Children -- Oh, the children!

We have just enjoyed a number of family visits -- reunions with far flung children and grandchildren, home visits with closer groups. The time together puts me in mind of the numerous ways that children influence and shape our lives.

What are the ways you have found children to be formative, possibly transformative, in your life? Your own children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren... they all touch us.

One way they touch us is that children can remind us of how we came to be who we are. "There are no seven wonders in the eyes of a child, there are seven million." -- Walt Steightiff

We have the opportunity to be with them as they evolve from open, undefended bundles of presence to the unique, distinctive packages of personhood that they each become, inevitably. If we view their unfoldment from a larger perspective, observing how this happens, we can sometimes notice what effect these little personalities can have on our own, and we have an extremely illuminating tool that can contribute to our own journey of awakening, our own journey toward authenticity, toward being our true selves.

In BECOMING, a full chapter is devoted to the gifts I have received from grandchildren in my life, for example reminders of our inherent vitality and easy confidence, ("Who wants to play with the amazing Me?" she said at four, arms open and up high!); really paying attention, full attention; experiencing awe, wonder, unfettered, unconditional joy; giggling and gurgling for no apparent reason; intrepid, unfazed determination, courage and strength; contactfulness, easy personal connection, free from doubt, second-guessing; fearless availability and full responsiveness to the magic of the world... to name just a few!

And then there's also the other side! I've had conversations with parents who are stymied at times, exhausted, daunted, perplexed, and exasperated at the cumulative effect of the 'NO, I won't, and you can't make me!', the push-back and defiant modes, seemingly endless self-focus, lack of cooperation, stubbornness. How 'unreasonable' they can be! What the heck can one 'do'? How the heck can one 'be' with these beings?

Recently a young father observed that reading Eckhard Tolle's A New Earth had made a remarkable difference in his capacity to be present and patient with his children during the crunchy times. He went on to say how this new way of being was as much a gift to his kids, as to himself. I was touched by the conversation, and see it as a perfect example of how being with, and raising, children is really about continuing to 'raise ourselves', about our being willing and able to look at our triggers, and to inquire about why this or that behavior gets to us so deeply!

I like to believe that our children 'chose' us as their parents, and that together we have almost a destiny to give and share love and the good times life offers, but also to teach and learn from each other. Wes Stafford says, "Every child you encounter is a divine appointment."

So I leave you with two questions, to reflect on the sweet, rich, profound gifts, as well as the irksome and agonizing triggers and times, (whether in waking hours or during the long nights) that we experience with children: What might be some of the lessons that the children in your life are offering to you? Are you 'getting' the message?!

BECOMING : Journeying Toward Authenticity has several essays about these themes, life lessons, children, ways we learn. Perhaps you might like to check it out, give yourself and the children in your lives the gift of continuing to grow up! Other books that you might be interested in are Annie Burnside's Soul to Soul Parenting : A Guide to Raising a Spiritually Conscious Family, great for grandparents too!, and Anne Hillman's illuminating volume Awakening the Energies of Love : Discovering Fire for the Second Time. When we are tapped in to the larger space of transformative love, we have so much more to bring to the daily ups and downs.

You might also enjoy checking out the Becoming website -- and explore various ways the volume has been fruitful for people -- in therapy, spiritual and ongoing discussion groups, study circles, as a tool for self-reflection, aid in journaling. Your comments, questions, suggestions are always welcome!

Flow and Awareness

What is the connection between a spiritual way, a path, and our activities in the world -- our craft, our work? Carla Needleman, potter and author, has written provocatively on this topic in her book, The Work of Craft. Even asking the question leads us to approach our relationship between the spiritual dimensions and our day-to-day activities with a wider perspective.

Stepping back from the usual grind of our stories and patterns, we can perhaps begin to discover that beneath our habitual activities we can sense connectedness, yes also interconnectedness. The theory of butterfly effect explores the rippling, expanding waves of sensitive dependence, where systems (and we ourselves are a system too), can unfold in a multitude of different ways from any given point, and it's impossible to predict--precisely because of the intricate interdependencies--where we will go--or, in spiritual terms, how we will unfold.

