Argue with Reality at your own Peril..

Being a mom I'm often asking myself, what do I really want for my kids? What am I modeling for them? What are my actions teaching them? I felt growing up that my parents told me to "do as I say not as I do." My response was always "but your actions are so loud, I can't hear your words!"

More often these days I know that the most important thing I can demonstrate for my children is that I am aware even in my most afflictive thoughts and feelings that there is this "well being" that is always on, a stable ground in the midst of the tsunami of emotions. My kids and I have a code word we use with each other when we notice big upset, we simply say, Remember! Remember who you are, remember you can take a deep breath, remember that no matter how you feel, you are always ok, coming back the "okness" is always an option, it's always there.  This simple reminder to Remember came out of this experience below.

About a year ago, I was having a conversation with a few friends, I'd enrolled my kids in a musical and they were really upset after the first day of rehearsal. It's never easy when your child has a total meltdown and refuses to participate in an activity that I know they'll likely enjoy once they are over the "thing". So they are both very upset and I found myself getting derailed by their big feelings.

Instead of just opening my heart to my children and offering my highest gift -my own total stability - I fell into a story that the gal running the theater didn't really do a good job of making the kids comfortable the first day. Instead of fully allowing my kids to have their experience and being willing to acknowledge my own discomfort in seeing my kids so upset. I blamed, I projected, I made her wrong and thus, moved away from the intense sensation in myself and in my kids. I got overwhelmed and fell into the habit of blame. Then I started to tel the story to my friends.

Anyone relate? So I'm in my little fit, criticizing the theater gal and suddenly my friend Mikki Willis said to me, JoAnne, maybe you should really just stop complaining and criticizing (especially in front of your boys). I was floored.. I heard him, I resonated with what he was suggesting, but I was so deep in my justified "story" that what he was suggesting was not even on my radar.

Anyone relate? No matter how much spiritual work you've done (I've done quite a bit), we all have these pockets of unconsciousness, these places we find ourselves where we are deep in a story of "wouldn't it be better if ________ " (fill in the blank). Wouldn't it be better if they would do this? Act like this? not have done that? All of these "stories" are an argument with reality. They are all saying that it's not ok what's here now.

To really get what I'm saying here you've got to know the difference between what is here now and you're story about what is here now.. The clearer we get, the more we see, the less deluded we are, the less hypnotized, wrapped up in stories, the less we blame, criticize, complain or make anyone or anything wrong.

The clearer we are, the more grounded we are, the less we argue with what is. It took me about a year, but this became very clear, I made the pledge recently to not blame, criticize, complain or make anyone or anything wrong. It's been the greatest liberation I've every known and a gift I am moved to share with others.

This is what I want to model for my children. To learn to be present with themselves, to know what is arising in them and to meet it fully with an open heart and open mind. To take full responsibility for my own stable, well being. This capacity to be completely clear that no one can make me happy and no one can make me unhappy, that is up to me. It's up to me, I determine my own attitude, how I see the world, where I fight and struggle with myself and others or if I can find the space of surrender within.

In the commitment to not complain, not to argue with life, not to blame others as if they are the cause of my upset, but to stay lovingly present with myself as emotions arise, to allow them fully and let them land in the ground like fertilizer for my own soil. This accepting of full responsibility for my own experience and commitment to stay present with what arises is where I've found great liberation and great empowerment. It's the end of believing that I'm a victim of life and the end of believing that I'm in lack or that I don't have what I need to thrive and be happy and content. What greater gift could I offer myself or could I model for my children?