This morning I read about what’s happening in Brazil to the rainforest and the rights of the indigenous people there.
I believe that a person who felt connected with other humans, with nature, and with their own loving nature would simply not be able to pass laws like that.
I believe that with earth in the state she is, we desperately need a shift in consciousness.
I was also reading the comments on a FB post about Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old climate activist who started off the school strikes movement. There were lots of loving and supportive responses, but there were many many responses that were judging, blaming and harsh.
We have grown up in a culture of judgment, blame and harshness, of disconnection and power-over. Nobody was born like that. We learn to become judgmental, blaming and harsh and to use power over others.
In parenting, we can help our children stay more connected with their true Lovingness (knowing that they are loved, loveable and ARE love);
and their true Willingness (acting from life energy rather than coercion, and not using coercion, blame, aggression or power-over others).
I believe that helping our children:
Feel a deep sense of belonging and connection;
Know that they are unconditionally loved;
Understand that their true nature is love;
Stay connected with their true lovingness;
Be deeply connected with their values;
Be free to say “no” to coercive actions;
Be truly willing to act, rather than being compliant;
is ESSENTIAL so that we have more and more people in the world who can act from love, respond to others with love, and speak our own needs, beliefs and feelings with compassion for others.
Alongside this, parenting can rapidly speed up a parallel process in ourselves:
To feel a deep sense of belonging and connection;
To free ourselves from guilt and shame and know that we are unconditionally loved;
Understand that our true nature is love;
Reconnect with our true lovingness and be compassionate with ourselves when we forget that;
Be deeply connected with our values;
Be free to say “no” to coercion, both external and internal;
Act from willingness rather than outer or inner coercion (including the coercion of guilt).
And this is very practical:
Choosing to respond with compassion when our child won’t get in the car;
Apologising and taking responsibility if we’ve lost connection with our lovingness and have been harsh;
Being compassionate with ourselves when we disconnect with our lovingness or use coercion,
these are all practical actions we can take, over and over again.
(and will often get invited to take over and over again).
This isn’t about some idea of perfection. This is about choosing compassion over and over again, how ever many times we lose connection with it and our truest nature.
Psychospiritual Parenting includes many layers of being a human being.
I’ve been watching a lot of what has been going on in London for the past week with Extinction Rebellion, and as a result I am seeing psychospiritual parenting as even more important in these times.
What I love about the psychospiritual approach is that it is very inclusive.
Instead of just focussing on one aspect – such as the effect of painful experiences (often called trauma) on a child’s behaviour, personality, and life trajectory, Psychospiritual Parenting includes feelings and the effect of stress and trauma on children AND also includes so much more.
Whether we are looking at our own development as parents, or the development of our children, we can include many different layers and levels, such as:
Our consciousness
We could call that the perceiver or our Soul; what is deepest in us, both most unique and yet deeply interconnected with all of Life. In the psychospiritual parenting paradigm, this is Loving Consciousness.
Our feelings
Sensory experiences which call us to meet unmet needs and show us our calling, as well as release painful experiences – eg. a child feeling upset because they need more connection, or having a big cry after an intense experience to release the physiological stress and have the painful feelings lovingly heard.
Our mind
The thoughts, beliefs, self-perceptions and identity that we acquire growing up. Some of these can be accurate; many are not – eg. a child believing that there is something essentially bad at them when their parents shout at them.
Our culture and cultural conditioning
Which deeply affects ways of thinking, perceiving and behaving – for example, guilt, blame, ideas of wrongness, rightness and punishment are all culturally acquired and passed down from generation to generation rather than inherent feelings or experiences of being human.
Our environment
How we interact with the world around us, and how connected we feel, both with other humans and also the wider environment of the natural world and the earth and all beings on it.
Our behaviour
The actions we take; which is affected by all the above, and particularly with our will and willingness, or life energy.
In Psychospiritual Parenting, we can include all these layers and more.
This means that for ourselves in parenting, we might look at:
Developing our ability to reside in a state of unconditional love for ourselves and our children;
Increasing our capacity to be present with a wider and wider range of our feelings and our children’s.
Helping ourselves have a more compassionate inner dialogue and identity;
Gradually freeing ourselves from guilt and shame, inner punishment and harshness;
Deepening our sense of belonging and interconnectedness with all of Life;
Increasing the proportion of time we act from love towards our children.
And for our children as we relate to them, we can help them:
Stay connected with their true loving awareness and knowing that they are loving beings;
Feel a deep sense of being at home in their bodies and feelings;
Develop a compassionate inner dialogue and a personality that reflects their Soul;
Reducing their likelihood of feeling guilt and shame and inner harshness;
Helping them feel a deep sense of belonging and interconnectedness with all of Life;
Helping them naturally behave in calmer, more connected, more restful and loving ways.
These are in my Psychospiritual Parenting Course!