Being spacious

Self friendship is fundamental. It is what our children need from us. It is what our world needs from us. When we turn out attention away from controlling the outer conditions of our lives, towards the inner life, we get access to something bigger.

Change begins with you.

Self work is the cornerstone of being the parent you want to be and it is essential for being an agent of change-in your family, your community, your work in the world.

Living the examined life means bringing a quality of self inquiry to everything that presents itself to you throughout each day. Welcome every circumstance, ESPECIALLY the challenging ones, the ones that stimulate an emotional charge, as these are mirrors. Every charged circumstance is pointing you towards your Life Curriculum.

And who better to show us the way? Our children.

The situation in the world, being home more with fewer distractions, allows our unfinished self work to become more visible than ever. So try this exercise…

Close your eyes and imagine a situation with your children that was frustrating for you, where you reacted and perhaps felt regret afterwards. You were not who you want to be. Take a moment and notice your body sense, your thoughts, face, belly, breathing, as you relive that.

Open your eyes and perhaps jot down a few notes.

Now close your eyes again and imagine a recent experience where you faced a challenge with your child and you showed up in a way that felt aligned with who you want to be, even if your child didn’t like what you were say. Perhaps you were saying “no”, and you did it with clarity and strength. Notice again your body sense, face, belly, shoulders, breathing, thoughts.

Open your eyes and write what you noticed.

What is the difference in what you were paying attention to in those two different situations? What was the quality of your awareness and how was it different?

Constriction.

This is the quality that parent-clients typically report in first scenerio. This is when you are in fight/flight mode, where your creative thinking is gone, primal reactions abound, you default to your own conditioning, and you rarely get access to your own innate resourcefulness. This state is ruled by fear. This is the small self at work, the limited, willful, constricted self, trying to force something. You are not in choice. There is no learning for your child in this moment. You are being run by false beliefs, assumptions that are not true. Deconstructing these beliefs can lead to lasting change in these circumstances. If you don’t have access to the support needed to do this self work, then at a minimum, your mantra is DO NO HARM.

Spaciousness

This is the quality most often reported by clients in second experience. The body is open and light, and you have access to creative, solution-oriented thoughts. Loving actions flow effortlessly and your child often responds in surprising and delightful ways because this state is ruled by love. This is what you experience when you are showing up as who you want to be. You are on friendly terms with what is. This is the ultimate form of self-friendship. Self-friendship (big you, not small you).

Your state of BEING matters. It leads to what you DO. It comes about as a direct result of the assumptions you are making in that moment. Notice your thoughts as they will point you to what you are assuming to be true. “She is always like this. He is basically lazy. She is going to fall behind if she doesn’t…”

You live in choice. You have the power to shift form constriction to spacious expansion by shifting what you are paying attention to, what you are aware of. The power of awareness is the greatest treasure (and still such a secret) of being human. Because children are less conditioned, they respond to this shift in us immediately, almost magically. So, what are you shifting your awareness to? It can be as simple as: see what’s good. Look for the possibility that your small fear mind is not right, that the negative assumption isn’t the truth.

Another way forward is to create a set of Guiding Principles to lift you out of constriction in those moments. More on that in the next post.

Big love,

Kris

Summary of Talk given at Women Agents of Change online gathering, April, 2020