Raising Children in a Spiritual Context

I have raised my children within a spiritual context but not with a religion.

I wasn't sure how to go about this when my children were younger. My wife and I discussed how we might raise them to have a spiritual awareness without saddling them with the restrictions and limitations of a religion. We weren't clear about how to do this, exactly, but we felt convinced that any benefits gained from practicing religion would be outweighed by the restrictions and limitations that come along with it.

We decided that living our spiritual beliefs and expressing our spirits in our lives would have to be the way to demonstrate spirituality to our children. We want them to know that they are spiritual beings, but not because someone says they are. We want them to experience themselves that way.

Of course, that put pressure on my wife and I to bring our spirituality into consciousness and live as the spiritual beings that we are. Fortunately, this was easier done than said. I don't know whether I could explain my spiritual nature very well, but I have learned to live, consciously, as spirit. My wife and I have both allowed our spirits to engage us consciously and we consult our spirits, our souls, about everything that we do in life. Because we have gained familiarity and confidence with asking our souls for suggestions and help in most things that we do, we have managed to model a practical spirituality for our children, which they have both adopted to some degree.

Let me give an example of this process. In the past week, I have experienced intense pain in my right ear and on the right side of my head and in the shoulder joint on my right side, intermittently. I wasn't able to find an injury or infection in the area, so I considered it as a metaphoric and symbolic symptom. I found that I was storing frustration and anger in my right shoulder, a sense of reaching for the stars but not being allowed to touch them. I discussed this in a previous post (Reach for the Stars But Don't Touch!).

With my wife's help, I was able to understand that my ear was filled with all the commands and rules that had so effectively kept me obedient and subordinate to anyone I perceived as an authority. I used this understanding to release these old patterns that had been stored in my body since childhood, letting the old energy out and imagining light of a particular color filling the space instead. I also asked my soul to let me know how well this would work and pulled Tarot cards in response to my questions. The idea is that my soul helps guide me to pick an appropriate card to help me know its response to my questions. Today, I feel much better and the pain in all these different areas has subsided dramatically.

When either of my children is faced with important decisions, they tend to approach it in a similar manner. They may discuss it with my wife and me, or they may ask questions of their soul to help them understand their options better. They have learned to live a spiritual life without any formal instruction in spiritual beliefs. I feel good about their sense of themselves and the way they each feel empowered by their awareness of their inner life. What more could I want!

Alien Encounters in Ancient Civilizations

Zacharia Sitchin has translated ancient Sumerian tablets that reveal humans to be genetically engineered from the union of aliens from another planet and the primates living on earth. Now, the fact that the ancient tablets describe such an advanced biotechnology, in itself, is remarkable. However, I'd like to consider his arguments for this claim as well as the counter arguments that I might suggest, to see if his claim has merit.

Sitchin is linguist, so most of his arguments are based on the translations he made of the Sumerican texts. I can't really give an analysis of his translation because I don't know ancient Sumerian and wouldn't be able to evaluate his interpretation. As far as I can tell, the other translations that have been made of these same texts are more traditional in their interpretation of the stories on the tablets. They tell tales of the gods that were important to the ancient Sumerians. Where Sitchin differs from these others is that he considers the stories to be accounts of the actual exploits of beings who walked the earth. Starting from that hypothesis, he came to the conclusion that these beings had to be extraterrestrials to be able to fly through the air, fight each other with advanced technological weapons, genetically engineer slaves to handle the physical labor that they didn't care to do themselves, and teach humans the rudiments of language, civilization and culture.

For me, the main argument in favor of Sitchin's interpretation is the wonderful way that this history of humanity explains so many puzzling mysteries of ancient artifacts, pyramids, and histories. The stories of the gods that were passed down to so many later civilizations from the Sumerians make much more sense to me when they're interpreted that way. For example, the stories of Noah and Moses make much more sense in human terms as tales about the interaction between two very different cultures and peoples than they do as they are usually interpreted by religions. I like understanding the origins of things, and Sitchin's interpretation explains a lot.

The main argument against Sitchin's interpretation of the Sumerian stories is the lack of any concrete present time evidence that aliens exist, have visited earth and have played pivotal roles in the evolution of our race, cultures and social structures. It's interesting to consider that these aliens built the pyramids as control towers for their space craft, but it seems unlikely that every piece of the advanced technology that resided there once upon a time vanished when they left. It also seems highly unlikely that all of them could have left earth a few thousand years ago without leaving a trace. I would think that scraps of whatever substance was used for their space craft would have survived the centuries, at least in the desert, for archeologists to discover.

Even though I love the idea of there being an undiscovered planet rotating around our sun on which these aliens live, and how fascinating I find the notion that they were instrumental in creating humans, I remain skeptical because I don't have enough supporting evidence that such beings exist and visited earth. Nonetheless, I haven't discarded the ideas that Sitchin has published. They make more sense to me than most of the interpretations of biblical and other ancient stories of the gods that I've come across. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between these two poles.

Teaching Old Patterns New Tricks

It's interesting that I have been discussing death in my writings, recently. I have made several major breakthroughs in my creative and emotional life, recently, and hadn't thought about the transition I am going through with respect to death and grieving.