Here's the kicker: as we understand more about brain plasticity and how the brain works--indeed how learning changes our brains--and as modern psychodynamic insights reveal more about how we become the personalities we are -- we are led back to the critical role that attention and awareness play in our development-- how they actually affect the directions we take and how we unfold.

What are we paying attention to as we work and play, as we eat and relax? Are we present, are in touch with being, or are we stuck in stories about ourselves and others? Are we 'here, now,' or are our minds and psyches dwelling in the past and/or the future, as Richard Moss, in his seminal work The Mandala of Being suggests? Where is our attention, our awareness as we go about our lives and work? The answer can be part of a tipping point toward being, creativity, ease, richness, and joy.

I offer up an invitation to reflect on awareness today... what are we paying attention to, what's happening in our body, our mind, our belly, as we go about our craft, our leisure, our lives?

If you would like to explore this in your volume of BECOMING, we address these questions and connections in several essays, in particular in Flow, on page 189 ff: "We can be very involved in any given activity--teaching, reading, balancing a checkbook...and we can be quite focused and alert, but not aware...more or less running on automatic. ...Flow has to do with the degree to which we actually bring full awareness to the activity, are embodied, fully present to what we're doing." It is then as if we have added an extra dimension to our bodies and to our experience... focused and alert, yet also aware and richly in our being.

"Without knowing quite how it happens, not really being the doer, but nevertheless showing up, paying attention, being present...opening my mind and heart, I am in sync with the flow, I am lived, I am flow."

Questions for reflection: Consider a specific activity in your life, a familiar one that you sometimes do on automatic pilot. How do you experience this activity in your usual, everyday mode? Now describe what it could be like to be engaged in this activity when you are fully aware, present, in your body, in the flow? How do, or might, the insights affect your experience of the activity? Of your life?

You may purchase BECOMING on line, or ask your local bookstore to order it! A good option for your book or study group :-)

Telling our Stories Part 2

If you'd like to order Becoming now, just go to The Write Room New Titles. You won't regret it!

Telling our stories: Part 2

We are continually choosing filters and frames for our lives, whether we know and acknowledge it or not.

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating or minimizing the power of stories: they resonate throughout our whole being. A story is something active, even if it is unconscious. It works in and on us. The way we frame our life--the stories we tell--affect the way we hold our past, how we live the present, how we respond in the future.

And our stories themselves provide a vehicle that can help us appreciate and learn from our part in the flow of life. Telling them can shed light on times, places and events that perhaps existed only vaguely, shrouded in the mists of our memories. They can provide insights, epiphanies, evoke laughter and tears. They can give meaning and allow us to put our lives into radically new and unexpected perspectives.

By reflecting on who we were, we begin a process of discovering who we have become through our life experiences. We can move toward presence and authenticity in part by becoming cognizant of our stories, the filters and frames we use to tell them, by learning from them and beginning to detach from them. We can let go of the accounts per se, because we have been able to extract the nutrients, and we can let them nourish us today, now, here, in present time on our own personal journey.

In Becoming: Journeying Toward Authenticity, you will find 40 some life stories, about a variety of unisersal, human themes. Each essay contains related readings and questions for reflection to invite you into your own stories.

Reflections: Tell your life story, highlighting key segments, in the form of two separate tales, one with your glass ‘half full,’ the other where your glass is seen as ‘half empty.’ What feelings do you have, what happens inside your body as you feel into each piece? What experiences have you digested and which ones are still in process? What stands out that you might like to explore more deeply?

Find out more about Becoming on the ChangeEverything website. Order your copy at http://www.thewriteroom.net/newtitles.html

Related reading:
Almaas, A. H. (1988). The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of personality into Being: An object relations approach. Berkeley: Diamond Books
Baldwin, Christina (1991). Life’s Companion: Journal writing as a spiritual quest. NY: Bantam Books
Davis, John (1999). The Diamond Approach: An introduction to the teachings of A. H. Almaas. Boston: Shambhala
King, Stephen (2000). On Writing: A memoir of the craft. NY: Simon & Schuster
Remen, Rachel Naomi (2006). Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that heal. NY: Penguin Books