What are we to do with the experiences handed to us? Yes, I know there is a lot of talk in certain New-Age hotspots as to how 'create our reality.' But to only focus on the possibility that we 'create every experience that comes our way in life' is, to me anyways, to miss out on realizing the importance of honestly accepting and acknowledging the Mysterious Unfolding of Events that mark us in both profound and subtle ways.

Life seems to me to come to us as a Gift---often a Gift we prefer not to have, right? It's some Gift, eh, when someone betrays you! Or it's some Gift when someone you love and cherish is wrenched out of your life so unexpectedly.

I personally see not merit in ascribing to the belief--and let's be honest here, it is a belief--that we create it all, even if that creation occurs at a less than conscious level. To me, to buy into the belief disrespects the time-honoured perspective that Life is a never-ending sharing--an ongoing relatedness that occurs in a communal space for reasons not easily approached by human consciousness. I mean, do I really create the wonder of a Son or Daughter? Is that all MY doing? Or am I the recipient of a Gift so profound and awe-inspiring that I can only bask in the wonderment of it all?

Which perspective is more ennobling? Which is more engaging of Life? Which evokes a greater sense of Awe and Gratitude?

I ask the following questions only so as to approach more tenderly the process of dealing with the experiences that become our memory of who we are, our forecast of who we are yet to become. I ask the following questions because they speak to me of the raw potential that exists for dealing with our experiences in a more noble way.

Noble. Dignified. Which has nothing to do with a constant stream of whining and moaning about the things that have happened to us. If we are truly noble then no matter what befalls us we will be able to honour that experience, embrace that event. No matter what.

For men--and sensitive men especially--I feel that this marks a new heading in life. As men we cannot stop at the feelings generated within us by the events and experiences that have arisen in the course of our personal existence. Yes, we can embrace and acknowledge those feelings as valid. But let's move on from those feelings. Let's allow those feelings to be fuel for a future that is something other than doomed cycle of History endlessly repeating itself. Let us be men who feel... yes... but not men trapped by feeling.

It was the women who encouraged mankind to feel more. Emotionally men were seen as being underdeveloped. It was as if mankind had become arrested at the level of emotions. Men couldn't feel. Men were not supposed to feel. Men were in jobs that made feeling a hazard. For instance, in War you couldn't grieve your fallen comrade as the bullets whizzed by and the bombs continuned to fall. Inevitably that conditioned Mankind--with the exception of a few rare Poets, Prophets, and/or Mystics--to a life lived in defense against feeling. Men were hard, rough, gruff, tough. Men were... well... stereotypically... Male!

Then relationship difficulties bourne of an empowering Womanhood pushed Manking to feel once again. Womanhood was saying--collectively--that Man needed to learn how to feel again. The emotional arresting of Mankind was creating all sorts of problems for people on the personal level, as well as for the whole planet on a political level. Man needed to get in touch with his ability to feel.

Man could feel. It was not as if Man was unable to feel. It is just that Man had not been encouraged to feel. In fact, it was just the opposite. Mankind was encouraged not to feel. Feeling was soft and for 'Sissies!' And what Man wanted to be a 'Sissy?!'

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As a young boy growing up in this-world--circa 1970's--I can remember feeling. I felt feelings that I often saw no correlate for in the outside world. For instance, I can remember the violence done to the natural world in the form of Frogs and Snakes and Turtles by other boys my age and feeling excruciating pain. Empathically I knew that the Frogs and Snakes were capable of feeling. I could feel--feel the Horror that was being done to them.

But no one else around me--the other boys who would initiate these acts, dream them up, encourage them, seem to long for their recreation one Summer day after another--appeared to be feeling what I was feeling. In short, no one seemed bothered by what was going on! No one said a word.

I take that back. There were words said. Words like 'Cool!' as the firecracker placed into the Frogs mouth went off, scattering Frog-pieces all over the Sun-baked concrete of the neighbours driveway.

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I didn't get it back then. I still don't get it. I don't understand how people can be so numb as to be incapable of feeling the 'suffering of others.' I am talking about the numbness now of Presidents and Generals and Terrorists one and all. I am talking about the numbness of Rapists and Murderers. I am talking about the gross indifference--or is it the seething malice?--that results in the carnage and wasting that is a daily occurrence throughout the world. I don't get that! I don't understand that!!

What drives people--generally speaking Mankind--to enact the Horrors that hope to solve problems by forcing others to bear scars and wounds for us? Are problems really solved through dealing in death? Are solutions really found through killing in the name of-------??? Does Mankind still buy into the belief that sacrifices are required in order for the Real World to appear--i.e., the World as some vain-glorious God wishes it to be?

