“Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love”

~Virgil, Roman poet and mythologist

A little over a year ago I culminated the journey of the Maiden and underwent the rite of passage that delivered me onto the path of motherhood. After 51 hours of labour I became the Mother, gifted with a baby boy who was healthy and bright and filled with magic. As all babies are.

This amazing passage was followed by dazed weeks of cuddling, waking, admiring and crying. Yes, crying. Sometimes I wept for joy and awe, sometimes for anger and confusion. There were so many questions, some related to baby, but many related to me. Okay, how do you get bright yellow poop out of crisp white fabric diapers? And, more importantly, WHEN DO I GET MY LIFE BACK?!?!?!

That was it, in a nutshell. Yep, spot the crafty, travelin’ hippie chick, now feeling saddled to a grindstone with no release in sight. No more writing, no more knitting, no more hiking…my life must be over now. Right?

My pregnancy had been all happy, it had been as “Ohm on a Mountaintop” as I could make it. But that was back when I had some control over my own days. This changed once my new baby was actually out of the womb and into the world. Since his arrival, my Motherhood was fast becoming a bit more of a “Silent Tears in the Bathtub” kind of journey. Not very happy at all.

I really thought this parenting thing would be all fun; kids laughing, everyone cooking together, playing hide-n-seek, decorating Christmas trees and reading bedtime stories. I never imagined a 6-month-old screaming bloody blue murder and tugging on my pant leg with snot streaming down their face while I tried, desperately, to make some darned oatmeal. “Am I am failure?” I would wonder. “Do my more pure, attachment parenting friends have clingy, angry babies too? Why can’t he just be humming in a corner, playing with his Ganesha statue or sit calmly and listen to my chant music? I mean, come on! This isn’t how it works, is it?”

Well that’s the truth of it. Babies are people too. They have personalities. They have moods. They have needs and wants and preferences. And they change as they get older. We are all human. Some days we are giggles and fairy tales, other days we are food throwing and temper tantrums. It is what it is.

Now, I wasn’t so much regretting my decision to have a child. We definitely wanted him in our lives, he had been planned and worked for. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was finding my way on this new and surprisingly more complicated path and not being able to find my own inner peace with all the changes. What I wanted was to make peace with parenthood, to not be afraid of it or overwhelmed by it, to be a better parent than had been passed down in previous generations of my and my husband’s families. But I also wanted to still be “me.” I guess you could say that I wanted to be a good parent to all of us, my son, my husband and myself.

But what to do with the tragic, shell-shocked, overwhelmed feelings that were dominating my days? I couldn’t ignore the truth of what I was feeling.

What I had to do was to go back to my base, which for me is always spiritual awareness. The spirit is always free and empowered and optimistic. So, I practiced quieting myself, over many days, taking a few minutes each day to listen within. And eventually my guides, or guardians, spoke, gently and clearly. They reminded me that I (my spirit) and my son (his spirit) had chosen each other as companions. We had chosen this journey of learning together and we had chosen this time and this place to meet up. And neither one of us existed in a bubble. We were to learn from each other. That meant that I am his parent/protector/teacher and that he is my spiritual teacher as well — my Guru. Our life together was to be the temple, or Ashram, of the Guru and it was therefore a sacred place of dedication and spiritual community.

In light of this message from my guides, I began to pause in my moments of anger and frustration to step outside of the moment and look at our relationship, that of Mother and Son, but also of Guru and devotee. “How can I honor my Guru, my teacher, the divine Source and our sacred community in this moment?” I would ponder. And, over the following weeks, I came to understand that letting my tension and worry dissipate, singing happily at our spiritual connection to one another and doing what he needed most in that moment to comfort him or teach him, with true love and compassion and without any resentment or animosity, was my divine service to him, my “seva” within our sacred Ashram.

Seva, or selfless service, is the spiritual practice of doing something that benefits others and doing so without any expectation of recognition or reward. Seva is done to honor the relationship of God with all things, to honour the essence of God/Goddess/Source within all things and all people. The concept of seva works well here because true parenthood is the place where self and other lose their separateness.

This does not mean that it will always be easy to maintain this headspace. Seva, even though in many temples it will be something as mundane as hand-washing the floors or scrubbing toilets, is the hardest work of all. The overcoming of self, of ego — or rather the melding of self back into oneness while still living in a materially manifest body — is the work of all spiritual paths. It is to lose the defensive, over-thinking nature of humanness and embrace, without any plan of why or to what end, the mindset of loving acceptance of all life and life circumstances. It is the most challenging awareness to gain and just as challenging to maintain. But the reward is the task itself. Freedom from suffering, through the process of loving surrender.

