What Have We Become and Who Do We Want to Be?

What Have We Become and Who Do We Want to Be?

Two totally unrelated events of the past week converged unexpectedly for me and led me to some deep introspection.

First came the college cheating scandal, where wealthy and influential parents, including CEO’s, two Hollywood actresses and a legendary fashion designer, schemed to get their children into universities through fraud, bribes and lies.  According to court records, parents paid to help their children cheat on college entrance exams and to falsify athletic records of students to enable them to secure admission to some of the country’s elite universities, including UCLA, USC, Stanford, Yale and Georgetown.

Then came the news that 49 people, worshippers in the Al Noor and Linwood Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, were brutally gunned down by a 28-year-old Australian man  who expressed white supremacist ideology,  who posted a racist manifesto online and who streamed live video of the horrific events on Facebook.  It was the worst act of violence in the country in nearly three decades and was, according to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”

There is still much to learn about the college cheating scandal.  What is clear though is the lengths parents were willing to go – and the money they were willing to spend –  help their children illegally gain entrance to college. To me however, this scandal is merely the most recent and extreme symptom of an ailment deep in our psyche as parents and educators across America.

As an educator for nearly 35 years, 30 of which I have served as head of school in one of the country’s most competitive private school markets, I have seen the steady rise of anxiety around readiness, SAT and ACT scores, and the college application process in general.  Though I’m not a psychologist, I can say that from my vantage point it has become a mass hysteria –  a national crisis documented poignantly in films such as Race to Nowhere and Waiting for Superman as well as in books such as The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins.  The questions begin as early as preschool: “What do you think is the best pathway for my child to get into an Ivy League school?”  “What is the average SAT score of your graduates?”  “How many hours of homework do your elementary students do?”.  And so on.

Testing and test scores have become the penultimate goal of school.  Getting into the “best” schools occupies a significant amount or our psychic space.  We spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how our child will “stack up”, whether he or she will “make the grade”,  or if they will “be able to compete.” And whether we would admit it or not, the high schools and colleges our children attend often become status symbols as much as the cars we drive or the clubs we attend.  Meanwhile, our stress becomes our children’s stress, exacerbated by the college prep and entrance process; it has all become one insidious and dangerous cycle, contributing to epidemic rates of clinical anxiety & depression. And along the way we have totally lost sight of the meaning and purpose of education, perhaps because we’ve lost track of our own moral and spiritual compass.

Our greatest thinkers and visionaries –  from the ancient Greeks through the renaissance to modern times – saw a deeper meaning and higher purpose for education.  Aristotle said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all”. Michelangelo could have been talking about a human being as much as a piece of art when he said, “Every block of stone of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”.  According to Maria Montessori, education was intended to be a “preparation for life” and a means for the person to “discover himself”.  More recently the Dalai Lama talked about the “inner values” that should be taught to counterbalance the emphasis on the “material values” which pervade our society.

What does this have to do with the tragedy in New Zealand?  As with so many countries around the world, the USA has seen a dramatic rise in the number of hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center identified 954 hate groups in 2017 – up from 917 documented in 2016.  According to a March 15, 2019 CBS report, the FBI has bout 900 active domestic terrorism cases that include cases tied to white supremacists. The USA has seen a rise in violence by white supremacists, including the murders of 11 people at a Pittsburgh Synagogue last fall.  There was also a deadly clash at a white national rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, the murders of nine people at the church in Charleston in 2015 and the deaths of six at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012. Gun violence takes young lives each and every day in cities across America.

In this climate of extreme violence, political figures stoke fear and anger to their advantage, while the internet has become a forum for expressions of the most vile and debased ideas and perspectives. We as adults, like our more vulnerable children, are left trying to tread water in the turbulent storm of traumatic images and reports that fill our television and computer screens, the emotional scars of which we have not even begun to understand.  We are overwhelmed by it all,  and left wondering what have we become and where we are going.  But maybe the better questions are, who do we want to be and what do we most want for our children?

