Читать книгу But the Buddha Didn't Raise Children - Linda Stein-Luthke - Страница 5

I began my journey into metaphysics after my first marriage ended. I had helped to care for my stepmother before she succumbed to cancer -- which did not help my marriage. My husband didn't want to stay as I suffered through the loss of yet another parent. My own mother had also died of cancer and seven years later my father had died of a heart attack. Thus, at the age of 30, I was now officially an orphan as well as a single mother with a one year old and a five year old son.

The burning question in my mind was why were we going through the motions of trying to have successful lives when death could claim us at any age without us knowing why we had ever lived?

My parents had tried to hit all the marks and do the “right thing.” They had counseled me to do likewise, and yet they had all died unhappy, unfulfilled by life. As I looked at my two small children, I vowed that I was not going to leave my children with the same legacy I had received from my parents.

I wanted to know why I had been born and what life was really all about before I left the planet to my children. I would leave a legacy, a path that they could follow. I would find the way and show it to them.

Little did I realize, as I made this resolve, just how convoluted this path would become and how amazingly unreceptive my children would be to the answers I was handing them as I learned more and more about the true nature of reality.

My children would prove to be my most unreceptive audience.

The main lesson I would glean from this was that each must forge his or her own path. All of our journeys are unique. When my children found their questions, they would seek their own answers. I could not provide the answers for them.

The other amazing fact that I have unwillingly learned on my journey to awareness is that my children would prove to be my best teachers! They would repeatedly be the Masters that would force me to grow past what I thought was necessary for my awakening process.

So, my question has become, how did the Buddha do this without kids to drive him crazy? Conversely, how would he have done this with kids?

I know Siddhartha did have one child before he began his quest, but he left his son because he had more important things to do. Or so we've been led to believe. But is there one great Master that we know of who stayed with the kids while on the quest to enlighten humanity? I asked Martin this question and then thought about Mary. His response was, “But she had Jesus; we don't!”

So there you have it. It seems that the modern mystic must travel the road to awakening with the children in tow.

It does make things just a bit more complicated, to put it mildly. Yes, our children can be a wonderful catalyst to soul growth. But they certainly do limit the time under the Bodhi tree!

On my journey to awakening, I traveled through various stages of soul growth and brought the treasures and nuggets back to my children to share and also to see if this new way of being could improve my relationship with them. Invariably, I was disappointed. But why was I doing all this soul searching? Was it to be a better mother or to simply awaken for my own sake?

Inevitably both. As I have learned in the course of my life, once you become a mother, you will always be a mother. Yes, you can focus on self, and that's all well and good. But you and the children are inextricably linked forever. Any mother will tell you that is simply the way it goes. Nothing changes that fact. Nothing. If you've had a child, there will not be one day in your life where you do not think about that child.

So, how does this affect one's ability to become an enlightened being? Enormously!

Yet, who has actually thought about this fact, or written about it?

If you look at the metaphysical literature you will find statements to the effect that these beings who have come through our bodies are sovereign beings of Light who must have their own journeys. We must let them go for their own soul growth.

Well, after thirty five years on the path I'm here to say, very simply and honestly: The suggestion to let them go is hogwash, bullshit, whatever term you want to go with. To my dying breath as I leave this form, I will want to tell my children that I love them and I've always cared.

That's just the way it is. I may be incredibly enlightened by that point -- God knows I hope so. And I may finally be capable of loving everyone in my universe with a compassionate open heart, but the kids will come first.

That's just part of what's ingrained in being human. And I am human.

== ::: ==