The Conscious Parent

Do I honor my body? Do I live my passions?
Do I love my imperfect life?
Am I able to be one with myself, while being nothing in particular and
doing nothing?
Am I able to access my deepest emotions without fear of judgment or
shame?
Do I orient my entire world from an internal axis?
When we can be present in these ways, our children learn the same—
not from our words, but from our ability to be present with ourselves; not
from what we buy them, or the college we send them to, but from our
awakened awareness.
The reality is that few of us know how to experience our experiences
without interference from our mind, just being present with them.
Without our realizing, we get stuck in polarities: this or that, either-or,
good-bad, pleasure-pain, me-you, past-future—and yes, parent-child.
The minute our mind engages in this kind of polarized thinking, it
creates a separation between ourselves and our world. We don’t realize
we are creating such a separation, yet we actually do it much of the time.
We meet someone new and we instantly judge them. We observe our
children and immediately say to ourselves, “He is good,” “She is bad,”
or, “Why is he behaving like that?” We constantly feel the need to
impose our judgment on reality.
To engage with our reality in its as is form is simply foreign to us. To
be fully present to our reality, as it is, and not as we wish it to be,
requires us to silence our mind and detach from our preoccupation with
the past and the future. It requires us to center ourselves in the here and