To answer to these questions will require us to do a major reset, to pause and deeply reflect upon the hyper focus we have created on test scores and the insane competition around college readiness, where students feel that they have to take AP classes to be competitive and that even a 4.0 GPA is not high enough to stand out.  Not only is this path destructive for everyone involved, it is far, far removed from the actual meaning and purpose of education. I have informally asked parents in many different forums over the years what they most wish for when they think of their child’s future, and the most common answer is that in the end they just want their children to be happy. Simple as that right? Well not so much anymore.

If we truly want our children to be happy, then we must contemplate and co-create learning environments that balance cutting edge academic classes with courses that foster personal well-being and community.  We have to incorporate opportunities for students to experience cultures and religions beyond their own neighborhoods in order to broaden their understanding and expand their comfort zone.  We should encourage community service activities that help build empathy and human connection.  We can foster forums for dialogue on race and gender so that students feel safe expressing who they are and learn to listen to other perspectives.

In the big picture, in addition to our academic goals, we should strive to instill inner values such as courage, compassion, integrity, justice, forgiveness and respect ( to name a few)  – and to imbue our students with the belief that a life well-lived is one in service to something bigger than one’s own self–interest.  And no, the aim is not to nurture naïve and passive lambs that will inevitably get devoured by the wolves of the real world.  If we must choose an animal metaphor, let’s help create lions of the human spirit who are discovering themselves as human beings, who are passionate about contributing their gifts to the betterment of the world, and who won’t shrink from the immense and daunting challenges we face as nation and a world.  Because whether they become leaders in the traditional sense or not, the moral fiber our children carry within them will impact those around them, whatever sphere of life they may eventually be in.

To bring this conversation full circle, the triumph of love over hate is ultimately a struggle in the human heart.  The journey to overcome ignorance, bigotry, prejudice and injustice begins with the choice of what we value as parents and educators.  As Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”  The path toward creating a more harmonious and peaceful world is educating a new generation of self-aware, inspired and broad-minded leaders.  In order to renew our commitment to those goals it’s time to reexamine ourselves.  It may mean we have to let go of some things we thought were important, but things that we know are not truly what life is all about in the end.  For hatred to be stemmed and ultimately overcome, we need capacities of the heart as much as new ways of thinking.  It’s a long journey, but as they say, it begins with a single step.

 

 

 

 

 

Skating to the Edge of the Night

As uncle Bob led us across the snow-covered pasture, I looked up and saw Venus shining brightly just above the lavender and pink-streaked horizon.  I took a deep breath, and as the cold night air surged into my lungs, I felt a sense of adventure.  Down the hillside we slid to the edge of the pond.  My brother Matt and my four cousins and I began strapping on our ice-skates as Bob began to gather a kindling for a fire.  The full moon was rising behind the pines across the pond from us.

Soon I was gliding along in circles, as the moonlight glistened on the smooth black ice below me.  Meanwhile, flames from the fire danced in the darkness.  I skated in and out of light beams and silhouettes.  I felt the winter air against my face.  I was in a new world of luminescence, mysterious shadows, crystalline air,  and primeval flames.  I felt a visceral, organic connection between myself and the natural world.  Strangely, as stark and raw and cold as it was, I felt a sense of security and well-being.  I felt at home.  I was existing inside a feeling of total freedom, which kept expanding and expanding. 

 Stopping to rest, we gathered around the fire.  While we’d been skating, uncle Bob had wrapped potatoes in tin foil, punctured them with holes, and placed them in the hot embers. Now we carefully unwrapped the steaming potatoes, cut them in half and slathered them with butter.  I got big morsel onto my fork, cooled it down enough, and put it into my mouth.  The mélange of steaming potato, charcoal, melted butter and bits of dirt was transcendental.  I felt as if I had never really tasted a potato before – so pure, so distinct, so rich was the experience.  Meanwhile, I looked out across the moon-lit ice pond.  I felt happy – alive.

