Parent Like a Guru was initially created as a series of video-blogs produced in the winter of 2015. It was a shortened version of the book: Cultivating Spirituality in Children: 101 Ways to Make Every Child’s Spirit Soar. I wanted to provide a version of the book that was more accessible for busy parents, guardians and grandparents, who have little time to sit and read a book, chapter by chapter. Thus, Parent Like a Guru was born.
An unforeseen outcome of Parent Like a Guru was that the blogs were rich and empowering to the readers. So it made sense to create an e-book for those parents who wish to have the blogs accessible at a moment’s notice. And here we are!
The intention of Parent Like a Guru is to provide stories, thoughts, and experiences that inspire and empower you to let go of everything you think parenting is about. It’s letting go of how you perceive yourself as a parent, guardian, or grandparent (from here on out, collectively referred to as parents). It’s intention is to support you in letting go of the stresses and the worries, plus the hoped-for outcomes of all the blood, sweat, and tears you have brought to this role as parents. It empowers you to let go of doing it right, being perfect, and never failing your children, or yourself. It supports you to give up feeling like a failure as a parent. In essence, parenting like a guru requires letting go of all of that, and more.
Parenting Like a Guru, taken on as a spiritual practice, is not about being in serenity every minute of every day or generating a "perfect" environment within which to instil everything you want for your children. It isn’t even about meditating and silencing the mind. Parenting Like a Guru does, however, require you to empower yourself to become more mindful, such as training yourself to notice your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, as well as what has you choose to do what you do.
Furthermore, another intention of Parent Like a Guru is to empower you to witness and become conscious of that which you really want in your relationship with your children, as well as that which you really want from your relationship with your children. Through this book, I want to empower you to be curious about you, as a human being in the role of a parent, grandparent, and guardian of all children on this planet.
By the way, I’d love for you to observe yourself without judging, without seeing mistakes, without feeling guilt and shame. Guru’s are really just ordinary people who began to laugh at their humiliating and embarrassing mistakes. Over time, they just see the humor in being human. I so send this humor and humbleness your way. It’s there if you need it!
Yet another intention of Parent Like a Guru is to remind you of that first moment when you fell in love with your child; when you were blown away by your capacity to love. Through this book, you will empower yourself to return to that love, which resides in you always, but often gets buried by the demands of daily activities, stresses, and worries.
As you read through this book, you will find yourself staying present, as best as you can, to what you believe to be your highest truth and to your highest contribution to the well-being of your children.
As parents, none of us get it right and we never get it done. What we get are thousands upon thousands of opportunities to notice when and how we do what we do. With experience and maturity, we inevitably get it that within every one of these opportunities is a gift of direct experience, which reflects the degree to which we stayed in alignment with our truth, our values, our desire, and our commitment to make our children’s spirit soar.
Like all spiritual practices, we cannot hurry the process, because, as most gurus will tell you, there is nowhere to go that is any better than this exquisite moment within which you are currently living. No other moment is better than this one for learning to parent like a guru.
Just for this moment, practice closing your eyes, and feel into your being. Notice the state of your being. Notice if you are being relaxed, anxious, angry, happy. These states of being directly influence how you do what you do, as a parent and as a person.
Ask yourself: "What is the state of being that I want to experience as I parent my children? As a grandparent, teacher, or guardian of children, you can ask the same questions, as all of us are be-ing a certain way, and being influenced by our being-ness.
A second question to ask yourself: "How do I allow my circumstances to influence how I be a parent?"
Starting here, where you are, right now, not waiting until tomorrow, allows you to notice who you are now, while discerning how you want to be as you begin to parent like a guru.
