to the truth of your being is the transmission of truth to your children and to everyone you meet.
We have the example of great teachers, artists, and scientists, but the world as a whole, the “normal” world, does not support being true to awakening.
This is the challenge. It is the challenge of a lifetime.
Give your life to that. Give your role of “mother” to that. Give your son’s life to that, your husband’s life to that, and then see.
Yes, it is a radical surrender, and it does not exclude conditioning and training of our children, but conditioning and training are secondary to the primary, essential transmission.
I understand. I get it that it’s living the truth.
Yes, living the truth!
How much do I talk about the truth with my nine-year-old child?
Don’t restrain yourself. As it comes up, be willing to speak the truth. If you fall prey to the temptation to preach, be still immediately. Let truth speak through you rather than you speak through truth. Speaking is more than sounds made through the vocal chords. Speaking is the emanation of your life. Speak silently, and you will speak truly. Live truly, and you will respond fully and appropriately.
If you live satsang, you speak the language of the heart, a language of truth. It speaks to you from a nine-year-old as easily as from any other age, because it is alive at any age.