To experience life directly, head on, without any buffer, is what skating on the ice pond provided for me. The feeling of gliding freely in the winter night, beneath the light of the moon, lives deep inside of me.  I can still taste that fire-roasted potato from uncle Bob as if it is right in front of me.  There is a beauty to the rawness of life experienced in the wilderness, and that beauty can stay with us forever.  These experiences were common in my youth.  Now it seems such experiences must be sought out with intention, especially amidst our world so influenced by technology,  and where most of live removed from natural world.

In the modern world, with our dominating interest in machines and technology, we have harnessed the forces of nature and made them work for us.  But it can be easy to forgot that we are not the source of those natural forces, the source of that power.  The source of nature’s power and beauty is what sages from time immemorial have contemplated.  It prompted ancient priests and priestesses to describe Earth as a goddess – as our Mother.  It inspired poets like John Keats to say, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”  It’s what drove Cezanne, Monet and Van Gogh to tirelessly fill their canvasses with the ever-changing mystical light of southern France.

The idea of allowing our children to experience the natural world sounds simple enough, but it carries with it a deeper significance.  Nature is a reflection of our own spark, our spiritual essence.  The natural world is like a mirror of all of the beauty that lies within us.  And as such, the more we can bring our children into contact with nature, the more our children can experience a reflection of their own inner selves.  Nature is a refuge where all of us find ourselves again.  Its puts us all back in touch with the greater cosmic harmony in which we all participate.

Maria Montessori felt that the experience of awe and wonder is the primary goal of education – and by extension of childhood.  And the natural world is where awe and wonder live.  When our children look at a flower, hear a bird sing, touch a turtle’s shell, see a snake slither or spot a butterfly, these experiences become touchstones of their spirit.  When our children roll in the grass, jump in the creek, play in the mud, skip stones at the lake, catch a fire fly or poke the embers of the campfire, they are embracing first-hand the essence of life.  Those experiences fill them with a joy we hear in their exuberant squeals of laughter and we see reflected in the light of their eyes.

So as life seems to speed up, slow it back down.  For a day, live organically not virtually.  Become fascinated again by the little miracles of nature – whether it’s in the woods or on a farm, on the mountain or in the river, at the lake or at the sea, on the ski slope or on the ice pond.  Be intentional about finding experiences of the natural world with your children.  Grow a garden.  Go for a hike.  Or get on the bike.  Pick some apples.  Make a plan.  Put it on the calendar.  If you live in the city, get creative.  Visit the arboretum.  Find the local community garden.  Go to the natural science museum.  Nature is closer than you think.  Be like the bees and seek out the flowers.  For like the bees we are pollinating the next generation, so they too will seek the nectar of life.  In so doing, our children’s lives – and ours – will be enriched.

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.“ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Activity:  Go on a mini vision quest. 

Take your child to a creek.  Walk to a place along the creek where you cannot see the road or hear the cars – away from the trail and other people.  Tell your child that you just want to sit quietly for ten minutes along the water without talking; that you just want to watch the water flow, hear the creek ripple over the rocks and the birds sing above, feel the sun and the breeze on your face, rest on the rocks or moss beneath you.  

If you want, you can share the idea that native people would do this kind of thing to get in touch with the earth, to feel reconnected to nature and to even hear the messages from the animals and the plants – messages even from the water and the stones.

After the ten minutes is up, take a deep breath and stretch.  Ask your child how they liked the experience?  What did they hear or see?  Was there something special that drew their attention?  Like the native people, did they receive any messages while sitting by the creek? Was there an animal or plant or insect that spoke to them?

As a follow up, you can have notebooks or drawing pads with you – and spend some extra time either writing / sketching what’s in front of your or describing the experience you just had.  This has the added advantage of creating a permanent memento of the experience.