Now some people may say this does not fit their vision of parenthood. Parenthood is love and joy and fun and creativity, right? Yes. All that and more. But it is also loss of self, on many, many levels. You maybe hadn’t planned on losing yourself, but parenting with all your heart and soulful intentions will require loss of self, in little ways, over and over again. YOU are not the main feature anymore, you are backstage support staff. And when everyone goes home and the footlights are turned off, you can creep quietly out from behind the curtain and twirl in the spotlight. But being “seen” isn’t your biggest thrill anymore. You may get a starring role from time to time, but directing and clean-up are really what your life purpose is, at least until someone says “Mom, I got this. Feel free to steal some sunshine, my leaves are bright, my roots good and deep now.”

To be able to understand the peeling away of your excess layers and accept changes to your most dearly held beliefs about why you are so special and what makes life worth living, within the framework of sacred service, is very important for keeping positive and upbeat as your new life unfolds and unexpected challenges are faced. Knowing that it is not all about you, believing that there is divine providence at work, that perhaps in past lives this soul was not the child but the parent to your own small soul, can put into perspective the sacrifice of missing date night or going to bed so early that even your 8-year-old self would have felt gypped, or giving up your dream vacation for someone else’s dream bike or offering the last piece of cheesecake without gripe or waking up to soothe an angry, cranky, fever-ridden child when you just worked the late shift and haven’t even had 3 hours of sleep yet. What matters more, patiently taking 5 minutes to teach your child to brush their teeth for the 8th time or snapping at them and tucking them, crying, into bed so you can get that 5 extra minutes of “relaxation” time with a book or a cigarette or a movie?

Yes, you need “you” time and you will know when to put yourself first — no one is saying that neglecting your own physical and mental health is a smart or spiritual way to parent — but taking the “you” time in a peaceful and flowing way and making sure that your children know love and a balanced foundation is not only possible but totally manageable. Put a rhythm in place, in your home and in your thought processes, that builds a support network for your seva and for your “ego,” as well as for the your children’s unfolding and exploration of life and self and the world. Teach them seva as well, so they can appreciate the gift of selfless service. Take one holiday out of the yearly calendar and cancel your family celebrations to instead create a celebration of Earth or of community or of health. Whichever feels most age-appropriate for your children.

Every child is different and constantly changing, which means their needs and your service will be changing as well. Yes, our little one was once screaming whenever I cooked and making me take him to the toilet with me. But that wasn’t “who” he was, it was just “what” he needed. Now our son is calm and curious, talkative and very sensitive to the emotions of others. He is joy. Except when he’s not. Because sometimes they just won’t be. When they don’t sleep good, or are learning new social behaviors or cutting a new tooth, they can be angry and weepy, throwing and shouting. But all that this behavior says is “I need a different Mama today. I need MORE Mama today.” So, in service to the highest good of our spiritual connection, what I do is set aside my plans for that day. I breath one deep, calming breath. Then I open my arms wide and give in. I give everything I’ve got, with peace and love and presence. Because tomorrow he will be calm and sweet and curious again. That child is this child, one and the same. One day he will become a man, and he will have a foundation that says, “Love is given freely. You are lovable on every day, not just the good days.” He will know that service to the ones you love, to what you believe in, is divine even when it is not easy or not fun.

And he is giving me gifts as well. I have learned so much from my son already. I have learned so much about myself, what is true about me and what were just wrong assumptions. I feel that he teaches me even in his sleep.

I like to bow to him, in his calm and in his frustration, and say “Namaste”, meaning “the divine that resides within me honors that which is divine within you.”

It was remembering and including our spirits that helped me to improve our life together, but I can still recall the sharp pain of how it felt before. It all seemed so tragic then, like I had lost myself forever and was doomed to a long, walking death. Many new parents must find themselves in this same, painful mindframe at first. Now I can see how wrong I was.

It’s not that you “lose” your self in becoming a parent, it is more that self is no longer your primary function on this planet. You might say that you have less time for self-ish-ness. You will not always be able to sleep when you want to, eat when you want to or even pee when you want to. Will you see these moments as angering, frustrating, resentful? Resentment is certainly there, lingering on the sidelines, waiting to take hold. But parenthood is the shift from how the “me” feels and what the “me” wants to a new paradigm of “we”, especially for the primary caregiver. You and this little soul have made a pact with each other, to be teachers and learners of each other and of life, together. As a parent, you hope the majority of the lessons you teach will be good ones. Using Seva in your understanding of parenthood is a tool that can remind you, when times get difficult, of your gift to your child and of their gifts to you. Accept service with peace and openness and watch for the little miracles and unexpected joys along the way. Life unfolding is a wild ride and the scenery is extraordinary.

