Graceful Parenting in Austin

I was at the library the other day browsing the parenting section and of all of the many choices, I was drawn most to The Seven Spiritual Laws of Parents. Mostly because it is small. Not much bigger than a paperback. Less than an inch thick. Only 156 pages with lots of white space. I connected with Deepak Chopra before I even checked out his book, that maybe he respects my time and has chosen a path of simplicity and brevity which is a kind of love since my spirituality and my parenting have to share time with the laundry.

I like some of the ideas in this book, some I will come back to and think about and meditate on for a long time. Others, if I implemented them now with Noel, who is eleven, would cause an uprising of disastrous proportions…

Deepak Chopra has taken Seven Spiritual Laws and applied them to parenting. For example, the first law is, “The Law of Potentiality - The source of all creation is pure consciousness… pure potentiality seeking expression from the unmanifest to the manifest.” He translates each of his laws into kid-friendly language, the first kid’s law is “Everything is possible.” He recommends focusing on one of the seven laws each day of the week and he provides age-appropriate activities that support each law.

Chopra speaks a different language than I’m use to. He uses words like potentiality, consciousness, carefreeness and manifest. He especially, with great frequency, uses the word “universe”. Then he says things like “nature wants us to be successful” and “be at one with the creative power of the universe.” This language is abstract and new-agey and while I get a feel for the meaning some of the time, other times I’m left thinking, “uh, what did he just say?”

Some of Chpora’s ideas are kind of far out there for me. For the weekdays, Chopra recommends setting an agenda for each day at breakfast, guided by the spiritual law for that day, then sharing what was accomplished and learned at dinner. This made my head spin. I like the idea of making the space and time for setting intentions and reflecting, this is what makes a spiritual practice real and not just an idea. But, for one thing, my family doesn’t eat breakfast together. Noel grabs a glass of milk, I eat cereal at different times depending on Baby Girl’s morning and Blue Eyes skips breakfast all together. A family breakfast would require everyone waking up earlier and, while not impossible, that would be a very deeply significant and costly change. And the idea in general, of daily goal setting and review, feels like too much to me. To granular, to intrusive, to overwhelming. Like a Continuous Improvement Initiative at work gone out of control.

But, then there were parts of the book I really liked. So much of society’s definition of successful children involve proper behavior and good grades in school. It feels good to consider a more spiritual view of success that is “a child’s ability to love and have compassion, the capacity to feel joy and spread it to others, the security of knowing that one’s life serves a purpose, and finally, a sense of connection to the creative power of the universe.” (Oh, no, there is the ‘universe’ again!) It feels true to me that this definition is more important.

And while Chopra’s steps may not be for me, the ideas are. To spend some time thinking about who we want to be, to work towards getting there and to show our kids how to do this too. And to know that what I want as a parent isn’t to master techniques or have kids who win lots of trophies. At the end of the day, it is about how it feels for us to be together and how it feels for me to think of them eventually being on their own.

It’s the same as dating, really. In my single days, I had a theory that when I sat in a chair, closed my eyes and thought of my boyfriend, the initial gut feeling would tell me everything. Did I get tense or comforted, nervous or at ease? The simple gut feeling, without all of the analysis or debate, was the best indicator of how things would go.

I want my kids to feel comforted and at ease with themselves, our family and in the outside world. I don’t know all the details about how to get there, and I’ll need to come up with my own path that is different than the book, but at least I know where I’m headed.

So, Noel doesn’t need to worry. I’m not going to start waking her up at 6 AM and asking her to eat eggs, bacon and toast while we all set our intentions. But I’m going to come back to this idea often, that how we feel at the end of the day is more important than what got done. That is a start along the path to where I want us to be. And that is a pretty big idea for such a small book.