2015 – Zen: The Art of Nothing

Is World Peace a Distant Dream?

November 16, 2015 Ashwita Comments 1 comment

It is OUR earth, every inch of it. Can't bomb one part and think it isn't hurting US, ultimately. — It is OUR earth, every inch of it. Can’t bomb one part and think it isn’t hurting US, ultimately.

My heart is aching. I don’t watch the news, but some bits of them come blaring, into our lives anyway. I heard about the blasts in Paris first thing in the morning on the 14th, and then started to realise that it wasn’t just Paris that was bleeding. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq… the list is endless.

But what hurts more than anything else, is the violence I see in day to day life, and the encouragement of more violence. Nobody seems to be talking about the fact that this was a retaliation by those who were upset that Paris was bombing Syria. Not that that makes it any less painful, but how is it that we didn’t care about dead Syrians or express our solidarity by changing our profile photos – are some lives less valuable than others? Can the Westerners go around funding and selling arms to whoever they support, encourage mass murders and then be alarmed when they experience a fraction of the same horror? Is this what you support?

Are you Contributing?

Do you really want a peaceful world? It is sometihng we talk about, but I’ve observed that it is hardly something anyone really wants. We’d rather see severe, brutal punishment. We’d rather see Paris retaliate with bombs, because the media has convinced us that Muslim lives are worthless and they’re all violent terrorists.

There were hundreds of responses to this image, applauding and celebrating the bombs. Are these people any different from the ‘terrorists’ that bombed Paris out of fear and anger?

So, whose side are you on?

Are you taking sides again? Are you filled with hatred and anger towards the killers? Do you realise that by doing this, you are helping the world remain a violent, horrible place to live in?

What can you do?

The violence in the world is nothing but a reflection of the violence inside our hearts (read more). We can blame the ‘selfish’ politicians, the terrorists – who are really just people tortured by the West and trying to fight back, no different from the Western soldiers who are sent to bomb their wives and children – or anyone else. But really, we are contributing by allowing the violence to seep inside our hearts, and by sending it back out into the world through our words, thoughts, and now social media posts.

Let go of your beliefs

Yes, a large part of the wars are motivated by greed, but they are supported by ideologies. Every citizen that supports the war, believes that his side is right, his view is perfect. Don’t you, too? If you’re taking sides, you can come up with dozens of reasons why it is ok to kill innocent people on the other side – but can something like that ever really be justified?

If we want a peaceful world – if at all we choose to make it a priority before we ourselves stand to lose everything we love – we need to stop taking sides. We need to stop making it about ‘them’ and ‘us’. There is no separation, not really. The worst monsters in the world are a reflection of our own inner darkness. We can choose to dive into that darkness and create more bloodshed. Or we can send them love, refuse to take sides, and hold the space while the earth starts to heal.

CAN you make a difference?

One of the most common excuses is that one person cannot change anything. Yes, you can. You have no idea how many thousands of others you will join, and maybe if we’re all lucky, you will help us cross the critical mass. There are dozens of scientific studies that have shown how group meditations have brought down crime rates. You CAN make a difference. Will you?

Lighting the Inner Lamp

November 10, 2015 Ashwita Comments 2 comments

Diwali is my favourite time of the year. I don’t so much know why, because it is the festival I do the least in. Maybe something to do with the lights.

In India, Diwali can seem like the festival of pollution and explosions, more than light, but to me, it really is the festival of silence. Despite all the noise. The outer chaos only makes the silence louder, if only one chooses to tune in to it.

Light is very significant. My favourite lines about it, I read in an Osho book.

Wise Words by Osho in his book "Intimacy" — Wise Words by Osho in his book “Intimacy”

As a healer, for years I was stuck with a belief that once I am completely healed, I will be happy. But even months and months of therapy later, I still felt messed up. It felt like digging an infinite well.

And then, one day, it dawned on me. Light up. That is all it takes to dispel the darkness. The healing will happen automatically, for guess what – it is what eventually fuels the fire. You will burn. Joyously.

Just like the oil in a lamp, or the wax in a candle, every bit of your ego – your sense of separation from the source – will burn away, lighting up the world, until absolutely nothing remains, and ‘you’ have gone back to the source, burned away.

Stop trying to be a better person this Diwali. Stop trying to burn away all your inner trash, stop trying to heal a little more so that you can one day be happy. You can’t remove the darkness. You can only bring in the light. Burn away, my dear ones. Burn away.

