"Mama, it is now officially afternoon," my son was telling me, glancing at the digital clock display on the microwave oven. Very swiftly, I replied, "No, TV is still not allowed," and continued to get busy in the kitchen. That has been one of the boundaries we agreed to uphold, that he is not supposed to watch TV until at least after lunch - which I typically refer as "in the afternoon", in our conversation. He has been home the last two school days as he was feeling under the weather. "Mama, that was not what I meant," he cringed a bit, then said, "I am just trying to tell you that afternoon is here," pointing again at the clock, a little past 12pm. His response made me paused and I immediately apologized to him, "Oh, I am so sorry about that. You are right, it is now afternoon," quickly gave him a hug and smiled. Suddenly, something relevant hit me - it was the quarterly parent-teacher conversation with his teacher earlier that day. One of the things we discussed was actually about teaching him how to read the clock. Wow, right there, he just taught me a lesson on conscious parenting. My view was tainted by my own assumption about his indirect cue to wanting to switch on Netflix again. Yet it was far from the truth, if only I tuned in closer to him.
Putting myself in his shoes, I was reminded by that rainy evening again when I had to move the stacks of laminate floorings delivered on a large pallet into the hallway (read my last post here) of our new home where we now live in. That means, I really did not have any handy and useful tools with me then, like a pair of scissors to cut open the plastic wrap around them. Since not many neighbours have moved in nearby, I ran down the block to the only house with lights on and knocked on their door to borrow a pair of scissors. I had to hurry as the rain started to pour harder. Once all the laminate floorings were safely moved into shelter, I dropped the pair of scissors back through their mailbox after spotting no one through their windows and left, to avoid being soaked under rain while waiting for someone to answer the door. It was late and we have to drive (to old) home. As we hurried out to the car, suddenly I heard someone hollering behind me. The heavy rain definitely did not help, the voice was faint but seemed to be getting louder and angrier - all I heard was, "Hey...hey you...!! HEYY!!..." I turned around with my umbrella and saw that the neighbor was shouting, "Where are my scissors?", with one hand up in the air and the other akimbo. I went up nearer to her and shouted back, "Sorry, I have dropped it through your door," followed by a thumbs-up gesture and ran again to catch my son. Honestly, if you ask me, the final tone in her shout was close to that of a police agent chasing down a criminal. What do you think her belief was of me initially in that scene? And, what do you think was my impression of her after that?
So simply by these two scenarios, can you notice how we actually co-create the reality of the world we are in? This is another way to depict how our world functions on basis of causes and effects. We are all interdependent of each other in the most complex way possible, taking into consideration generations after generations of unresolved patterns and cultural influence. With painstaking effort, great patience and likely a lot of luck, perhaps we can track back every single event in the past to understand why things happened the way they did (but, what is the point?). Everything that we do or say is the cause for some effects down the lane of time, impacting a series of events and similarly was also the effect of some events before that. And one of the effects, say it got one person really upset and bear grudges, then subsequently has become the cause of another effect, potentially soured relationship, and so on. Imagine the world is literally a perplexing web of all our thoughts and beliefs, blinding us from the actuality of things, perceived only through our five senses. The truth is, there is more that meets the eye. When the night falls, the moon is shining bright, the sun has retreated and hidden but it does not mean the sun is no longer there. When we act out on each other, instead of talking it out, the stories we tell ourselves will naturally be filled with false assumptions and beliefs which then translate into resentments we harbor. When we silence ourselves because we want to keep peace and resort to gratifying activities to avoid dealing with a problem or issue, we may feel the pleasure temporarily but it does not mean the problem is resolved and it will come back one day to greet us in other forms.
If everything is thought-based and nothing is as real as it seems, then the world must be just an illusion! We are all mere actors on this grand stage, therefore we must not be too attached to the play and storyline. As how Wayne Dyer put it, when we change the way we see things, the things we see change. What a liberation when we understand this, isn't it? In our life, we must not do unto others the very things we do not want to have done unto us. Always treat others the way we want to be treated. When we are free from biases, judgements, concepts, ideas, labels....this is pure love. When we can embrace everyone just the way they are, with love and compassion, this brings ultimate joy. In Buddha's teaching, this is called 'emptiness' or enlightened being. It does not mean 'nothingness'. Emptiness means all-encompassing, void of separation (you-me-them) and one with the entire Universe. Coming back to the context of conscious parenting, whenever we face any difficulties in connecting with our child, our first instinct must be to ask ourselves, "How have I co-created the current situation?" and not the rush into fixing what happened. Parents can check in on their own energy level, their presence, possible projection of stress or expectations onto their child...to name a few and this can only be done with consciousness. Co-creation is an important teaching in conscious parenting which calls on parents to take responsibility of the situation at hand and not blame it solely on their child. When parent and child can be seen on par and collaborate instead to find a win-win situation, that is how connection can be restored and continue to strengthen.
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