Why??
One of the most commonly asked questions of a parent by a young child is "Why?"
For me, personally, I heard a lot of "Because I said so's" from my parents growing up. I would ask "Why do I need to do that?" "Because I said so." Now, if I was able to watch a movie of my grandparents' lives, I can most assuredly say that their parents responded to that question in the very same way. That is simply what this lower consciousness does when there is no awareness to oversee it's actions. The past becomes the future.
As children, we are all raised in different environments. A child, for instance, raised by parents who were strongly identified with impatience, might have received the "because I said so" answer. A child raised by parents who were strongly identified with the intellect, might have received a very long-winded intellectual response. A child raised by parents who were strongly identified with anger, might have received a "physical" response for daring to ask such a question. On and on it goes...
I used the above examples in order to illustrate something that I would like to convey.
ALL answers, responses, if not given from the right part of ourselves (from presence), are incomplete. By incomplete, I mean that the response comes from something old in us (the past). The only way for a response to be new is for it to be "given" to us from a different "place" within ourselves in that moment. Otherwise, we just incarnate the "old" over and over again.
When we live from old parts of ourselves, we always have reasons "why" everyone and everything is as it is. A part of us truly believes that we know so much about everyone and everything. How do we know though? Well, as odd as it may sound, we simply pull those answers up from the past content of ourselves - that's how we claim we know.
But here's the kick - if we truly knew why everyone and everything is as it is, why are we so shocked (and negatively affected) when someone says or does something that we don't agree with?
When we work to wait for something new to be given to us in the moment, we start to see that most questions starting with "why" (excluding practical ones that a child may need to understand) are self-serving.
Why? (no pun intended)
When we agree to wait and suffer ourselves in the moment in favor of bringing something new into this world, there is no need to ask "why". Answers that we have held in our hearts are answered in those moments of suffering ourselves for the sake of that answer. All other answers are self-serving because they are given by and serve only the self that always believes it knows the reasons for everything. Therefore, we continue to feed the knower in us, instead of starving it.
We all suffer from the same malady....a disconnect from True Life, Wisdom and Reason, and all because we favor our own old answers that we give ourselves over something new and true in the moment.
Help your child learn to "connect' with that perfect intelligence that has always been there to guide us in the present moment. It IS the answer to all the "why's" that we have inside ourselves. It is we who depart from that intelligence in the moment, when we choose to give ourselves our own reasons for everything.
Exercise for the week: If your child is asking a "practical" question such as "why do clouds move?", respond the best you are able to. However, if they ask why someone is mean or doesn't seem to care, or why the world is the way it is, don't offer your opinion. Instead, share with them that answers to what bothers all of us are all available to each and every one of us when we choose to give up our own opinions and ideas about them. Help guide them to the true place where all true answers exist - within.
Image courtesy of: Sigmund on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/P2jJJjhMfos