I have created several musical compositions and am proving, day to day, that I can communicate my ideas clearly and succinctly through writing. My ability to do this is a very recent achievement, and I haven't considered the ways in which I am dying to an old, habitual way of being and starting to be a more creative and expressive person. That means that I am going through a major transition right now. No wonder death has been on my mind. Leaving old patterns of being behind is not just simply moving on and living differently.

I have been having unusual physical symptoms for the past three weeks. For the first two weeks, I experienced sore shoulder joints, as if I had been throwing or lifting heavy things after many years of not doing that. I haven't been doing any heavy lifting or throwing things around, so I didn't understand where it came from. Since it persisted for three weeks, I finally began digging into my consciousness to find what was going on.

I discovered old frustration and anger there, particularly in my right shoulder. It had to do with the programming I received as a child regarding my dreams. The programming was that it was okay to dream big as long as I understood that I could never actually achieve any of those dreams. I wrote about this in a previous entry, entitled "Reach for the Stars (But Don't Touch!)."

Processing the frustration and helping it to release from my body has helped my shoulder improve. I'm getting more mobility and extension in my shoulder again, as well as less pain. However, my right ear began hurting about four days ago. It's as if I slept on my right side with my right ear bent back. It was really painful, but there were no bruises nor any marks. The pain moved into my head the next day, as a headache around my temple and intense sensitivity on the right side of my scalp. The ear didn't hurt as much but I was just as uncomfortable.

Yesterday, the discomfort reached a new intensity level, and I noticed that the pain wasn't quite so much a physical symptom as a nervous condition. The nerves on the right side of my scalp and around my ear were extremely sensitive to touch and I felt very irritable at the same time. This helped me realize that the experience was not the result of some physical injury or infection.

I realize that I am going through some sort of death-rebirth experience. The process of letting go of my old ways of being in the world and assuming this new, creative expression requires some adjustment in my physical, emotional and mental state. I am rebalancing my system in response to the changes I have undergone. I have wanted to be this way for a long time and always felt that something was holding me back. Now that I've succeeded in being more creative and expressive, that something that was holding me back is suddenly left without a function. A part of me that was performing an important job in my life has been told its services are no longer needed. Well, actually I haven't told it, yet and maybe that's the problem.

I do want the energy and focus of that part of me to continue, but I would like the energy and focus to cooperate with my conscious self to assist in my creative endeavors. It would be like joining forces and having fun creating music, writing or whatever else I would like to attempt. This is not like firing that part of me from its old job. It's more like giving that part of me a promotion, making it a special assistant in charge of creative endeavors. We could work so well together, and have so much fun working in harmony, that I think it's a no-brainer. That part of me that once held me in check wants to be involved in my creative enterprises and was afraid that it was no longer needed. Hence all the symptoms, expressions of futility, sorrow and interference being its only mode of expression up until now.

This transition will be particularly gratifying for me because it is an opportunity to recycle an outdated production into a current dynamic that combines forces rather than creates conflict. I say that you can teach old patterns new tricks!

Listen to the Music

One of my dreams is to create music that I love and to share it with others.

That simple statement represents a new way of looking at accomplishment in my life. In the past, when I was ensconced in the hierarchical game, I stated my dreams and my goals differently.

In the past, I would have said that my goal was to create great music or music that other people love. It doesn't sound that different, when it's written out like that, but it is.

To write music that others love is an exercise in futility. For one thing, who are these others and what kind of music do they love? Without specifying who I want to love my music, it leaves everything about the music unspecified and difficult to conceive. After all, there are billions of people in the world and each of them have different taste in music. For that reason alone, I don't think that it's possible to write music that everyone loves. Even Mozart and Beethoven have their detractors.

There are thousands of different styles and kinds of music, hundreds indigenous to each culture, and thousands of others that may not even correspond to a particular culture. People who love rock music are not necessarily fans of reggae or rap, so how could I possibly decide to create music that everyone loves? Another way of looking at this would be to ask which style of music would I choose so that people would love it? Why classical and not funk, for example?

Even if I were to choose a style of music in which to create songs, what guarantee is there than anyone would like it? How would I ever decide on chords and lyrics if I want to please others? Even people who like the same style of music have different tastes and like some music and not others, even within the same genre. One person may love a song by a musician and dislike another song by the same musician.

Welcome to the world of my past. Is it any wonder that I was creatively challenged and found it difficult to create anything with such an attitude?

The good news is that I have learned to focus on creating music that I like, and I've even managed to do that. Whether anyone else likes the music that I've created is simply a matter of curiosity, now. The fact that I like the music that comes to mind is the whole point. Just being able to state my dream so simply is a relief and a liberation. I can't remember doing anything creative before this that was so much fun.

Reach for the Stars (But Don't Touch!)

I have a very sore right shoulder. I don't recall injuring it, but it hurts whenever I move my arm.

I am finding that old remnants of anger and frustration reside there, in the joint between my right arm and my shoulder. Looking for a metaphor, the image of reaching for the stars came to mind. Since I'm right handed, I would likely reach with my right arm. The anger and frustration come from the other message that resides there. You can reach but you can't touch.

