The Mystery of Parenthood

Chris: But moving on from that, I wanted to ask you what your ideas and feelings regarding parenthood are.

Tony: From about the age of 13 I had become very interested in the philosophies of Eastern and Western metaphysics. Such philosophies are full of teachings concerning reincarnation and karma. Some of the ideas presented were also about parenting and being involved in helping a being to incarnate in the body you help to form as parents.

As the years have passed my understanding and views about how, as a parent, we provide an opportunity and environment in which a spirit can incarnate have become more refined. Nevertheless, I still believe that as parents we are part of a continuum very few of us really are aware of. I believe the physical and psychological health of the parents is vital, and that we should not undertake parenthood lightly. I don’t mean we should be deadly serious about it, but I do feel that we need to make sure we have the right atmosphere and environment for a child to be born into.

Because of my interest in this I have devoted quite a big area on my web site to reporting peoples dreams, impressions and experiences of readying themselves to receive and give birth to an incoming being.

But of course, the birth is just the beginning of being parents.In some of my writings about this I have said that being a parent, especially if you are the mother, is one of the most demanding, fulfilling, challenging and rewarding experiences any of us can meet.

Unfortunately, northern European and American attitudes to parenthood have moved into a strange artificial condition for many people. I see some mothers wanting to be independent of their babies almost from birth. Yet being parents is one of the most fundamental expressions of being alive. It extends and nurtures life. It is a doorway through which the future emerges. And it can also be a way of exploring one of the greatest mysteries of life – the emergence of a conscious personality from a tiny mammalian life form. I believe that the personality of a child is not innate in the physical body. Left alone without being cared for or spoken to, no personality would spontaneously bloom in the body of the child.

(See Animal Children). Any personality that does develop is an amazing weaving of parental and social relationships, interlaced with the quality and hereditary traits carried in the body. Nature and nurture work together within the framework of infinite possibilities. (See The Nature Nurture Debate).

Parenting is like a work of art, and the canvas you work with, while not a complete blank has an incredible range of possibilities. As can been seen from studies of poor parenting, and nurturing parenting, you can raise a stunted criminal personality, or a gifted radiant person. Some parts of the art need much work. It might involve some pain and struggle. But great art is never done without a full engagement of the artist. So we need to bring to our parenthood all our creative skills. You need to use your wisdom and discernment. I believe one should not let failures turn us from creating what can be a great painting.

Example: It seemed to me I listened to the unborn baby speaking to me. It said that it had achieved wholeness already in previous lives, and was coming to birth this time because events in the world are leading to a time and a situation in which it wishes to be involved. I had the impression of social change with which it will work.

It gave me to understand that we knew it from/in the past. Its quality of power is not necessarily an easy thing to be here. It confronts one with one’s own weaknesses of darkness simply because of who or what it is.

The impact of meeting it brought about much emotion, leading me to see that I have been struggling with being here in Namibia. Soul – the name I gave to the child I felt I was in touch with – showed me that this was part of being near it. Such struggles occur as cleansing takes place. It went on to explain why I, we, were needed or chosen. It showed me that we each bring a quality or energy pattern. Together these form something like an anchor point, a situation needed to produce the right to birth setting. Later I described this to Johan has something like an event. Certainly events in history, because of the people present, have a powerful influence on future events. There is something here more than I can properly comprehend. But each birth has a part of it, a cosmic and energy pattern that is the foundation for the life ahead. Without the right configuration, the life cannot properly manifest. We each contribute to what is needed.

I then felt the clearing away in myself of barriers to being here. I opened fully to the influence of Soul and asked for clear guidance for us all.

Then it was as if Soul engulfed me for a while – held me in its influence. I felt it would be a power in helping many people move towards a new way of being in the world, and the three of us are part of the work. In this century are the foundation builders – the carvers of the way. I then told Johanna about a vision I had in American while with P. I saw thousands of people groping their way out of a dark and huge cave. I saw that many people were needed to help them make the transition and learn to live in a new way. I felt sure soul was coming for that work.