The activity suggested above is for one parent and one child.  Of course, you can do with more members of the family, but try it first with just two of you.  Be sure you won’t get interrupted by the ring of your phone – or distracted by checking your messages.  Try to be fully present.

 If you like this experience together, why not make it a tradition?  You can go to a different part of the creek each time – or go to a different nature place altogether. You can also expand the amount of time you sit in silence. These mini vision quests can become an important bonding opportunity – just you with your child and the natural setting you choose.

Postscript:

Uncle Bob was a shaman of sorts when it came to building fires, cooking potatoes in the embers, pointing out planets in the night sky, finding the best fishing holes, showing us hidden raspberry patches, spying the hawk on the branch of the oak tree, finding an owl feather on the trail, or telling tales of olden times.  I will always be grateful to him for spending time with us during those formative years of childhood and putting us into such direct contact with the elements of life.  Those experiences formed who I am and instilled in me a deep love for the natural world and an appreciation for the small things in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Night I Met Beethoven

 I was about 7 years old.  When I got home from school, it was raining and I couldn’t play outside.  I could hear the sound of the piano in the great room and so I quietly opened the door.  My older brother Peter was sitting at his Steinway baby grand, his eyes fixed squarely on the music sheets in front of him.  He did not look up or say anything, and so I sat down on the couch nearby.  

 I closed my eyes.  I could feel in the tones of the piano keys a mystical quality, something deeply soulful. The emotions I began to feel were very deep – and new.  It was as if the notes of the piano echoed a longing inside myself.  I was transported to a timeless space, and I stayed there until the song was finished.

After he played the final notes, Peter said, “That’s called Moonlight Sonata.  It’s by Beethoven.”  He said, “You can imagine moonlight playing on the waves of the ocean.”  Then he started playing it again.  I closed my eyes and returned to the same deep place, but now I was watching the waves roll toward the shore and crash, illumined by the moon.

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The great room became a refuge for me, and these listening sessions with my brother Peter became meditations, though it was many years later that I recognized them as such.  It was in this way that I became aware that I had inside me an internal world.  Within that world lived all kinds of deeper emotions, which brought with them new insights about myself and about my daily experiences.  Whatever challenges I may have faced during the day at school or on the playground, by listening to my brother’s playing I was able feel again the beauty and goodness of life.

I had begun to encounter the meanness and ugliness of the world.  It affected me deeply to see how roughly kids would treat each other on the playground and it upset me terribly to see boys get into fights after school.  After dismissal, some older boys would follow me off the school grounds and would tease me, tell me to give them money or gum and sometimes beat me up.  I befriended some other tough boys (and girls) and these new “friends” looked out for me and protected me, but then I was horrified at the way they treated the boys that were teasing me.

My only refuge was home.  Once I was at home I would feel safe, and I found great solace in going into the great room to listen to my brother Peter play his piano.  The experience of sitting on that couch and hearing pieces like Moonlight Sonata was a gateway for me to my own inner world.  The place I entered inside could not be damaged or hurt by the meanness of the world outside. It was a beautiful place and this helped me to keep a belief that despite all the ugliness there was beauty in world.

As I sat in these solitary moments I gained an ever-deeper sense of the variations of feeling I could experience. I am so grateful to my brother Peter for putting me in touch with my own soul with the exquisite beauty of his playing and for the gentle patience he showed me.  He never once questioned why I would want to spend so much time in that great room, just listening.  Peter seemed to sense what an impact these musical pieces were having on me – and how important it was to me to have this time where I could let my spirit fly free

I feel so fortunate to have had a safe home, loving parents and my brother Peter’s music to heal me on a regular basis.  But I know many people have not been as lucky – and who may have had many terrible things happen to them as children.  They did not have a peaceful home, let alone an older brother or sister who could help them to tap into a more exalted realm of experience.  Regardless of our circumstances, however, each of us at some point must come to grips with the harsh realities and cruelty of the world.  Finding our way through the darkness of the world into the light of well-being is perhaps the primary task of childhood, and for many of us this process is still ongoing.

