The appearance of a child in a family is perhaps the most significant initiation in a woman's life. And it is no coincidence that long ago a woman was prepared for motherhood consciously and long before conception. The woman was given time, space, knowledge, and all the support so that her future pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood would be resourceful and blissful. An emotionally and physically fulfilled woman will give strength to her baby, raise family relationships to a new level, reveal the resources of all the family generations, and fill life around her with Acceptance, Love, and Joy.
It turns out that the condition of a woman’s inner world (like mental and emotional harmony, resourcefulness, awareness, knowledge) not only influence herself and baby but also directly impact the relationship with her partner and the rest of the family. Thus, the key to a happy and loving family lies within ourselves, within our inner (spiritual) work.
Our Children are Our Reflection
Our inner work, our awareness allow us to develop ourselves, reconnect with our hearts, and create the world we want around us which is, without exaggeration, one of the most important components of our harmonious life. We often complain about the superficiality and spoiledness of children, their lack of interest in reading, their excessive passion for computer games, and watching valueless cartoons. Technological progress and an increase in the standard of living and comfort lead to the fact that children have an overabundance of toys, entertainment, clothing, and so on. Their attention is so defocused on all these unimportant and valueless things that the most important things like alignment with their souls, Self-realization, and how to peacefully and joyfully navigate life in this world are forgotten usually. By placing children in such conditions of "comfort" and “materialism”, we ourselves start to contribute to the growth of their excessive selfishness (narcissism), judgment, and demandingness.
Our children are a direct reflection of who we are. Moreover, all children in the world are the reflection of the grown-up world. But we often judge and characterize our kids as aggressive, mercantile, spoiled, and cheeky. Of course, contemporary education and values imposed on our children by the media have a huge influence. However, we mustn’t forget that the first school of life for a person who has come to this world is the family. The first people, thanks to which all the main seeds about the whole vast world are planted in the mind of a child, are parents.
Don't try to bring up children, they will still be like you. Educate yourself.
Therefore, instead of reading tons of books on psychology and getting lost in the mountains of information in an effort to raise your children correctly, start leading with a healthy and spiritual lifestyle yourself. Because If we want to guide our children to a conscious and happy life with minimal suffering, we must focus on our inner work first. And as soon as we are able to heal our inner children, remove our own accumulated garbage, then our surroundings, our children, our family immediately change as a natural reflection of ourselves.
The Practice of Altruism
Perhaps this is the most important principle of the harmonious coexistence of the soul with the Universe and its development. The meaning of altruism is to give to others more than we keep for ourselves. There is an old and wise saying: "What I gave is yours, what I kept is lost." Indeed, we are given very little time on this planet. If we spend our life energy only on ourselves, all our efforts, our whole life will be wasted. Leaving this world, we will not take it with us. But we can use the same energy in order to launch a series of good and good deeds in the world around us. Even one good word can influence the whole world. Moreover, all our efforts are never lost because they create a chain reaction that will go further and it will get longer and stronger. Just imagine how the whole planet can win only from our one good word, in what kind of world our children will live if we continue to share our love and joy with everyone we meet!
The conscious decision to become parents can already be considered as the first step towards altruism. Because before the object of your care and responsibility was mainly yourself. Now a soul comes to your family, which will be forever connected with you. And at least in the beginning, this soul will need all your care, attention, strength, and most importantly - your patience. The modern generation of young people was raised by a certain system to be extremely infantile. Many of us have complaints about our parents about how our childhood went, how we were raised, what we were taught. We consider ourselves much more developed intellectually, the authority of parents does not exist for us. That is why, only having gone through the path of raising children on our own, we can fully understand how much effort it costs our parents, how much selfishness was given up for the sake of our carefree life in abundance. The basis of all altruism is patience which is, in turn, the basis of Love. The highest achievement in human life is not only the constant maintenance of patience and Love towards all the creation but also the extension of it to all people around.
From birth, we are all characterized by unconscious selfishness not only in order to survive in this world (a baby cannot stand hunger and cold) but also in order to understand the rules of life in the world. The more conscious we become, the less egoism will remain in us. We have already grown up, we are able to give up something in order to benefit our neighbor, our friend, a random person in the street. This is what it means to be Human. If your child sees that your actions are as kind as possible and are aimed primarily at the development of other people, such behavior will become his/her ideal. Moreover, a child needs to be demonstrated altruistic behavior from the first days of life. Since, until a certain age (up to two or two and a half years), children do not perceive our moral teachings due to the peculiarities of the formation of the human mind. But they very carefully notice all the nuances of our behavior, all actions, and deeds. Due to the lack of life experience at this age, there is no concept of "good" and "bad" for them. But for them, there are concepts like mom and dad. And, of course, they don’t know if you are doing good or bad. For them, everything that parents do is an attitude of good, correct, adult behavior. For your children to grow up worthy, you yourself need to live accordingly. The Dalai Lama once said: “If I have the compassion to a certain extent, it is all thanks to the seed that my mother planted in my heart, and not at all religious practices. Of course, later Buddhist teaching greatly facilitated the growth of an altruistic mindset from this seed. But I got the grain from my mother. "
Therefore, By giving, you will never lose anything.