So the Jews need to suffer and die. The Faggots and the Queers need to be eliminated. The Americans need to feel the wrath of Allah. The Terrorists need to know what 'shock and awe' is actually like. And once all of those necessary sacrifices are made--the bodies are piled and mounted ten-high to the Sky of a God who seems to crave blood as presented by human hands and ingenuity--then and only then will Paradise be known.

Then and only then, right? First the sacrifice. Always the sacrifice. Forever the sacrifices.  It's like waking up and wondering 'Who gets to die today as we march on our determined way... in this nightmare known as the pursuit of happiness?" Who are we going to kill and eliminate so that we can make some 'Progress.'

And why does the Executioner always smile as the Bodies fall? 

Is it the once-upon-a-time emphasis on avoding sexuality--as if that were indicative of a greater spiritual truth? Is it the dismissal of the householder as vital, and the glorification of the mystic, the prophet, the saint or sage? Is it the literature--the so-called Sacred Texts--that places in one's mind a notion that with family life comes burden and responsibility, while with a renunciation of all that comes gnosis, freedom, moksha, liberation... enlightenment?

Either way you slice it I am going to go out on a limb here and say that by and large most spiritual circles that I have come across--been exposed to through personal and direct involvement--exhibit a decided disinterest (or at best a feigned interest, but only from a distance) for children. Yes, children. You know it's true. The so-called 'cutting edge' spiritual culture of the West is decidedly anti-child.

And that's a shame really. It is a shame because it can easily undermine the undeniable fruits of spirit that come through ongoing, direct, unmediated involvement with children, as well as making it seem to others (novices, novitiates of the spiritual climate of our times) that children are a burden... and only a burden.

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Siddharthe left his wife and child to seek enlightenment. I contend that we are still, for the most part, caught up in that archetype of spiritual transformation. The model that Siddhartha set is still the predominant archetypal force relative to what I would call the 'spiritual search.' The power of that archetype portrays a distorted vision of realtiy to us, wherein family--and by family I mean, children (and even grandchildren to some degree)--is (mis)perceived as an impediment to spirituality... to enlightenment... to transformation... to moksha. You can't have children and be spiritual. You can't be a Dad and realize enlightenment. You can't be a householder and attain moksha.

Nope, instead you have to be a wanna-be Buddha and renounce your sons and daughters.... or renounce the possibility of having sons and daughters. Go! Leave! Don't be 'held-back' by such duties... such obligations... be single-minded in your pursuit (pun intended!).

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I truly believe that we are immersed in a 'cutting-edge spiritual culture' that is anti-child... that is secretly and not-so-secretly averse to children. It makes me wonder what ever happened to the 'Ye must become as little children to know Heaven' refrain of Jesus.

But maybe that is what has made Christianity such a powerful force (for good and ill, right or wrong). For all of those Judeo-Christian failings that we know so well there is at least an honest acknowledgement of children and their spiritual potential: both a potential for their own enlightement as well as the enlightenment of their parents!

You simply will not find, anywhere, a similar emphasis in present-day 'cutting edge' versions of Western Spiritual Culture. Take Integral Spirituality (an example I use here at Zaadz if only because Ken Wilber's books are listed as the most widely read among the Zaadz community). Now, what do you see about children in the midst of the Integral Spirituality put forth by Ken Wilber? What you see is only talk of children in the abstract--as so many generalized nexi of developmental progress and/or arrest. You certainly don't get the impression that children and family life (and by family life I mean all of the non-traditional types of family that might exist or be created here in these post-conventional times of ours) are exalted as spiritual catalysts. In fact, I don't know as if I have ever seen such mentioned in any Integral offering put out by all of the various branches of the 'Integral Mulitiplex' as Wilber is now calling it.

To the contrary, what you get a sense of is just how averse to children and parenting is the Integral Scene. For the most part, the decided emphasis on one's own enlightenment (even if that enlightenment is couched in rhetoric of 'for the sake of all other beings) is primary to the point where all other relationships are either denied--or made to conform--to one's overriding Integral Push for some, as yet unaccessed, 3rd tier state of consciousness.

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Like I mentioned above, that is all a shame. It saddens me. It saddens me after becoming a Father in the past year. Now I know. I know because I feel people's aversion to me being a Parent. It is like I am infectious. Those former Integral Comrades are now leery of catching the dis-ease. But what they don't know is that it is not a dis-ease. Having a child and becoming a Parent is only a dis-ease according to that distorted and dubious view of reality that is owed to Siddhartha and his long-line of ffamily averse followers who have made it seem for thousands of years that to be a Mom or a Dad is to be 'less-spiritually evolved.'

