By Sofi Sonalii Wallin Steen
Being born is an auspicious event. We do not hold the ability to know the secrets of creation within our intellectual human mind. We can do our best to explain the wisdom life has given us about our existence, but the mystery of the reality beyond those words remains. Likewise, is the true identity of each person being born, but nonetheless we learn that the capacity of a human being’s ability can be beyond our imagination. At the time of being a child, all doors are open and the child will enter the world through them. If we introduce them to a world with flowers spread at their feet and give them the confidence to tread that ground, a child can truly flourish and prosper as themselves in life and make the world better together with others on this earth.
Raising a child to live their life with authenticity is unavoidably going to also teach you to live your life with authenticity
Say you are a new parent, a teacher, or and adult at the beginning of a relationship between you and a child. The jittery feeling of getting to know one and another, leading up to the joy of sharing each other’s gifts, as a subtle relationship takes form from underneath it all. In yogic philosophy it is said to be because of samskaras (reactive momenta or latent tendencies) that you face persons (as well as events) in your life journey. There are qualities within a relationship that offer resolutions for your personal growth. It can be challenging, rewarding or a mix of the two, as reactive momenta trigger your emotional, mental and physical interest and you respond. Without samskaras you wouldn’t have anything to overcome, nothing to learn and nothing that triggers you to grow.
In a relationship with a child, the responsibility is on the adult not to impose one’s own personal life frustrations onto the child. The nature of a child is like a well of water searching for deep understanding of their true beings. They will mirror themselves in everything they see and play out the scenarios they meet in order for their playful mind to grasp the sense it. Their minds are innocently researching and storing up emotions that then become seated in their physical body and color their intellect in their life thereafter. You become the first access to their new world and as the child will reflect his/her self in you, she will also project his/herself in you by acting out what people sometimes called in “a childish manner”. Be careful not to judge or act in a way that will tell the child that she is inadequate or “just a child” or “childish” as if the child is something bad. The child has the intellect to learn with great speed. Their intellect has not matured yet, but it is gathering tons of information and saving it in themselves which they will use later on in life as tools in new situations. Be a leading adult that through benevolence and the wisdom, sees your own role as the trendsetter to the child.
Kids have an innate need to feel that they belong to this world and will do what you do rather than do what you say. Follow the urge to look deeper and deeper yet, to become aware of the underlying factors in you that affect the child. Some factors will hinder the relationships progress, and not help the child grow as much as it will challenge it. If resolution is not within reach, the lesson remains still unlearned for both you and the child, that unfinished confusion will pass on and affectthe world around with confusion. Practice to increase your presence so that your awareness expands and resolution opens up like the petals of a flower. Use meditation as your weapon to achieve anything in life. Your deep intuition that comes to you when going deep within yourself will tell you what to do in difficult situations as the intuition then crosses a bridge to your intellect and creativity when performing a wholesome practice for your own inner self.
Strive for that which makes the heart sing and gives food to the soul
¬As children go about learning the ways of life with their great speed, they constantly ask questions and insist on their whims and wills. They are like sponges that enthusiastically soak in all colors. They are lives that have come to the world to do something of utmost importance and they need all the energy and good tools. They insist that they need to do what they want NOW. Obstacles rise to meet the child and we sometimes may think there are complications in execution that prevent the child from receiving our support in their requests. Most times it all comes down to your practical inflexibility in meeting a request or your belief that the child is inflexible when they don’t listen to you explain how it is not possible. You are learning about your limitations. But if you expand your mind, think about it, then the limitations are often easier to overcome than you first think. Usually the process becomes a learning experience of cause and effect which captures the minds of everyone involved and makes the original expectation less stubbornly important. That way the child will have the satisfaction of the research of the project rather than a result. Everything becomes more easygoing for both you and the child. You are no longer trying to raise perfect humans but rather searching for learning and growth experiences that will only make perfection as the result.
In Neo Humanism the knowledge of the soul creates a possibility to go beyond your limitations and learn to see how to meet the child with fierce optimism and support for their energetic spirits, not limitations on their expanding creativity, in order for them to feel fulfillment and an exhilarating feeling of life force. It can seem impossible to fulfill their wishes,
but only because they are also knocking on the doors to your own heart. Everyone wishes to live life in natural ecstasy with a sense of divine meaningfulness. The child’s soul journey becomes highly important, for them, for your own souls’ journey, and also for the world around. You are both gifts and your actions become gifts as well, as you are truly learning from each other as equals.
Sonalii Sofi Wallin Steen is a mother of three, multiple artist and handicraftworker, and has worked in Neo Humanist childrenhomes and preschools. Originally from Sweden, she now lives with her family between two masterunits in United States