Because of the enormity of this task and the emotional residue it leaves inside us all, we as parents would very much like to inure and protect our children from the darker sides of the world.  Like the king who kept his son Siddhartha sequestered in the castle,  where he had every comfort imaginable and was totally sheltered from the sorrows of the world, we would do anything so our children would not have to experience anything bad or hurtful.  Yet in the case of Siddhartha, who later became the Buddha, it was BECAUSE of the suffering he experienced outside the castle walls that he set off into the forest to discover his own meaning and purpose.

How do we help our children pass through “this dark night of the soul” – this realization of the sometime brutal realities of the world – and come out the other side as whole and strong human beings?  We don’t want them to lose their hope, their innocence, their unabashed embrace of life as they journey through childhood.  We are afraid they will lose the unique and special personalities that we have watched unfold since they day they were born.  And we need nurturing ourselves to find the energy, perspective and commitment to support our children along the way.

In my case, beyond having loving parents and a peaceful home, the key ingredient for me to survive those harsh early years of school was the discovery of my interior world.  The realization that I had a space inside myself that I could go where nobody could bother me – a place of deep peace and inspiration – was without a doubt the key.  The experience of that inviolable place within, where I could preserve a sense of beauty and peace in the face of the outside world, was my saving grace.  And ultimately that can be the pathway for our children too.

As Maria Montessori would say, the pathway depends on the child.  Providing our children with opportunities for deeper experiences is easy once we ourselves make the decision that we too need and enjoy those experiences.  Sitting together and listening to a great piece of music – or better still going and hearing the symphony in person – is the kind of activity that allows us all, adults and children alike, to let go of the ordinary world for a while and enter a place of beauty and inspiration.  We all need these soul-nourishing experiences on a regular basis.  Otherwise the heaviness and routine of the world can weigh us down and we can lose sight of the meaning of our lives.  And our children especially need this kind of soul-nourishment.

The power of music – and art in general – is that it is a communication from heart to heart.  When we listen deeply to a piece of music, we can feel the emotions the composer put into the music.  He or she has lived an experience, channeled the feelings of that reality into a musical creation, and then documented that creation in musical notation. The composer’s music is the expression of their own journey and the place where they found refuge for their spirit.

Musicians (like my brother Peter) then bring the composer’s experiences back to life by reading the musical notes and playing those notes on their instruments, intuiting the feelings the composer meant to express,  enabling us to magically feel what the artist had felt.  In this way, the process of art transcends time and space and puts us in touch with realities that are ever enduring.  The invisible feelings, images and ideas that are conveyed in this way can become sustenance for our lives and for those of our children.

In this way, I feel like I met Beethoven when I sat in our great room and listened to my brother play Moonlight Sonata for the first time.  I cannot imagine growing up without those precious times, carried inward by the melodies resounding from my brother’s piano.  Later, I realized that I could return to that inner space even if Peter was not there to play.  I return to that space even today as diligently as I can  – for the same reasons I did as a child – to connect to the stillness, light and peaceful energy of my own soul.

“What seems so far from you is most your own.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

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Exercise:

 Set aside time to listen to a great piece of music with your child.  Be sure there are no other distractions around – such as a television playing in a neighboring room –  and maybe inform others as needed that you don’t wish to be disturbed during this time.  This exercise is envisioned for one parent and one child – though variations are of course entirely up to you.

 Remember that, because it is so rare to pause in this world of ours, you are modeling for your child how to actually listen.  Get yourselves comfortable in chairs, on the couch or lying on the floor.  Take a deep breath or two.  Close your eyes if that feels appropriate.  As needed you can say, “Let’s listen to this music together.  Let’s spend a few minutes just letting go of the world outside.” 