But looking at parenting from the light of personal transformation, being a parent is a spiritual path. Strangely I have never seen this mentioned in books on mysticism, yoga or the inner life. Nevertheless parenthood has all the disciplines of great spiritual endeavour. (See definition of the word spiritual). In the incredibly intimate relationship between mother and baby, or parents and baby, you meet the mystery of LIFE face to face. In various spiritual disciplines or belief systems this is stated in a variety of ways. In Christianity it appears as, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” In other words you are dealing with an expression of the divine in dealing with your child. In helping your child to discover its own depths and potential, you are helping Life to discover itself.

Perhaps the greatest preparation for this approach to parenthood is for you to have opened your life to the influence of your own Core or Spiritual influence. This amounts to an attempt to live your life with fuller awareness of how who you are and what you do interacts with the depths and heights of life around you, within you, and beyond your present knowledge.

People tend to believe their life began at birth or at conception. That is quite a false concept, for the seed or cell that you developed from wasn’t a new thing, for no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self.

To go deeper you have to get beyond the brains memories, maybe by using https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

As parents we do not simply help create a body for a being who has never existed before. We are a doorway for the spirit to enter on another stage of an eternal journey into discovering its wonder and place in the scheme of things. If we are open to it, we may consciously take part in this. My own experience of this was when I dreamt that a being wanted to enter into my wife. It asked me to have sex with my wife to form a body for it. We did this and I then dreamt my wife was pregnant with a son. See Knowing the Baby Before it is Born

One of the most powerful things to recognise about parenthood however, is the connection between the emerging identity that we as parents care for, and language. In some of my explorations of the unconscious I at times met the experience of being in my mother’s womb. I discovered that my identity is rooted in the integrity I felt in the womb. This integrity was a physical thing, a sense of the cells and organs of my body existing as an individual organism.

The integrity arose out of the process in me of defending myself as an organism against any disrupting influence such as infections. But onto that integrity as it stretched into my early years, something strange, wonderful, frighteningly powerful was added – language.I believe that language is the software of the brain. It is a software package that radically alters the state of awareness existing previous to its installation. Without language there is no self-awareness. With it an unlimited series of concepts are formed, including the words ‘I’ – ‘Me’ – ‘Myself’ – ‘Mine’ – ‘You’. Around those concepts, those words, develops or emerges, the amazing phenomenon of self-awareness.

When I stand on the shoreline of the ocean of language, and gaze over it, all I can manage to say is, “Dear God!” or “Wow!” Its immensity, its impact, is so immeasurable, so astounding, that it is beyond proper description. I have called it a software package because there are so many languages, and because each language brings us a different way of perceiving experience, and involves us in different cultural values. Each language is, in fact, a treasure house of a particular culture, its attitudes, its history and its connection with other races and languages.

But the important point I am arriving at in regard to parenting a child is that because a baby who is not taught language does not develop self awareness, does not become a person, it is important to realise that the person it does become is largely conditioned by language too. The promise a baby has in becoming a human being, is shaped almost entirely by what is passed on to it by its parents, teachers and culture. This is an incredibly important point in considering the evolution of mind or personality. The new born baby, if raised by a wolf mother, becomes a wolf. It does not become a human person. If it is raised by a bear it becomes a bear. If it is raised by an ignorant and brutal mother and culture it becomes an ignorant and brutal person. If it is raised with love and nourished emotionally and intellectually, it becomes someone capable of love and high intelligence.

However, there is still something that is not said here. It is that as a human baby we are potentially anything, and being raised as a human being might be as limiting to our potential as being raised a wolf would be in regard to our potential to learn language. This may sound a silly idea, but if the baby were raised by a being superior to humans, the likelihood is that the baby would become more than we commonly experience as a human. In a fictional way, Robert Heinlein explores this in his book Stranger in a Strange Land. What I feel is really the greatest thing to pass on to a parent is for me to say – Give much thought to language and how it shapes your view of and experience of the world and each other. Then pass on what you learn in the way you teach your child language.