I can reference my experience in sports to explain. I loved playing baseball and football. In baseball, I was a good hitter and fielder, but I loved pitching. In football, I was fleet-footed and had good hands for catching the ball, but I really enjoyed being quarterback. I spent a lot of my youth perfecting my batting, my pitching, my fielding, and my catching in baseball. In football, it was all about throwing accurately and running freely with the ball. My parents encouraged me, my friends played the sports with me.

By the time I reached high school, I thought I was pretty good at both sports. My parents, however, thought I was too small to play football and refused to give me permission to go out for the high school team. My freshman history teacher was the baseball coach and thought I couldn't possibly be good at baseball and never gave me the opportunity to bat before cutting me from the team. It was okay to dream of playing sports at a higher level and to practice and play the sports throughout my youth, but the message was that I couldn't even try to realize my dreams. Others were bigger, cooler, stronger, or had some other quality that I lacked so I didn't have a chance.

I think this hopelessness, futility and interference had to lodge somewhere in my body. It was a defense against the bitter truth that the world seemed to teach me. I must have wanted to prevent myself from further disappointment by developing an automatic control over my ambition, something that would hold me back and prevent me from achieving my dreams. That way, no one could stop me. I learned to stop myself and that prevented me from having to face the embarrassment and hurt that came from others stopping me.

This automatic control, this stopping mechanism, was stored in my shoulder to prevent my reach from extending too far. However, now that I have begun to express my creativity, I don't need the control any longer. So my shoulder hurts while the old frustration and anger about my limited status in life is finally able to release.

Metaphors for Life After Death

I believe that dying is like going to sleep. However, when I die, I don't wake up into the same reality as I do when I wake up from sleep. The similarity to falling asleep is in the way I go unconscious to the present reality. The difference is waking up in a different reality.

In Christianity, the way that this idea of eternal life is taught is through the teachings of Jesus, who is God incarnate and, therefore, should know what happens when someone dies. To make his teachings about death and dying more convincing, he is believed to have come back to life after his torturous death himself, making his argument even more convincing. During his life, he was said to have raised a friend of his, Lazarus, from the dead, as well. If you believe that Jesus is God incarnate and that he experienced death and returned to comfort people about what happens afterwards, then you would be convinced that death is a transition.

For others, like me, who don't believe that Jesus was a historical person, there are the teachings of the Church, as well as other religions and philosophies that teach that death is a transition into a sort of spirit world, a conscious and eternal life that continues after death. The tradition of Easter, the celebration of rebirth of life in the spring, particularly relevant in temperate climates, carries the same conviction. In the same way that plant life returns to life when the temperatures become warmer in the spring, souls continue life after physical death. It's incredible to watch a plant sprout from the ground in spring after having seen an almost identical plant die in that spot as the cold weather came in the fall.

Trees lose their leaves and go dormant in the fall, and they return to life in the spring when the weather gets warm again. Some animals hibernate through the winter and come out of their caves, ravenous with hunger in the spring. I don't find this processes as convincing an argument about life after death because they seem more like metaphors for sleep. Neither the tree nor the hibernating animal actually dies in the fall. They go into a dormant state.

However, that's not true for many plants. They start again from sprouts in the spring. In the same way, most insects have to hatch from eggs in the spring, so that insect life starts over again every year. These appeal to me as more appropriate metaphors for life transcending the physical life-death cycle of an individual.

Conversing with Death

Death is part of a natural progression in life. There are no exceptions. Everyone dies.

Every day brings changes. I choose between alternative possibilities and opportunities each day because I can't do or accomplish more than my share in the time allotted to me each day. That means, for every choice that make, I give one possibility my attention and attempt to make it real in my life. At the same time that I give life to one possibility, there are others that I choose to not pursue. In other words, I give life to one at the same time as I let other possibilities die.

Yet, I don't usually grieve the opportunities that never materialized. I focus on the ones that I've made real and forget about the ones that I didn't choose. It works, in a way, similarly to a gardener who chooses which plants to give life and nurture. In the moment of choosing which seeds to sprout and which plants to maintain, the gardener focuses on the plants that he's chosen and celebrates their life. He doesn't dwell on the ones that he didn't choose, grieving for the lost opportunities for the plants that he didn't pick.

Life is a river that flows from my awareness to the possibilities and opportunities I choose. I may not direct my attention very well, forcing this flow of energy to scatter among a thousand possibilities, leaving very little energy for any one, in particular. Then again, I may focus my attention on one or two, making sure that I give them enough support. That seems more likely to accomplish something, but it's just another way that the river might flow through my life. In any case, death intervenes and the process changes. I'm pretty sure that the river will still flow, but I'm not sure how I will experience that flow after that.

Death comes, eventually, to all the plants and all the animals that live on earth. Not a single one is spared. That arc of life that we celebrate and enjoy has a beginning and an end that defines it, at least superficially from the perspective of those who are alive when we die. Only the soul of the living carries the full value of life, otherwise the short span of decades or days would reduce its splendor to earth-bound ornamentation.