 Trying listening in silence till the end.  After listening together, you can talk about how that felt – or not.  You can share any images that may have come to mind – or any feelings that may have come up for either of you.  As a follow up activity, you can have journals or sketchbooks ready to write, draw or paint expressions of the experience you just had.  This can be a continuation of silence or a vehicle for a conversation. Listen the piece again if the spirit moves you.

 Though not necessary, it’s nice if the first piece of music you listen to is somehow meaningful to you.  Of course, later your child may also have a piece of music to suggest.  The caveat for this exercise is that it be a piece of music that lends itself to reflection and promotes a soothing, positive vibration.  While this might be open to interpretation and debate, this usually means music in the classical, jazz or “spa” genres.

 If this exercise is meaningful – why not make it a tradition at a certain time of the week?  This positive habit will build self-awareness and feelings of serenity and security in your child.  In the big picture, it can be a pathway for your child to contact their own inner world.  And of course, the activity can also be so beneficial for you as a parent as well.

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Postscript:

And so, listening to my Peter play the piano became a ritual for me.  Whenever I could, I would go into the great room, close the glass doors behind me, sit on the couch and just listen.  I would close my eyes and just let the music take me away. Each piece would flow into the next and it was like I was on my own secret journey.  Over time I was able to recognize the different composers, and the emotional qualities of the various pieces.  There was Chopin’s Mazurka # 13 and his Waltz in C# minor.  There were Shubert’s Impromptus, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and Schuman’s Scenes from Childhood.  And then there was Beethoven’s Sonata #7 and Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 and so many others. But still today, I am always transported still by the very first piece I heard my brother play – Moonlight Sonata.

 

 

 

The Boy Who Fell to Earth

I turned my gaze upward to behold a most clear star-lit sky. I felt as if he were looking out into the farthest reaches of the Milky Way.  I saw planets, moons and stars up close – as if I could reach up and touch them.  There were swirling nebula, shooting stars and comets, waves of light with colors unlike any on earth.  Everything was filled with a deeply peaceful, dynamic energy.  I felt all that I was seeing was part of a vast whole.  I heard ethereal tones echoing, filling my entire being and more beautiful than any song I would ever hear.

 I was filled with an immeasurable joy.  I felt that I was of the same substance as the entire universe: that there was no real barrier between it and me.  I realized that I was something very big and unlimited.  Normal time and space did not exist.  I outstretched my arms and realized I was in an open channel and could fly as high or as deep as I wished.  I did not worry about falling or finding my way back.

 The celestial sky looked familiar to me and I felt like I had come home.  Everything was welcoming me and there was a conscious presence of the deepest love, sanctuary and joy.  It was like the entire universe was alive, and that its breath and mine were one and the same.  The realization dawned: This is where I’ve come from; this is who I am.  

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This childhood dream impacted the trajectory of my life. Perhaps deep inside each one of us there is a memory of a dream that was very special to us – that conveyed an important message to us and that carried with it feelings that would affect how we see the world.  Those dreams in which we touch the core of life are like celestial emissaries – singing the song of our souls – which can become like beacons when we get lost in the trials and tribulations of the world.  In my case this dream has always reminded me of what is important in my life – and what is important is often hidden from normal sight, yet not far away at all

Beyond all of our to do’s, our tasks, our goals and the plans, there is no more important thing that this very moment we are in.  This moment we are in will never come again.  And while this moment may be challenging or filled with pain, loss or frustration,  it is a moment that belongs to us.  To push it away or look past it to a “better time” might miss the message or gift that this moment brings.  Trying to be present to the moment we are in is not just healthy for ourselves; it is ultimately the best way to nurture our children and to reap the greatest benefits of being parents and teachers.

The human mind is not very accustomed to being present to each moment, however.  It is programmed to proceed in a linear fashion from one thought to the next, and in like fashion we move from one task to the next.  Our culture is accomplishment driven, and we are measured by what we produce and get done.  Our lives are geared toward getting results.  And each result we get drives us on toward the next bottom line, the next goal. We know this string of activity is the nature of the world we live in,  but we also know it is not the ultimate meaning of life.

