Can we learn from our children? Should we be learning from our children? Isn’t our job to be teaching them? They’re just kids, right? They need to be doing the learning. Isn’t this what we were taught? Children should be seen and not heard, (ha-ha, sometimes I do wish this was true, crying baby on the plane anyone?)

Last week, President Obama came out and voiced his support for Gay Marriage. Same sex partners should be able to be married (wish we would use the term “same gender”, not “same sex”). Having the president “come out” in support of gay marriage means less to me than seeing some change with federal legislature, there are still not equal rights for all in this country. Protection and equal rights for all is the goal, and yes, this is one step towards that goal.

The subject of this blog was invoked when he mentioned in his speech that (I paraphrase) the tipping point for him came when listening to his daughters speak about friends which same gender parents.  He thought to himself, “How could I explain to them why all parents don’t have the same rights”.  When thought of this way, as well as speaking with members of his cabinet in same-gender relationships, he felt ready and able to speak out for equal rights for all with his personal support for same-gender marriage.

So while I don’t believe that his children were the deciding factor, it is true that seeing the world through the eyes of the innocence of children greatly influenced his own decision making process. How in your life has being empathetic with your children helped you to see something in a new light?

I believe it was Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol who spoke out and said ““It’s a problem if my mom listened too much to my dad, but it’s a heroic act if the President made a massive change in policy position that could affect the entire nation after consulting with his teenage daughters?” Well, first of all, he didn’t make any policy changes. But why is it a problem if we listen to someone especially our children? (maybe this says more about how she was raised than anything else). We all listen to each other and make our decisions based on, first, our own internal processes, then, we look for something outside of ourselves to validate our change of heart/mind, to further us along in this change.

I’m remembering a very funny scene in the movie “Moonstruck” where Olympia Dukakis’s character doesn’t want to believe something to be true so she decides to ask everyone she knows the same question she asked herself. (Sorry, after all this time, I can’t remember the exact question and answer and I couldn’t find the scene anywhere). She asks everyone and discounts all their answers. Finally, the last person she asks has the exact same answer she already has brewing inside of herself but didn’t want to listen to or yet believe. She exclaims to this person: “oh, you’re a genius” plants a big kiss on his cheek and proceeds to change her behavior accordingly.  It’s a very funny scene, I suggest you check it out.

So yes, we learn from each other, we listen, we interact, and we see newly, we empathize.  All of these and more are part of our societal conditioning. We are all so much more alike than we are different living on this earth at the same time.  And don’t we all want to be liked? Don’t’ we all want to be loved?  This is true even with our children.  We want them to like us.  And sometimes, this is in direct conflict with parenting. We have to make our own personal decisions on where our priorities lie.  I, as a parent erred on the side of wanting my kids to like me.  I now see the errors of my judgment even though it felt right at the time. I now know that is was more important that I set strong boundaries for my kids and let them rebel against them.  I needed to trust more in the love that we shared and to know that liking me wasn’t as important as being the “so called” bad guy.

We also, and I believe most importantly, grow through our interactions with our children. Growing is much different than learning from them. Learning is to understand differently and maybe changing our minds or confirming our long held beliefs. But growth assists in our humanness and our soul’s growth. It’s what the soul is in this body to do, it’s why we have manifested into these bodies at this time. Grow internally, the growth that we can take with us. Learning we leave here with our bodies, growth changes us deeply on a soul level.

How do we do that with our children? Simple to say, but there can be so much resistance to actually do.  Simple to identify should be a more accurate way to phrase this. Whenever I have any emotional reaction to anything pertaining to something, this is showing me there is an opportunity for growth. And I do mean ANY emotional reaction, no matter how small! If this happens, there is an internal issue being triggered.  And triggers can be looked at as an angel gently (or sometimes not so gently) tapping us on the shoulder and saying “here is your treasure, feel this fully and you will have one more opportunity to find inner peace and further opening of your heart”. Over time, working through each one of these issues will create so much inner peace and self-love that it will transform you.