“Cleanse your emotions, passions, impulses, attitudes, and reactions. That is the essence of spiritual discipline as laid down in all faiths.”
~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba, South Indian Guru and Spiritual Teacher

While you are walking the path of spiritual development, slowly building a greater awareness of your spirit, personal motivations, actions and your effect upon the world, you are also learning to recognize the difference between a spirit-thought and an ego-thought.

The easiest way to phrase this is that you are learning to discern your impulses from your inspirations.

Sometimes these impulses are big things like the impulse to drink a case of beer at lunchtime or the impulse to jump in bed with a beautiful stranger behind your wife’s back. But often what we are faced with are the collection of small daily impulses that, when followed blindly, drain us of our energy, our focus and our self-esteem.

For instance, this morning, between the moment of waking, kissing my beloved, taking a sip of water, then using the bathroom (a sequence which took roughly 4 minutes) I had a total of four self-defeating and/or distracting impulses. All of which were completely unrelated to what my true spirit or a healthy, happy mind and body would desire in reality.

These consisted of several old friends such as: the go-back-to-bed monster, the fear-of-falling-down-the-stairs demon, the ghost of sugary-cereal-for-breakfast and the sucked-into-the-internet-inferno dragon.

Why do any of these concern me? Quite simply because each of these thoughts carries with it an energy or, more specifically, a desire for energy.

Thoughts that desire to eat up a bit of your energy tend to give a kick-start in your mind to exactly the kind of energy that they are hungry for, amplifying its presence and its hold over your thoughts. Which would be fine, if the type of energy they ask for was one that feels good – like watching a butterfly on a sunflower or being a kid on Christmas morning or falling in love. But impulse thoughts, more often than not, are feeding off of fear, desire, desperation, discord and sluggishness.

Though I prefer to use positive language in my articles, I must be honest here and say that, when it comes to impulses, working to reduce their hold on you can seem like a battle. One where the battlefield is won on some occasions and then lost to the opposing side on other occasions.

The approach for achieving success here is really two-fold.

First, you must become aware of your thoughts and impulses, learning to tell the difference between inspired motivation and defeatist impulses. In other words, knowing which desires are truly the real divine you and which are power-based mind illusions. The best way to do this is to develop a practice of meditation, having daily bits of silence and calm in which you deliberately listen to your mind chatter and work on quieting it. Also, it may be helpful to institute a 30-second delay between motivations (thoughts and desires) and their respective actions (speaking and moving), just to give yourself time to gauge their true origin and value in your life.

Second, you must find a way to silence our disempower the illusion-based impulses and only act on the truly divine motivations. This is a game of constant mindfulness and willpower. What you need to have are a set of inspirations and intentions for yourself and your life. For example, knowing that you want a fit body, and articulating why it is that you want this, will give you a ready-made shield for the moments when ego shoots its French pastry ammunition at you. So, take the time to make note of your hopes and true inspirations for your life, whether it has to do with how you spend money, how your relate to your parents, or even how often you do your laundry. You can use your inspirations to help you stay on track.

For instance, I have some long held intentions and positive desires that helped the divine me win in the spirit & ego tug-of-war this morning.

1. I am trying to move closer and closer to waking up at the sunrise, despite the change of seasons or the silliness of daylight savings time.

2. Though I have an old knee injury, my intention and affirmation is that my joints are getting stronger every day and that my trust in them to support me is unwavering.

3. With a past of food issues, including anorexia and obesity, and the desire to build a body healthy enough to carry a baby in the near future, I now walk on a path that consists of organic, whole, vegetarian foods with the occasional indulgence in (not the every day gorging on) something sweet or cheese laden. Knowing the difference between occasional and habitual, I aim always to be mindful of the fact that what I put in my mouth becomes a physical part of this mortal body which houses my divine spirit.

4. My partner and I have both come to our own realization that we tend to disappear into our computers and forget to live life in the real world. As a joint decision, we now have three days a week that are “unplugged” days – days for hiking, gardening, canoeing, cooking, knitting, reading books, etc. Therefore, I can stimulate my intellect and need for information on “plugged” days. Hence, I have no need to run to the computer on a Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday.

So, with a few moments of awareness, armed with these above intentions and a small snippet of willpower, I was able to silence each of these defeatist impulses and carry on with my morning. I opted to actually remain awake, to walk confidently down the stairs, to eat whole rye toast and old-fashioned homemade oatmeal, to steer away from checking my email and to instead focus on our planned morning hike.

Will spirit and positive intention always win the tug-of-war with ego, fear and imbalanced desires? Most certainly not. But today, this one fine morning, my spirit takes the prize.

“I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.”
~Richard Wagner, 19th-century German Composer

The divine self is your inner life force, your true motivation for living. The divine self is what powers you and makes you wonder. It is the soul light at your core that chose to be incarnate at this point in time.

The divine or higher self is that part of you that is ever-aware. The divine self has been aware and thinking since your birth in this lifetime and since your birth in every other lifetime. The body and the physical realm, in which we dwell, are but a vehicle for the higher self.

