Questioning Your Fears

You are either attaching to your thoughts or inquiring.  There is no other choice. –Byron Katie, Loving What Is

Definitions: Unified Spirit-God’s voice of oneness in this world. Ego-Our false sense of self

We cannot begin to know the Unified Spirit’s plan for our children.  We do not know what spiritual lessons are for them.  However, we often feel the need to blame someone or something for our child’s difficulties.  We blame others and the professionals blame us.  We want to say, look it is not my fault, it is my child’s brain, or my child hangs out with the wrong set of kids, or he is allergic to something that triggered the bizarre behavior, or it is the vaccine, or she was born with addictive behavior, or he inherited the tendency to emotional instability.  We want to be able to say to people, look I am innocent, I did not cause this, and someone or something else did.  I am not to blame.  Or, we make it worse by blaming ourselves, which prevents us from seeing our child’s wholeness of spirit.

When we accept society’s labels for our children, we seek to place our blame outside of us.  Or, we accept responsibility, but turn our blame inward and judge ourselves.  If I am going to get stuck, this is where—judging myself, not forgiving myself.  And when this happens, I know I have totally succumbed to the ego’s thought system of guilt and attack.  When I am in this dark place, it feels even more difficult to get out.  And the ego is really clever, because I will tell myself I know better, look at all the spiritual work I have done, how could I possibly be this unforgiving?  How do we get out of the shame and blame game?  How do we get out of the ego’s grip?  You give yourself the gift of a question.  You cannot change your child; you can only change your mind about your child.  Remember your relationship with your child is holy ground and holy ground is risky ground.  It can feel scary to look within and confront our fears and drop judgments to embrace the divine in each of us.

When you are in that place of fear and feeling stuck or upset with your child or with any event in your life, give yourself the gift of a question.  Two spiritual teachers, Byron Katie and Barry (Bears) Neil Kaufman have developed a series of questions to help us understand and then release our fears.  This inquiry work aids in uncovering beliefs that are thoughts attached to emotions, which keep us unhappy and fearful.  We can re-write our story about our children from one of sadness and struggle to one of joy and peace, but first we must look at the limiting beliefs that cause us to stay stuck in the sadness and struggle.