How do we do this? How do we learn to not react so strongly to our triggers? How do we not lash out at the other person and make them wrong, make them the bad guy?

Courage is number one.  Having the courage to take that step and look deeper than just our anger, our guilt or our anxiety. Sit still and look within. Going deeper than our surface anger and looking beyond our rash judgments. It’s having the courage to face our true feelings and also the desire to look deeply into that mirror, because we want to change.

This is a process. It takes time, practice, experience of the process and sometimes, help to get you there.  This is where therapy and life coaching practices can be of great assistance, as well as many other tools and therapies.  We need to have a belief in something greater than ourselves, and learn to have that trust. This is why sometimes it helps to have someone you can trust to work through these issues with until you learn to have that internal trust of the process.  This takes experience, seeing the process work creates miracles in your life and your relationships, firstly with yourself.

If we look at our emotional reactions as triggers for our soul growth, we will start to react to them differently by not reacting.  We will start to see them for what they are, opportunities or treasure maps as I call them for deep change, change that is permanent.

The initial feelings of a trigger are actually our egoic minds reacting to outside stimuli. If we continually identify with those reactions, with the ego self, than we are caught in a web created by our ego. We need to un-identify from our egoic self, please look at other posts I have here in my blog to understand how identifying with our ego can be the cause and root of so much of our suffering, anxiety and lack of inner peace.

Try this next time you find yourself having any type of an emotional reaction to something. I would suggest starting with the small ones first, like road rage, or little things that happen while shopping, someone cutting in front of you for instance. Instead of lashing out at this person internally or externally, stop and observe your reaction. Take a deep breath letting the full range of your reaction move through your body.  Observe how this feels in your body. Observe the pattern of where it is moving.  Do your best to keep the reaction in your body and not have it move into your head. Another words, don’t try to figure it out  or label it, just feel and observe. Watch. Know that this is not the true you, this is your ego reacting and you are not your ego, you are not your thoughts, you are the one creating those thoughts.

As we practice at being the watcher of our reactions, we will find that the reactions to the same triggers will begin to diminish.  Sometimes, we can take a journey with our reactions and find deeper places within that are the “true buttons” of our reactions. These may take us back to original instances which could be the cause of our reaction.  It’s no wonder why our reactions to some situations seem to be so illogical and sometimes overblown.  The true cause of these irrational reactions may be found deeper within ourselves, just waiting for true resolution and forgiveness. If you’re really lucky (I use this term loosely, because this journey may feel like anything but luck in the beginning, it may be quite painful), this journey can take you to your core issues.  I also use the term “luck” here in relation to “core issues” because when our journeys take us to these places to un-trigger core issues, we will feel a profound sense of inner peace and true freedom from our own limitations. True clarity and love. The key here is surrendering and forgiveness.

Worked through in this way, we will find that the reaction to a certain issue will eventually disappear. That is the magic of this work.  Next time someone cuts me off in traffic or in line, I will not have the same reaction to the situation.  I can still take action accordingly that makes good sense to the situation, but I will no longer have this overly emotional reaction to the situation.

This will work wonders in your personal relationships. You will be learning to take 100% responsibility for who you are and how you show up in your life and in your relationships. With your children, it will lead to deeper levels of intimacy and understanding. You will begin to see the truth of your reactions and will learn to take things less personal.  “If it’s not love, it’s not personal” as they say in The Course of Miracles. Learning to unidentify from your egoic reactions will give you the emotional distance from reacting to what your children may have to share with you.  You will find they are more willing to share their lives with you if they know you are not going to react so heavily to what they may have to share. This will give them the freedom to share some of the more difficult things, especially in the teenage years.