But we Parents... we true Mothers and Fathers who midwife the spiritual potential of children know better don't we? We know something that Ken Wilber doesn't. We have direct, unmediated access to a level of experience that Saints, Sages, Mystics, Mullahs, and Maharishis have no clue as to the nature of. And it is Sublime beyond all measure. And it is time that Parents stand up and start calling the Mystical Denial of the Child for the Sake of Pursuing Moksha the cruel joke that it is. It is time for Parents to proclaim the Truth that eluded the Buddha.... because the Buddha walked away from it 2,500 years ago. In doing so, making it seem to millions of others that it is necessary to denounce and deny the Child-Parent Matrix for the sake of this Ghost we call Enlightenment.

 

I am going to try and make an attempt to be fair and deliberate in my thinking here. I am not out to offend anyone in particular. I don't have a bone to pick with anyone specific. I am not out to name names and I am surely not out for vengeance with a 'take no prisoners' mentality. All I am intent on doing is

1) Giving a fair 'spiritual' shake to parents and children alike (or what I am going to call, abstractly, the Parent-Child Matrix).

2) Reframing the nature of what it is to be a Parent, to have Children--which is to say I want to offer a new perspective on what the Parent-Child Matrix represents, offers, and invites.

Certainly it invites challenges the likes of which most of us will never see in any other form or manner. There is, simply put, no other form of relationship that will challenge you in the same way. Physically you will be asked to keep on going when you are exhausted. Mentally you will play and replay decisions over and over again in your head. Emotionally you will experience everything from the most profound sense of purpose and faith to the depths of paranoia and anxiety the likes of which would make even Nietschze proud! And spiritually, you will have the precious opportunity to have an intimate and ongoing relationship with someone who will no doubtedly be for you as important and formative in a 'developmental-sense' as you are for him or her. And truth be told, that last one is a 'spiritual opportunity' that should not be dismissed lightly, nor taken for granted as just so much genetic fallout from a totally Darwinian-web.

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The task I have set before me is certainly going to require of me some personal disclosure. I had many preconceptions about being a Parent that have turned out to be completely erroneous. These preconceptions, though, were not just my own. I am going to go out on a limb here and insinuate that those preconceptions are cultural: most of us will inherit those preconceptions in one form or another. Such preconceptions can prevent potentially good Parents from becoming Parents.... i.e., from entering into the Parent-Child Matrix.

For me, personally, there was no direct, conscious decision to impregnate a woman and have a child. I didn't wake up one day and say---as some Women accuse Men of being solely capable of--'Shall I fuck or fight today!!??'

Sometimes events happen. Or, more properly put, 'Shit happens!' You can take all the ... ahem... necessary precautions and still end up having sown the proverbial seed in fertile loins. I mean, shit, there are 6 billion humans and counting, so it does happen with some regularity people!  ; o )

Life is super-abundant! Just think how many leaves are put out on just one tree, and then consider how many trees are growing in just one forest, and you might get some sense of how super-spectacularly abundant the Cosmos is. Plethorization is innate. There is a plethora of everything and everyone---always more than we could ever imagine (which means, at times, there is always more than we can handle!).

So yes, when someone says' Having children is too much for me!' understand that it is too much for everyone. It is!! It is always more than 'I' can handle--which is why there is such a profound spiritual opportunity forever embedded within the Parent-Child Matrix.

When you first here those words--whether you are a Man or a Woman--they 'stop your world' in its tracks. Everything is perfectly still for that moment. You can hear yourself breathe in a way you never have before.

Pregnant.

It's a big word with a lot of connotations. And a ton of those connotations have become negative connotations for so many of us.

To me it's odd that we don't see that word 'pregnant' as a blessing. It does, after all, mean that Life is being well... LIFE! Living shall continue. We shall live on. And even if you only believe Richard Dawkins than at least you have the comfort of knowing that some 'selfish genes' are having their way for another generation.

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If you are a Man you can wear a condom and you can here the words 'I'm pregnant.' And if you are a Woman you can take the pill faithfully and still see that line form in the little window of a home pregnancy test.

What would you feel if that happened to you? Maybe it already has. Maybe it has happened to you more than once. Maybe you are the only one who knows that it has happened to you. Maybe you have that secret inside of you, and you carry it around the days of your life: 'I'm pregnant.'

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Being pregnant used to be sign of fertility. If you became pregnant it was most often interpreted as a Good Omen. It meant that God was blessing you. In fact, many tribal peoples in Africa paid homage to Fertility Gods and Godesses because the fertiiity of the Human was just as important as the fertility of the Earth. It was no different.

