Allen / LeBrun / Irons-Hill Guardians of the Vision

Parenting for the Birthright Of Potential
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-988270-00-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

More than a book about parenting, this is a book about human potential and the choice to move forward and evolve beyond the limitations of our past. Parenting is something that is passed from generation to generation, replicating patterns of thought and behavior, often completely out of our awareness. This book and the inspiring authors who openly share their experiences and insights offer new information and a new paradigm for parenting grounded in a WEL-Systems perspective. They are the Guardians of the Vision for future generations and they invite you to join their ranks. The choices we make now will shape the future.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Allen, Anita

LeBrun, Louise

Irons-Hill, Naomi

McNaughton, Amy

Landry, Ray

Smith, Marie

Hensel, Lucy

Leseproben

    FOREWORD
Louise LeBrun We stand at a critical juncture, watching our world rapidly transforming itself into that which has become unpredictable and unfamiliar yet, nonetheless, the only home we know. At this same moment, we also stand at the crossroads of great opportunity to rediscover and redefine who we are as a species, as a people and as expressions of the boundless potential that we all are. What will determine our collective fate lies in the simple act of choosing. The choices we make will determine the lives we live. Guardians of the Vision : Parenting for the Birthright of Potential invites consideration of a new paradigm for parenting through personal experience rather than dogma. We are ready to discover and embrace parenting as a context for accelerated evolution; as a safe space within which the biological imperative of growth can easily unfold and express in ourselves and in our children. We are ready to become guardians and facilitators and invitations to greatness, allowing our intergenerational commitment to being controllers and molders and shapers to fall away. We - the parents - must become more than our histories, greater than our pasts, that we might become the seed of potential that sources tomorrow rather than that which protects history and our habits. We must come to recognize that our greatest contribution to our children (and ourselves) is to trust our innate genius and recognize, honor and respect the potential in us all… the entelechy of being human… that lies waiting to be expressed. This approach is one that invites parents to become conduits for potential rather than harbingers of history and the status quo; that compels parents to place themselves between children and the world, keeping at bay that which cripples and silences until the child has gained sufficient strength and voice to be able to do so for him/herself. From that place of being willing to not know; of being willing to luxuriate in the questions rather than seek quickly to select the most familiar answers that quell both agitation and curiosity; and of being willing to free ourselves from who we have been that we might become expressions of who we desire to become, potential is birthed. I can think of no more sacred, pressing, essential and relevant expression of our humanity than what we have come to call ‘parenting’. As living beings that rely on their offspring to ensure a future, this is our single, most powerful act. This day-to-day, often mindless and habituated process is the overriding force in all cultures, in all religions and at all economic levels that determines our future from one generation to the next. And yet, despite the breadth and depth of its impact, it is the process that we often engage in the most cavalier and distracted of ways. We pay more attention to the lint on our suits or the color of our car than we do to the single, most powerful and defining force that shapes culture. Our current parenting paradigm is rarely, if ever, questioned. Grounded in the Newtonian science that dictates the norms we attribute to what a human being is and how it works, we are significantly - and increasingly, dangerously - outdated as our world becomes vastly changed by the implications of a quantum world. Our willingness to embrace the underlying paradigm of a quantum world while staunchly holding to a Newtonian parenting paradigm generates a dichotomy of the soul; a schism that leaves us ‘doing’ things to and with our children that we know, deep inside where we live, does not honor the truth of who and what we are. And yet, in our mindless fear and uncertainty, we continue to rush headlong to the edge of the cliff. The problem with this is that our children don’t get to choose - they must follow our lead. Parenting is the gift that keeps on giving, from one generation to the next, shaping lives and harnessing the creative Life Force that will either feed our souls or destroy them. In this moment, the choice has become more imperative than at any other time in history as we face massive, expansive and unforeseeable change. We - the adults - are the ones who must reclaim the territory of our own inner landscapes that we