Hi James,
I have a doubt around neutralizing likes and dislikes, that seems to persist in me after many years of inquiry.
As I have a huge tendency of a “pleaser” in me, I sometimes get confused around right action. I have tried the practice of healthy boundries for quite some time now, to build my self confidence. Where I pause before I say yes or no when someone request something of me. I try to listen into myself to see if I really want to do it, or if I do it out of an old pattern of pleasing. However the doubt persist in me if that practice can also reinforce my likes and dislikes since my barometer is: do I want to do it or not. And I guess concerning my kids (age 12 and 16) the doubt is stronger since those are the one’s I hold dearest and I want to be a good, caring mother to them.
I hope you can share some light around this. Thank you.
James: Thinking about doing what you are asked to do by your children is an important part of life so discrimination is involved. Most people just react without thinking. The best action serves you and others, in this case your kids and by extension society since unhappy kids make other kids unhappy and unhappy kids make parents unhappy, etc.
But first you need to be honest with yourself about your motivations. If the need to be loved by your kids forces you to give them what they want even if it isn’t good for them and/or you, then you have to say no and explain why, or you will experience the guilt that comes when you go against the moral law…non-injury…that governs our actions. Children in general have very little appreciation of how parents experience the relationship and they easily run up against moral issues because their desires are so intense. If you are too needy you won’t know what’s best for others or for yourself. And you will always be confused because people will abandon you, often without telling you the reason, not just to avoid hurting you but because neediness is normal for you. Anyway, you have to be prepared not to be loved by them because the tendency to control them risks turning them in to rebels, which can easily become a lifelong problem. Look at complex materialist societies these days if you want to see the problems caused by unskillful parenting. A huge portion of the population, parents who aren’t mature adults due to unskillful parenting, is obsessed with acting out dysfunctional family stuff instead of contributing to the society, which in turn benefits them.
Remember, freedom from limitation is the number one need of human beings and emotional attachment, which is usually but incorrectly called love, puts the mind in conflict. When parents use power consistently…”Because I told you so!!!…the children experience suspicion and distrust. The family unit seems like a conspiracy to them, which in a sense it is. They are longing to grow, which is accomplished by succeeding and failing, but they can’t grow if they are acting out someone else’s desires, particularly a power hungry couple of big people eager to be good parents but whose self-love is deficient. So what do they do? They become adversaries.
So, while parents need to still enforce some boundaries they need to express love by gradually letting go of the attachment to outcomes that give relief from their insecurities. Remember, nobody put a gun to your head to make you a parent. You wanted it one way or another. But letting go doesn’t work well without knowledge of and surrender to all the complex impersonal factors in life that generate the specific situations that families are confronted with daily. If you appreciate the complexity of action and the moral issues i.e. non-injury that always accompany free will, you will turn the reins over to what happens and gladly accept the results. Of course this is a problem if you have a problem with religion, which paints somewhat perverse picture of the unknown factor in every transaction.
How you act is up to you but the results aren’t. If they were, you would have everything you want and you wouldn’t experience doubt. If you let go of the anxiety for a particular outcome…you don’t want them to take drugs for instance…you will not condition them to an anxious state of mind. If others are in your energy bubble, they will absorb your energy, positive or negative, by osmosis. There is only one mind. You definitely don’t want to create a neurotic person just to keep him or her safe from the inevitable pinpricks of life.
If you let go to the attachment, even if things don’t turn out according to your preference, your children will still feel loved by you because you are recognizing their most fundamental need..freedom to be what they are. All this LGBT stuff is just about freedom to express one’s feelings, which is good. Repression doesn’t work for individuals or societies. This is not to say that there is no personal or social downside to unfettered self expression. The backlash today which appears as culture wars, is understandable because nobody needs to know what you do behind closed doors in your relationship with intimates. Nobody other than you can understand or validate the tendencies that give rise to your choices. As you develop non-attachment to outcomes, you are developing a devotional relationship the field of life, which is obviously everyone’s primary caregiver. If you cultivate a loving relationship with the world you will develop great self confidence because the world will look after you. Self confidence is self love. You need to feel that life is a benign force, not a dark conspirator. “Bad” things do happen but an appreciation of the upside lurking behind every downside teaches you to take them gracefully in stride and learn from them.
You are not thinking of what life needs. Life is intelligent and set up to offer freedom to anyone who sincerely wants it, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Life is the desire for freedom welling up always in every human heart. Trust it to take care of your kids but don’t put pressure on them. They will rebel one way or another and your feeling of failure will be justified. You definitely don’t want that.
Much love,
James
