Raising a Child in a Crazy World
As always, I like getting down to brass tacks.
What is the definition of a crazy world? Some of us may agree on similar definitions and others may define crazy in an entirely different way.
But if we boil it all down, underneath all of the definitions that we have to define crazy, all of the defining characteristics would inevitably fall into the category of the extreme opposite of what we believe sane is.
Many believe that our world "pre-Covid" was a sane one, where we could go into a grocery store without masking ourselves, where we could go to large gatherings and enjoy the outdoors together, no matter the number of people, etc.
But how crazy is it that for as long as humanity has been in existence that we haven't risen above our negative reactions to everything? How crazy is it that we keep believing we know what's wrong with everyone and everything in the world, but never question the part of us that incessantly believes it knows what right is.
This blog is all about questioning things that have remained unquestioned.
What if we have always lived in a crazy world?
What if that crazy has just reached a certain pitch in our consciousness where we can no longer turn our eyes away from it? What if that lesson is being so "loudly" presented to us on the screen of our lives so that we may finally come to the point where we see that no matter what we do, it adds to crazy. Our wants (desires) always come coupled with don't wants. Everything has a temporary existence in this world, including you and I.
Thank God (literally) that there is a sane world that we can choose to live in. That world is a certain level of awareness within ourselves, where we physically live in this crazy world, but are not of it.
That is how we raise a child in a crazy world.
We can help our child learn to observe their own minds. We can share with them that the content of their minds is filled with crazy things that have been absorbed unknowingly by them, through culture, environment - perhaps even from lifetimes. In learning to observe their mind instead of identifying with it, they are automatically brought into a higher level of awareness that allows them to be in this world but not of it.
Practice being present with your child and with everyone you come into contact with. You have to be the living example of what it means to be present, what it means to relate properly to other human beings through presence,
Old patterns in us have to die. We can't do the same thing expecting a different result - it doesn't work that way, it never has. Patterns keep repeating themselves because most of the world is not present to reality.
In order to bring something new into this world, we need to be made new in the moment by dying to old parts of ourselves that want to negatively react to the moment, define the moment, blame others, resent others, divide ourselves from each other.
If we continue to do the same thing as we always have done in each and every moment, which is to give ourselves our own answers to it, then we feed crazy with energy that was intended to be used (in the right way) by us to be made new.
Nothing then changes and we continue to point the finger outward and exclaim "look how crazy the world is" which is the same as believing that we aren't a part of that crazy.
We are part of that crazy until we aren''t.
Awareness, presence, is the only sane and safe place to live and be.
Have your child absorb the beauty of that and you literally raise them with sanity.
Image courtesy of: Photo by saiid bel on Unsplash
