Teaching Spirituality To My Son
Ever since the day my son was born, my thoughts have been circling around the project of teaching him spirituality. I had started on that journey six years ago, including yoga workshops, meditation seminars, a full ten-day Vipassana retreat in India, and some other fancy stuff. I was like: ‘Hey, he needs to know all the wisdom that I found by now but way earlier in life, so that he doesn’t have to go through all the same shit. If I can teach him meditation and yoga and the concepts behind it like awareness and mindfulness, how much easier could he integrate those things into his very core?
So, by now, his second birthday is approaching. We are still far from having the in-depth philosophical talks that I am vaguely envisioning when I say teaching spirituality. Thing is, I am still not sure how to do it, that ‘spirituality for children’-something, and so far, I am still looking for inspiration. But then, finally, this week I got that inspiration. Not as anticipated.
Everyday spirituality
One encounter with the topic was an article on Medium, ‘Confessions of a spiritual dickhead’. The author describes how he got high on his esoteric ego-trip, sucking in all the experiences from books and workshops, but never integrated, never lived up to the wisdom he had learned.
It made me realize (again) how important it is to transfer the theoretical understanding of all the spiritual stuff, basically, love and acceptance into one’s very own everyday life. Yet, I can see how I am still going mad at some of my wife’s remarks. I know how I suffer from an article not performing as expected. I realize how easy I lose my balance and start doubting and fighting inside. Teaching spirituality could work by being a model. It certainly would work for children since they are prone to imitate their parents. I am not a model, at times. I do not love myself, at times. From there, massive conflicts arise in me that tend to manifest in the external world. Imparting spirituality by being an example would first imply that I come to peace with myself. Just that. Becoming a peaceful version of myself involves becoming a ‘spiritual’ model for my son.
Until then, I am no teacher.
Who is the padawan?
Then I had a second insight. It came tonight and made me write this article. I had been playing with my son this evening. Like always, he was fully immersed in his games, and I was enjoying to follow him. His eyes were beaming with delight as we drew the wooden train a hundred times or more around on its tracks. I realized in the aftermath, how ‘spiritual’ again my experience had been. He had drawn me into the moment, with his laughter, his will, and his example. When we built towers from wooden pieces, he was having fun in destroying them, not giving a second thought on how high each had been or how tricky the building process had felt. I, on the other hand, felt attachment to this or that tower and a slight impulse to defend my construction projects. I got a ‘spirituality in a nutshell’ — demonstration about being in the present, about attachment, how life is a play, a game. How there is no right and wrong, only things that can be tried out and that offer an experience. How much fun there can be in every tiny aspect of living.
How strange that is to my ego! Now I feel — adjusted. My teaching project in my mind, I realize how I am the padawan apprentice of my little on.
We already have all the resources that we need
I have to go a bit further afield now: in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), this chapter’s header is key wisdom. It contradicts our inner doubts about our incompleteness and our lacks.
And then, I read that book about child education. It is in German and has a funny title. The translation fails, it goes a bit like ‘The most planned and longed for child keeps driving me insane’. It’s a fantastic read, showing up how often parents misunderstand or misinterpret their children. In one episode, they are talking about cooperation. There is scientific evidence that children at the age of two naturally love to corporate. They don’t need to be advised or educated to do it. There is no deficit that we adults need to settle. At the age of three, the will to corporate has significantly decreased. The scientists believe it happens because of the competitive social environment. Yet, we treat our children with the expectation that they are egocentric and need to be raised to be social beings. But they are already social beings, and evidently, we adults keep corrupting them over time.
There I understood the underlying problem of our society. We believe in scarcity. We believe stubbornly in our incompleteness, in our deficiencies. Our relationship with nature stems from the same mindset. There are always problems that need to be solved. Nature, life, our environment, all are crowded with issues and aspects yet to be improved. A pest in a wheat field? Invent some pesticide. Climate change? Technology will save us all.
And our children? I see that they are already perfect. Like all of us! They have all the abilities they will need for their existence as a starter package. As parents, our very first responsibility is to keep our children’s perfection unflawed. We need to protect their minds from doubt and feelings of inferiority. For this, we need to be aware of the stories and images that society projects on our children and us. We need to be very conscious of ourselves. How do I want to raise my children, where do my fears intervene with their education, and where do I yield to some external pressure or expectation (that danger is great, I promise).
Wreaking havoc on the curriculum
So I found that my role as a paragon needs refurbishment. My two-year-old son, on the other hand, is teaching me the core principles of spirituality. And my first job as a parent, besides being a model, is not to mess up his inherent abilities and his individual perfection. My second job, as I believe, stems from my own failure. I have lost trust in life at some point, like many others, too. I got disconnected from the abundance of nature and within myself. I can try to keep him from losing that trust. But again, there I have to work on myself first.
I feel stunned now. The writing has been a rethinking process, and reading that summary feels — bad for my pride and my ego. Shouldn’t I, as a grown man, have more important parts to play in the education of my child? Shouldn’t there be more interference, more decisive life lessons and talks, and fancy concepts to apply? You know, that ‘state of the art’, ‘best of upbringing’ — advice from the latest psychological experiments?
I think: ‘No’.
P.S.: During the revision of this text, I ran into another article about awareness in the context of child education. The psychologist Daniel Siegel has found that the same brain areas get stimulated by mindful practice and by providing a secure bond to a child. There we are again. I can forget about the meditation exercise for my son. I ‘just’ need to love him unconditionally and offer security and trust.
