It is perhaps one of the most insane and inane facts of our life that in the "modern world", kids come last in our priorities. That in effect means that we have taken the anti-cosmic and anti-biologic stance that tomorrow doesn't matter. It is essentially a suicidal insanity of the paranoid patriarchy that is now dying for reasons just such as this.
The reality is that parenting is the ultimate form of generativity, which is the ultimate form of maturity. It is the building of tomorrow's people and world. In its nature, when we have what we need to do the process, it is a lovely cosmic and biologic undertaking that unfolds beautiful people. And that is the way it should be. But it isn't the way it has been.
Human formation or the developmental process is like an inverted pyramid in which the things that happen first (and that includes or even especially emphasizes the intrauterine period) determine all that happens later. Thus, the first three years and nine months (for the gestation time) set the pattern for the rest of the individual's life. This includes the phenomenon known as "silicon implants" that occur during the "no boundaries" period, especially in the first nine months post partum. These are insertions of the mother's passions and pathological beliefs that then operate as if they were the individual's issues until the individual can work them out to the surface to be discharged.
To give an example of how this can work, take a child who is just home from the hospital, say 63 hours old. And the parents have read the "scientific" principle that picking up the crying child is conditioning crying. So they "let the kid cry it out" for 45 minutes, and then they congatulate themselves on the success of their parenting practice -- after all, aren't they sleeping quietly now, just as predicted?
But now lets look at that person 35 years later in a metaphor here. Suppose we are at the western edge of the Apalacian mountains looking west to the eastern edge of the Rockies. And way over there we see something. So we drive for days and finally we arrive at the Grand Canyon. And way down there is the "Colorado river" -- that 45 minutes of ignoring that produced the "inverted pyramid" effects that now makes it all but impossible for the individual to trust intimacy or the Universe.
And this is greatly complicated by the "in loco Deity" effect generated by the "commons" childrearing history of our species for six and a half million years minus ten thousand. When the whole community was rearing the child, it was a pretty good cross section of the cosmos and it was taking place during the period where we still had one foot in the cosmos anyway. That makes the first three years experience feel like they are getting the "straight stuff right out of the horse's mouth, the Source itself" due to "hard wiring" from our evolutionary process. These early events are then experienced as God speaking, with all the implications, ramifications and impacts that this has. It affects their relationship to the Universe, the "Home Office" and themselves as an essence for the rest of their life. And these early experiences go down like that, and the earlier the more so. This biologic fact profoundly compounds the effects on the emotional body of early negative experiences.
Now going back to our "45 minute kid". A big nick develops in their emotional experiential history around abandonment, rejection by God, and being a person without a cosmos. This is the interpretive process in action. The emotional body is making that interpretation, and out of it comes what John Bradshaw calls the "inner child" in reaction to "trouble right here in River City" with the "Home Office". The result is the formation of a desparate attempt to "get back in the good graces of God", the pursuit of the "God Housekeeping Seal of Approval" in the form of a reduction of the negative parental patterns arising out of the parent(s)' neuroses and misconceptions. In effect, they reached for God and they got Godzilla, and they then try to please Godzilla the rest of their lives till they learn better.
Because of this outcome, the individual is going to have all sorts of reactions and interpretations to all subsequent experiences about who they are, who God is, what their relationship is to God, what their relationship therefore is to the human community, what their expectations and elicitations of treatment from the environment will be, and on and on it goes. And out of all this comes the "Grand Canyon".
To make matters more complicated, all human relations and their effects take place at the rate of 16 interactions a second, which is far too fast to control or to be conscious of. That includes the parenting process, of course, and that is where the action is and what the people of tomorrow learn from. And furthermore, it affects the essence via the emotional body, which is the seat of meaning and where all experience lodges.
Meanwhile, this is all taking place in a "double passaging" context. That is, the parents are going through their adult life phase experiences and the child is unfolding their "developmental ladder" at the same time. And just to complete the complexity of the thing, the parent(s) are undergoing a "developmental recapitulation" as they "back burner remember" what it was like for them at the various developmental stages of their formation process. And all of this makes for quite an emotionally loaded "stew" in which the person of tomorrow is forming.
Now what this means is that everything that happens is going to be affected by all these parameters impacting on the emotional body meaning-making system. Thus, what you are getting is what the individual is making of what is happening, rather than just a habit-formation or "socializing" process. For instance, all "consquences" in the "discipline" process are interpreted by the individual, and this comes from the essence and the emotional body. It is these interpretations that they learn, not some behavior that is modified.
Now if you are doing the parenting process correctly, you are tracking what the forming person's cumulative experiential history has been. This allows you to have some notion of what interpretation they are likely to make of whatever events are happening at the moment. In other words, you are working with the individual's experience, moment to moment and cumulatively. And at the same time, you are undergoing major transformation from this 24 hour a day, seven days a week, 20 year contract process with all the stakes involved.
This is all taking place with an individual who has a different soul from yours, who has their own intended destiny, and who is going through the process of forming up while being in your life as you play out your planned destiny. Then the whole process takes off with a life of its own. The task here is to have some sort of notion of what their cumulative experience has been and what yours is and what is the relationship between them -- with particular emphasis on what is happening to the essence/emotional body of the forming person.
One of the prime factors involved here is the so-called "soul age" of the forming individual. This determines both the level of comprehension and the destiny manifestation of the person-in-the-making.