And yet how things have changed in these (post)modern times of ours. Now with our personal agendas all laid out ahead of time, coupled with our dis-connect with the Earth--i.e., with Nature, with Cycles, with Seasons, with Real Fertility--the former blessing is now viewed as a curse. Being fertile is just not in the plans and ambitions of millions upon millions of so-called 'advanced peoples' in ... again... so-called 'developed nations.'

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The 'advanced' don't want to be fertile in the loins as much as fertile in the imagination, in the consciousness, in the head---in those abstract realms where 'states of consciousness' are generated, brought to life, and nurtured into existence. In short, the effort is upon 'feeling good' and if you know anything about being a Parent then you know that 'feeling-good' is hard to come by, because being a Parent is about feeling so much more than 'good.' It is about feeling-doubt, and feeling-anxious, and feeling-devoted, and feeling-lost, and feeling-proud, and feeling-hope, and feeling-just about everything that a human is capable of feeling. 

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I used to think 'Why would you want to bring another person into this-world?' I mean, the world is big ol' f&*in' suck-hole isn't it? This is Samsara man! This is Maya! Why would you want to bring a person into this prison-house... this asylum?

Then one day I realized, when I heard those words spoken directly to me---'I'm pregnant'--that I was not in control. Who was I to decide who should have the right to live in this-world and who should not? Who was I to deny a person the right from incarnation? Who did I think I was.... GOD?? How arrogant of me to assume that I knew best what the world did or didn't need? How could I go on, for years and years, saying what was right and what was wrong in terms of someone either existing or not-existing? Was I bourne only to snuff out flames and put out the fires of consciousness that began to flicker in the wombs of Women? Was that my Destiny---to shout from the rooftops that the world had enough people in it already and it didn't need anymore? 

'I'm pregnant.' Like I said, that's when 'my world' stopped, and the World started. 

I think it's odd that we so glorify athletes that we see as reaching the pinnacle of human achievement when going unnoticed is the damn-hardest task anyone could ever hope to .... ever have.

Truth be told... finding Enlightenment is easier than being a Mum or a Dad. It's true. There ain't no red-hot iron ball in Zen that compares with swallowing the red-hot iron ball of being Mommy or Daddy.

And the kicker is you will get no thanks. No one will come and listen to you wanting to give darshan. No one will want to come and sit a sesshin with you. You will not be famous and people will not come from around the Globe to hear you speak... to sit in your Company and bask in your profound Radiance. In fact, you kids probably would prefer 'not to listen' to a word you have to say.

Like Rodney Dangerfield has so famously put it.... 'I tell ya... I get no respect...'

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I hear ya Rodney! The most demanding task before a human-being on this Planet, with no pay, with no prestige.... and you get no respect for it. How's that for some marketing along a pro-parent agenda line?? Not good, is it?

No, because we are busy fascinated with the dude that can long-jump 29' or run 100 meters under 10 seconds. Now those are feats worthy of adoration, prestige, money, fame, and numerous TV spots on the morning news shows.

Oh, I forgot the slam-dunkin' inner-city youth who has gone straight from high-school to the pros. Sorry... didn't mean to leave that amazing accomplishment out. I plead for your forgiveness.

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Maybe parents don't get any love within the public sphere because we all suck at it. Maybe we are just not that good. Ya know, here we are in the post-Freudian age when we realize just how bad our parents can F**K us up, and so now everyone is so skeptical of parents and parenting that we don't even have any Daddy of the Year awards. We went from Mike Brady as the mythical father figure to Al Bundy!!

And we can't be giving out awards to guys who sit with a hand down their pants, slouched on the sofa making the crucial decision as to which of hundreds of some odd TV stations he is finally going to land on. That is not 'award-worthy' behaviour is it?

Couch Potato of the Year Award---in the Men's Division---goes to Ned Stevens from Omaha, Nebraska.... father of three overweight young boys who are already on their way to the penintentiary after burning down ol' Lady Langley's house across the street... and all because she looked funny. You must be proud Ned. Congratulations!

'Thanks. I'd like to first thank the Pepsi Corporation for keeping me going through all of these hard-times. Fox for finally putting real guys on TV... like Homer Simpson... and not those fake Dad's who make us all feel bad because they have a six-pack and don't drink one... or two... or uhm.... and I would like to thank Jesus for saving my eternal soul and dying for my sins on the Cross so I could spend every Sunday from now until the Second Coming watching Football.'

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Yeah, maybe parents pretty much do suck a%% big time!! We are all over-worked and over-stressed. Our bodies show it. The bags under our eyes tell a hundres stories about late-nights with a screaming monster who is either a child in pain or a cruel joke played on unwitting parents who have no time for romance... enlightenment.... or any of the other figments of the tireless imagination that provides so much fantasy material for the ever-seeking human psyche.