I intend to discuss the spiritual facets of parenting. How many of you are parents? But no, it’s not necessary to be a parent to gain from this. We are all involved in parenting. We were parented in one form or another, and some of us are parenting. It’s perhaps one of the most primal relationships we have, more so than even that with your mate, and it leaves an impression on us that can last a life time.

What does it mean to be entrusted with a new little life? We have the teachings we are given. Even some “more enlightened” sort of humanist views. Yet do we as a society bond well with our children? It has even been proven in some less than humane experiments perhaps, that young life forms will forgo food for lack of that bond. They can even biologically atrophy for lack of that bond despite adequate food, water, and shelter. They will cling to a proxy for lack of a real bond. Children can get very attached to TV, and that is not just immaturity. It’s a very real aspect of the human mind. We still need it, and need to offer it. Mental health is more a threat to our lives now than disease or predatory attack, why is that?

What does a distressed infant want? Need? The affirmation of bond, of place, more simply put love. We seek it ourselves as adults, often from peers who are as much like the crying infant as we are. Is it a mystery why divorce rate is so high? Why co-dependency is almost omnipresent?

We are transitional? Yes, and not equipped to transition. Many are introduced to a surrogate. They are decent people meaning no harm, but they are shown bars or homes where people come together to feed an addiction, and are made to feel welcome. It’s a false and destructive bond, but people act like they want them there. They ask what they want and mean it. They come to replace the parental bond with something that might very well take their lives, it’s just that important. It would seem suicide, no?

What do you think of the ‘stay together for the kids’ idea? I think it robs the children. They need any example of the parental bond, they don’t need constant affirmation that “Mommy and Daddy DON’T love each other”. There are some things that I learned from my parents divorce, and my own later in my twenties. If you aren’t genuinely present, or not genuinely in the presence of your partner, to present the lie steals a chance at the truth. To present that false face to your children will make them the little girl or little boy behind the iron mask. Even those who are dedicated to having a “good relationship” can be so dedicated to the ideal without root that the ideal fails to have any substance.

Room mates? Yes. Will teaching children that partnership is just living together give them a chance to meet the need of bonding? What you deny yourself, you deny your offspring. Is there any example where this is not true? We live that life of denial, even if only in little ways, and wonder why our child seems sullen? Dispirited? Feels low self esteem? Even though they might say “Well, I never abused my child. I was never mean”.

I often feel dispirited and I’m not a child. Indeed, that’s true. How long has that been a pattern for you? Were your parents spirited people?

A long time, and quite enough. I still feel a pain inside. I don’t know where it comes from, but it makes me live not fully.  If this seems too ethereal, and not concrete enough. Brain research shows that you retain behaviours even from infancy. In regressive hypnosis you will for all intents and purposes lose that “growing up”, because it’s artificial.

My son is a very happy little boy, and I am not by definition a happy man. The reason he is so happy (well there are a couple), he was born of a spirited and enthusiastic disposition, gregarious and good tempered. Having had my life go in the opposite, I looked at him and his nature. How was he in the world? What fascinated him? How did he feel? And rather than looking at how I was brought up, I let him teach me how to parent him. I was his guardian, his protector, and I had to preserve what we had for home and food, but for his little mind and soul, even then he was the real authority on that.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~