For instance, younger souls tend to react to things in what could be considered an "immature" manner because they are still learning the "ropes of coping" with being in a physical body in space/time. This, in turn, means that their destiny is perforce going to be a "learning from their mistakes" type of process. Nevertheless, we must still do what we can to make what they learn as cosmically congruent and self-, community- and ecology-committed as possible.
A major consideration of this aspect of the parenting process concerns the degree of match between the "soul ages" of the parent(s) and the offspring. When there is a large distance between them, it can be a considerable challenge to deal with. When, for instance, the younger person's soul is older than that of the parent, the result is a form of bafflement, befuddlement or bedazzlement that can really profoundly affect the child-rearing process -- often badly, due to overwhelm, non-comprehension, fear, envy, exploitation, paranoia or any of a number of other factors. And conversely, a much younger soul child than that of the parent(s) precipitates the necessity to allow them to live out their intended "learning the hard way" destiny with as little despair, ego-tripping, excessive harm-avoidance, rage, confusion and other "If they only would listen to me!" reactions as possible.
The reality is that a foetus/infant/child is an essence or soul who is having reactions to and making interpretations of everything they experience. This requires that you respect their reality, including the fact of the "inverted pyramid effect", the profound helplessness of the infant, the severe handicaps of the child in terms of their knowledge of the workings of the world and their primitive impulse control systems, and the great inner conflicts of the emerging adult during adolescence. Attempting to be aware as best you can within the complexities of the vissicitudes of life of what's happening for the forming person, of what is really going on for the individual is the key to effective parenting. And if you play your cards right during the first three years period, the child will shift from a responsibility to a resource in many ways, especially if they are an older soul.
It is a cosmic crime to either ignore, assume about or attack children. We have to cover for them as they garner their formative experiences and then phase ourselves out over time. Coming from compassionate comprehension of their experience and situation before you put your oar in makes all the difference in the world. It is essential to respect them and their experiences. If you do, they'll respect you and your values, and they will then be able to do automatically what you had to do consciously to break the chain of neurosis that has come down for millenia.
Now the way the human system works is that the emotional body is the "seat of meaning". The mental body (and the mind/brain) stores, retrieves, processes and presents information, but the emotional body is the one that puts meaning on events and experiences in terms of the implications and ramifications of the information. It is in effect the biocomputer for the "operator" -- the emotional body. Ask any paranoid -- they'll show you how the emotional body determines the meanings of things!
However, the emotional body is also the "seat of the soul", the "cross-over point" between the essence and the ego, and between the cosmos and the space/time world. This means that it is fully operative from the very beginning, from the point of conception onward. The emotional body therefore does not require a fully functional physical body or mental body to operate -- as when people can remember their own conception, intrauterine experiences and birth.
This means, therefore, that the emotional body is where the action is. And what that means is that when you are dealing with a foetus/infant/child, you are dealing with a conscious essence dwelling in the emotional body. The emotional body knows exactly what is going on, regardless of what the mental body or physical body is capable of comprehending or manifesting at the time. This means that experiences impact in two ways -- one at the child's level of conscious comprehension and physical capability, and another at the emotional body/essence level. In other words, "the soul knows . . ."
For instance, hypnotic studies have clearly demonstrated that the individual can do things like comprehend and record exactly foreign languages spoken by a physician in the next operating room at the point of their birth. Or what took place exactly at the moment of their conception between the parents. Findings like this prove beyond a reasonable doubt that what is really recording and reacting is the emotional body/essence, with the physical and mental bodies doing a catch-as-catch-can process on the conscious awareness and comprehension capability level. But everythng is going into the emotional body and the person's essence or soul.
What this means then is that the emotional body/essence or soul is tracking, reacting to and interpreting everything far beyond what the biologic equipment can handle. And that, in turn, means that things like the "soul age" (cumulative essence experience/sophistication) and the "soul type(s)" (the most developed avenue(s) of experience and learning) play a large role in the interpretations that are going to be made by the individual. Thus, the soul is what you are actually affecting and dealing with in your parenting.
It is with this in mind that the admonition to respect the child's experience is made. Everything is profoundly affecting both the emotional body and the soul/essence at every step along the way. And the parenting process has to reflect that as much as possible. Being aware of the individual's nature and experience is absolutely fundamental to the successful formation of a human being. It is this fact that underlies the impact and nature of the "Family Training" program of one of the major workshop systems. There they treat every individual from six years old on up as a sentient soul -- and it works. It is also this that was behind a seven year old woman's experience and reaction to me that led to her telling me that she had been in love with me from the moment she laid eyes on me but that she had been to scared to tell me until the end of the training, when it was too late.
Children are people with souls and with an emotional body that is operative from the very beginning. They need to be treated with the respect that this invokes. Know that everything that is going down is going into a sentient being whose biologic equipment may not be able to report it, but whose emotional body and soul are being affected forever. At some level, they're getting the whole experience. And the whole crux of the parenting process is the awareness of that fact.
Loving commitment, compassionate comprehension and soul respect will generate an individual who is heavily motivated to be beneficial. It is the nature of the essence/soul and of the species and of the cosmos to make everything a "win-win proposition". When the basics are met from the very beginning, the result is an individual who will be seeking to be contributory and compassionate with everything they do. It is the way we are built -- until things like the paranoid patriarchy and our family's neuroses distort us. In other words, dealing with the foetus/infant/child as an essence whose emotional body is recording, reacting to and interpreting everything that happens will take you everywhere you want to be in your parenting practice.
More information: index.php
More information: email: Narayan-Singh@dbs2000ad.com
Books, Face Reading and More Information.