You are here because you have chosen to be here and because the energy force, that is life and awareness, has lessons to learn and exchanges to make that can only be accomplished by taking human or manifest form.

All that is, is light.

Though it may seem as if the physics of incarnation, of being born and of living in the busy, colorful, physical world of manifestation would cut us off from knowing the divine self at our core, it does not have to be so. You may chose for it to be otherwise.

Here is how we can begin to acknowledge our divine and true core and, by so doing, begin to draw closer to our own higher self:

The first step is to embrace the existence of the divine self.

Try this exercise.

Turn off your waking mind by calming and quieting yourself.

Remove all external distractions to the best of your abilities. No radios, televisions, lawnmowers, screaming children, telephones, alarm clocks, music… nothing.

Now seat yourself comfortably and chose one of the following, either a lit candle or a mirror.

If you choose the candle, you will stare directly into its flame. If you choose the mirror, you will stare into it, scanning your whole face… You will not stare into your own eyes and you will not let the flame make your eyes unfocused (as you do with those Magic Eye puzzle images).

Instead, remain aware of you, in your body, and remain relaxed, but with the eyes still maintaining relative focus.

The candle flame is light and light is the force of all life. Everything that we think is animate, and therefore alive, is powered by light. Everything that we know to be solid, material, and therefore provably real, is only perceivable due to its reflection and absorption of light.

Mass is matter, matter is energy and energy is light. So all that is, is light.

In the case of the mirror…The image of the self is one that we both embrace and avoid.

We avoid it because we compare it to the beauty and perfection that we would hope to find in the natural world. We avoid the supposed imperfections in our physical bodies, because they make us feel unlovable, unworthy.

We never realize that imperfections are what life’s purpose is all about. Sentient energy is in its whole essence perfect and choses to be incarnate, in order to experience not only the joy and sorrow that is physical reality, but also, most purposefully, to experience the joy and sorrow that is imperfection and to learn to give off and believe in the bright, universal light of unconditional love, in spite of the sorrows and imperfections.

Only by this process can true lessons be learned and one come closer to ascension or reintegration with the ALL, an infinite and sentient energy form which all that has been, and all that will ever be, is derived. The ALL is the “Creator”, the “Source”, it is neither male nor female but simply IS. The ALL is ever-present, as are all light beings that derive from its source. That means you and I, our light and our awareness, are ever-present and that we are all siblings in the Family of Light.

What we often miss is that the many things and people that we, in this physical realm, think to be perfect manifestations of the creative force of nature, have often been altered to appear perfect and are actually no longer natural. The ideal of natural perfection is an unnatural lie.

Alternately, we embrace the image of self because we have ego, because we KNOW that we are manifest in a body and that this body has eyes, a nose, a mouth, a face and a shape. We know this is true, because we can see and feel it.

Now, looking in the mirror, we might look at ourself as simply a physical thing, a manifest object comprised of matter, just like the candle or the match that we used to light the candle. We are just matter and we will eventually die and decay. But, hang on. WE can make choices, can lay up late at night thinking, can reproduce, can form religions, can create with our hands, we can cry and love and feel anger.

Then are we really just matter? Are we not something more advanced, a spirit, a personality incarnate?

Personality and thought are not physical functions. Yes, they are powered by physical functions, but this is only to bridge the gap between the spirit and the body. How does gas power a car? By combustion, which is achieved by a physical process that changes the state of the gas. The brain is the method of conversion for the fuel that is the spirit, but the spirit is always the necessary fuel for life. When our engine gets clogged we need only look at the poor state of a neglected spirit to find the cause.

So now that we can look at ourself in the mirror and see ourself as more than simply this flesh, but as a sentient spiritual being moving about in a living phyical body, we can begin to value our connection to things beyond the physical realm.

Look into the mirror and scan your visage, see the light within the body and the light, the lifeglow, surrounding it.

While doing this exercise with the candle, or the mirror, embrace the light of life, the energy of creation and your connection to all that is. Now repeat: “I believe in my divine self, I know of it, because I can feel it within me, because I can see its presence in my life.”

Repeat this phrase, but not mindlessly. Repeat it while feeling the truth of it well up inside your heart. Feel the energy of the divine self and the energy of your connection to the universe and all creation buzzing around the surface of your skin.

Repeat the phrase, or modify it if another, more suitable, phrase comes to your mind. Think to yourself of your divine self making contact with your manifest self.

Open yourself to the reality of your divine self and open your heart to the possibility of communication with that higher self, and see what comes of it in your life.

You may repeat this exercise every moon cycle, best at the new moon, for as long as you feel it is necessary to build this relationship with the higher self and to draw it closer to your waking understanding.