The Conscious Parent

and the loud that our infants offer us our most-needed spiritual lessons.
In their ability to draw us into an attentive state of receptivity, focused
on their little burps, sighs, soft and non-resisting bodies, miniature
fingernails, and wide-eyed gaze, we learn to enjoy the abundant
extraordinariness of the simple moment.
No stage in your children’s development offers you a better
opportunity to learn the power of moment-by-moment being than does
infancy. Unparalleled in its ability to take the most ego-driven parent to
a deeper state of soul, even if only for a few moments at a time, the
apparent emptiness of just being with your infant is rich with spiritual
fullness. This is your window for changing your spiritual vibration.
Infants, by their ability to engage in their world in such simple yet
awakened ways, compel us to enter into a state of engaged presence. Our
infants ask us to coo with them, make faces that mirror theirs, and hold
them close for no reason other than that they wish to be close. If they
understood our language, we might say to them, “You demand I look at
you with complete attention, toss aside my weariness, worries,
preoccupations, and be fully here, body, mind, and soul. I never knew
this could be so incredibly difficult.”
If you fail to embrace the spiritual lessons of the first year of your
child’s life, you lose the opportunity to access new parts of yourself.
Holding fast to your established ways, you commit only a piece of
yourself to this venture. To truly be able to access the jewels of this
deeply spiritual stage of your child’s development, you need to take a
deep breath and plunge into the ocean. The degree of internal
transformation you experience will be directly proportional to how