Yes, this may sometimes be of great challenge, huge actually for me. I remember when my daughter was 16 and decided it was better for her to live full time with me rather than her mother.  I didn’t completely understand the full force of this decision until after she had been living with me for a few weeks. I first began by listening to everything she had to say without reacting strongly. This started with the little things. Eventually, the trust was built up enough where she could begin to share with me the full brunt of her relationship with her stepfather.  She had to give her Mother an ultimatum, either he goes or I move in with Dad she told her Mother. There was a lot of extremely inappropriate behavior between her step-father and herself and her Mother wasn’t doing anything about it.   She didn’t want to share this with me earlier because she was afraid, and rightfully so, that I would take her away from her Mother before she was ready. Needless to say, having her share all this with me was extremely difficult for me to hear. I am her Father, I didn’t protect her as was my job.  During her process of sharing all this with me, I was going nuts internally.  More emotions were moving through me than I knew how to handle at the time (this was almost 20 years ago now).  But I knew that if I began to share with her all that I was feeling, it would become about me and not about her. I knew this could shut her down. As her parent, I needed to be there for her and let her share all that she needed to share and all that she needed to feel during this sharing with me. I had to just observe my own reactions and feelings and not act on them.  This was a long and difficult process over a few months.  I wasn’t always successful.  My main job was to keep giving my daughter the space to move through her feelings and come to the places within so that together, we could make the best decisions on how to move forward (how to keep her protected, how to protect her brothers etc.)

For me, I needed to find someone that I could work with on my personal process through this journey without involving my daughter. My process would prove to be too difficult and would be overwhelming for her to handle on top of her own process.  As I worked through my issues and came to inner peace within little by little, I became more and more available for her.  Over time, I did begin to share with her my process and how I was feeling, but only when I felt it was important for her in her process. I wanted to make sure I could see how it was helpful and not a distraction. At times, it was important for her to know how I felt, but it wasn’t important for her to watch me go all manic and share my strong egoic reactions.

That’s an extreme sample of how our kids will trigger us into growing.  Kids are our mirrors in more ways than anyone else.  They are the living embodiment of our unresolved issues. Of course not all of them, but boy will the ones we share show their ugly heads. Our children do subliminally take on our unresolved issues, that’s one of the many ways we assist each other on our souls journey.

I had kids young, so I didn’t have much time to work through any of my issues, hell, I didn’t even know what they were yet.  But sure enough, I found them alive and well and living in my kids. One of the benefits of having kids later in life is you don’t have to pass down so many of your own issues.  If you have used your life to work through them that is. Just getting older is no guarantee that is the case.  It depends on how you have lived your life.

Regardless of when you have children, some of your issues will be living in them, and they will use every chance they can to throw them into your face. As they age, they will become more aware of this and use these areas to rebel. If we don’t react to their rebellion and breath into our own issues, see them as our mirrors, I wonder how different this rebellion would look?  How this could be a great opportunity to teach our kids the courage of looking deeply within for our answers and for changing our lives.

So President Obama, thank you for being empathetic with your children, having the courage to look them in the eyes and using this as an opportunity to change who you are. Our world is starting to become a better place for all of us to live in, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or religion.

I have a coexist bumper sticker with many symbols of religions on my car. I would like to find one that shows these symbols and say’s coexist in shared loved and respect (can you find one buzz word to say all this?) I want to do more than just coexist, I want to share our love and respect for each other and the many ways we ride the spoke of our wheel to the center place of God Love that we all share and live in. (whew, that’s a run on sentence)

Can we find the way to all live together in this salad bowl of life as we mix more and more together? The world is changing, one great example is this “How many people do you know that are pure in only one race?” Beyond some of the few indigenous tribes in far outlining places on the globe, it’s becoming increasingly impossible. What a fascinating time we live in, don’t you think? Maybe this scares you, maybe you are having an emotional reaction to the thought of being a minority, or being with people very different than you? If this is so, maybe I can be your angel and help you to move through this fear into a place of love and open heartedness.  Will you take the journey with me?