Detachment is the beginning of mastery.
Sri Aurobindo
Parenting is a spiritual journey, and children are our spiritual teachers. An aspect of this divine journey that often arises in the experience of parenthood is our ability to let go. Letting go, non-resistance, surrender, ‘un-tethering’ your soul, acceptance - are all qualities which can be a challenge to exercise, particularly with parenting. Although letting go is difficult, the rewards of training ourselves to practice this can be deeply rewarding as it enables us to experience happiness, love, peace and joy as a parent.
My patterns of behaviour are common to many. The more control and resistance I exert over my parenting experiences, the more challenging that situation becomes. The pain arises primarily out of the act of resisting, rather than the actual circumstance itself. As spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has said, Karma is not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you. The suffering, or lack of suffering, therefore becomes a choice.
Letting go is a tangible feeling. Think of how you feel when you are engrossed in a mental battle with one of your children. You can feel the drain of expending the emotional energy as you try to reason, explain, bargain, attempting to create compliance. Then visualise the emotional release when you realise how humorous or perhaps ridiculous the situation is. It is a tangible lightness that overcomes you. You feel as though you have dropped a weight. This is letting go. The situation itself may not have changed that much, but your emotional reaction to it has. Through the detachment from the situation, you can feel lightness and even happiness. Thanks kids, you have taken us one step closer to becoming a Zen master!
What is it about parenting that makes it a windfall for practicing letting go? Because our children magnify how we experience attachment. Parenting provides infinite opportunities to practice letting go. There are two main reasons this is the case:
We project some of our highest expectations on our own children
There are multiple situations in any day that trigger an emotional reaction
True love comes from letting go. True love is unconditional. If we can approach parenting from a place of letting go and unconditional love, the transformation can be miraculous. From it will arise an inner joy, patience, compassion, and openness. There is no better foundation from which to build our relationships with our children. It will be a foundation upon which they will never question their self worth, or their worthiness to be loved, since they have grown expecting love as the default state of their existence. The child will then believe that the unconditional love they received is the same love they are to give those around them. This will become a trans-generational practice of healing.
Parenting is, at times, extraordinarily challenging. By letting go of our preconceived ideas of what should take place and to live from a place of surrender, we can relieve ourselves from unnecessary suffering, and be able to parent from a place of joy, rather than one of resistance.
Marcus Aurelius provided us with wisdom for this path of surrender when he said:
Love nothing but that which comes to you, woven in the pattern of your destiny. For what could more aptly suit your needs?
Every challenge is an opportunity for growth and surrender, and parenting provides us with the opportunity to practice this daily. Through this, we can ultimately experience true happiness.
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