might find our way back to honoring the magnificence of who we, and our children, intuitively are. The Bigger Picture In my 20-plus years of working with both men and women, I have witnessed a species that cannibalizes its young. Although we may not consume the flesh of their small bodies (and even that’s up for grabs when we know there are those who offer their children as sexual partners in exchange for money and their own freedom), we most definitely have become adept at gobbling up their innocence, their spontaneity, their sense of play and ability to trust, leaving a mechanically functioning yet vacuous, spent and empty device to move through the requirements of living. In my work, I have been astounded over the years by the number of high-functioning, outwardly ‘successful’ men and women whose bodies and lives carry the long-buried and desperately forgotten truth of a past filled with disrespect, denigration and, in many cases, brutality and terror. “Children don’t remember”, we like to tell ourselves. “It’s not a big deal - they don’t really care’, is another lie we cling to in our desperation to justify the unjustifiable to ourselves. Daily, we learn of increasing numbers of children and young adults moving through the world as living expressions of the utmost desperation (street children, AIDS orphans, dropouts, runaways, etc). These, we can easily identify. What is not so easy to identify are the ones who live in attractive homes and wear nice clothing yet their young lives are rife with the same fear and desperation. Disease in our children - from Type 1 Diabetes to ADHD to early-onset asthma to autism - is relentless in its pursuit of those that are the life force of sustainability of the species. Behavioral challenges - from bullying to battering by and amongst children - is leaving its mark on both its victims and its perpetrators. Sexually active 9 year olds and increasing numbers of teen pregnancies surface in our awareness as do rising incidences of violence against young girls by their boyfriends. Strategies for coping with their young lives, as exhibited by children from as young as 5 into their early teens, include drugs, alcohol and suicide. These children - our children - are screaming at us to pay attention! They are desperately trying to make their way through lives that aren’t working, devoid of any sense of how to make them better and so seeking to make them disappear. A sense of hopelessness and despair has hardened into a veneer of aggression and a strategy of first-strike. Potential no longer lives here. There is no mystery to why our children are in the shape they’re in; why children, adolescents, teens and young adults are so filled with hatred (of self and other) and rage. Simply put, we have made choices. Whether those choices were made as their parents or their teachers; whether they were made as their coach, choir master, babysitter or religious leader, we have been making the choices that have imposed life on our children like a sentence to be served, forcing them to become the consequences of our actions/inactions. The evidence is mounting that we have failed them, miserably! I can’t think of a more important conversation than this one. Nor can I think of one that is more venomous or combative. The playing field of ‘parenting’ is riddled with land mines of history and habits, rights and righteousness, and the abject terror that comes with the notion of losing power and control. It is a conversation that few dare navigate since this practice is the very hallowed ground on which stands the notion of ‘family’ and all that it entails. With hand over heart and flags waving, we hide behind the ‘noble cause’ and the myth of the intact family to keep at bay the scrutiny that would, without doubt, show up the lies and betrayals for what they are: the sad legacy of our own treacherous journey to adulthood. In many cases, we may be tall enough to qualify for adulthood but nonetheless harbor an angry and terrified child, within. Nonetheless, we are long overdue for calling up our courage and our innate truth to guide us through these seething waters. The Process of Parenting Parenting, as a process, hides behind an unchallenged veil of being untouchable… a ‘sacred cow’ badly in need of a BBQ!… and holds sufficient power to cause us to back away, look away and seek to change the subject. So much of the dogma of parenting falls from the dogma of ‘god and church’ ; that to question one is to challenge the so-called inalienable rights/power of the other. To take on the process of parenting is to take on the legitimacy of any external reference, including the one that comes from on-high. For many, that is a frightening place to stand, not just because of the inner turmoil but because of the external pressure and leverage exerted by the collective to remain blind, deaf and mute. How dare you think for yourself! How dare you see what you see, hear what you hear and know what you know! How dare you speak the truth of your own experience without benefit of the agreed-upon filters of the collective ‘truth’! In these, we must find the strength within ourselves to stand tall and, often, to stand alone. Do...