In our ordinary workday consciousness, the spaces in between tasks, like the spaces in between thoughts, are not that valuable to us.  They are the interludes between what we are doing now and what we need to do next.  But in the realm of spiritual awareness and growth, it is those very spaces that take on significance.  They become a refuge, a gateway to new levels of awareness about ourselves and about our lives.  Inside those spaces is where we are reminded of who we really are where we hold what is most important to us.  In order for us not to live out the movie “Groundhog Day”, where we are mindlessly repeating the same tasks day after day, week after week and year after year, we need to intentionally shift from our “normal operating system” to our “pause in awareness mode”.

To stay in touch with the core of who we are, we must try to be cognizant that we are moving from a space in which thoughts are important and necessary to a mode of being where thoughts are like the tips of waves.  It is what lies in the depths beneath the waves that we want to reach when we are practicing awareness.  For those brief periods of time when we are pausing in awareness, our normal thoughts are no longer that important to us.  We shouldn’t try to push them away,  but just recognize that there is a level of experience deeper than our thoughts – and that deeper level of experience is what we are aiming for.

To try and find our own inner child, we need time to ourselves. This is not being selfish.  It is being wise and practical.  Ultimately spending more time with our own “inner child” will only help us to be more patient, loving, and inspiring caregivers.  If our intentions are aimed at the healthy and balanced growth and development of our children, then we must nurture ourselves first.  Just like they say on the airplane – “put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then put on your child’s mask.”

From spiritual calm and centeredness come emotional calm and mental clarity.  If we are giving ourselves the soul-nourishment we need whenever we have the opportunity, then everything else will work itself out.  Raising healthy and happy children takes energy.  The batteries of our personal energy are located within – especially in our quiet spaces of inner awareness.

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Practice One: Creating time and space for yourself:

Consciously trying to create a time and a space for our own personal reflection can be an important step in expanding the possibilities for growth and empowerment in our lives.  Create a special area in the house that is especially intended for your own personal reflection.  In this special place, you can set up a shelf, a small table, a rug or a cushion. You can include items such as inspiring pictures, a candle, flowers or other items that will help foster a peaceful atmosphere.  Regardless of how small the place, the most important thing is take a few minutes each day to tune out of our ordinary mind and tune into a higher and deeper level of awareness.  After a short while of regular practice, we will feel the benefits:  greater peace, poise, and patience, as well as greater contentment. 

Practice Two:  Reflecting on our dreams:

You may have had a dream in your childhood that was special to you.  If you cannot remember any special childhood dreams, stay attuned when you first awake and see if you can remember a dream from the previous night.  All dreams “bad” or “good”  may have some meaning or value to us, but the dreams that that leave us with a positive, energizing and inspiring feeling can provide us with “soul nourishment” that we can bring with us into our daily lives.  Take time to sit in your personal reflection space and write or draw the images, feelings or insights that come from the dream you had.  Pause and close your eyes and sit with that awareness for a few moments.  Take a deep breath or two.  Are dreams not simply another realm of experience where we relate to a different, deeper part of ourselves?

Reflection Quote: “That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”  -Maria Montessori

Postscript: Later when I was about 12,  I remember hearing my parents talking in hushed tones late one night about how little money they had.  How would they afford rent?  Groceries?  School supplies?  Listening to the concern and despair in their voices I was filled with worry and helplessness.  I started to wonder what would happen if we had to move out of our house?  What if we really didn’t have enough to eat and we would all go hungry?  As I lay in bed and my mind was spinning anxiously in this way, out of nowhere a wave of calm came over me.  A vivid memory of my dream came back to me.  I heard a message from within me, saying – “Do not worry about anything. Remember the source you came from.  It will always provide for you.”