Shit Happens

October 8, 2015 Ashwita Comments 4 comments

Vietnamese countryside

When we planned a trip to Vietnam, one question bothered me vaguely, at the back of my mind. ‘Why are we going to a country that was so devastated by war? Will it be too much to handle?‘ Luckily for me, I was too busy to actually think about it.

Places where trauma has happened almost scream back at you. In Berlin especially, one can feel the intensity of pain where the concentration camps once were. The Jallianwala Bagh still vibrates with intense pain, so does Cherokee, an American friend on this trip mentioned.

And yet, as we landed in Hanoi, I was struck by the absence of any such vibration. Indeed, all I could feel, was peace. I was very surprised. This country thrives. And it isn’t even the commotion that many people use to mask their pain. It was simply quiet. One normally finds stillness only in temples or sacred places. As far as countries go, Vietnam is the most ‘still’ country I’ve ever been to. It was amazing to see such hard working people, not driven by a desire to

Our surprise intensified when we visited the War Museum in Saigon (It is called Ho Chi Minh City now, but I somehow still prefer Saigon, like many of Southern Viets). This museum showcased thousands of photographs taken during the Vietnam war, showing how people suffered. The Americans violated international laws and agreements and flooded their rivers for 10 years, with highly toxic chemicals. Not only did this destroy the lives of many alive at the time, but also deformed babies that were being born. The result is handicapped people, still being born decades later.

A former nurse, next to her 23 year old disabled son. Between 2-5million people were directly affected by the chemical, and many more continue to be affected, as these people have children. On the right, is a picture of indiscriminate bombing, by B-52 planes, or 'Whispering Death' as they were called. — A former nurse, next to her 23 year old disabled son. Between 2-5 million people were directly affected by the chemical, and many more continue to be affected, as these people have children. On the right, is a picture of bomb craters left behind, by B-52 planes, or ‘Whispering Death’ as they were called.

I have a fairly small threshold for intense stuff, and I spent most of my time in this museum trying not to burst into tears and resisting the desire to run out. It was hard not to hate the Americans by the time we left the museum, even more so because they still continue to hurt entire countries. Even so – if we found it hard to forgive after a couple hours of seeing photographs, how could these people, having directly borne the atrocities, move on?

The USA still spends money on Vietnam war veterans – apart from everything else, they needed therapy for years. How did Vietnam move on? We finally asked someone.

‘Everybody wants to win’ she said, explaining away all the horrors of the war. ‘We just focus on the present. Now we have welcomed Americans and Australians into the country, and hugged them. We treat them as friends.’ There were no traces of bitterness or hatred in her voice, or on her face.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It couldn’t be that simple. How does one simply move on, deciding to work on building a better future? As a therapist I know that just that much would only lead to suppression, and an eventual need for therapy. It couldn’t be the complete story.

The real answer occurred to me a couple of days later. It really boils down to a deceptively simple phrase. Shit happens.

Sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Reducing all of that pain and healing, to two words? But when you really understand and integrate this phrase into your life, it can make a world of a difference.

Our story isn’t meant to be perfect. Nature didn’t intend for life to be a bed of roses. Life isn’t fair. But growing up listening to fairy tales with ‘lived happily ever after’ endings teach us something else. ‘Good things happen to good people’ is a dangerous lie we grow up with. No, they don’t.

We’ve formed a wide set of belief systems in a bid to find some security in an unpredictable world. We convince ourselves that if we act a certain way, things won’t go wrong, that there will be no suffering. This is all a lie, and if anything, it only creates more suffering. Won’t one just be left asking ‘But I pray everyday/ go to church every week/ I’ve never hurt anyone, why did this still happen to me?’ A lion doesn’t ask a deer about its moral conduct, before it kills it. There is no real insurance against misery.

And having battled outsiders for many decades, maybe even centuries, it is only natural for the Viets to know this. She was right. Everybody wants to win, and wars of all things, are not fair.

When we learn to accept the calamities of life as a part of life, we don’t cry out in pain asking ‘why me?’ There is no sense of entitlement, something the current generation across the world is infected with, explaining the growing need for therapy and the increasing incapacity of people to function effectively. And without this sense of entitlement, there is no need to place the blame – either on others’ or one’s own shoulders. One can just move on.

The ‘Nice Person’ Syndrome

September 12, 2015 Ashwita Comments 3 comments

Many years ago, either a book or a person caused me to ask myself ‘would I rather be a good person, or a spiritual person?’ The answer to me, was obvious. Good person, of course, wasn’t that the point of spirituality, after all?

All these years later, I’m not so sure it is. I’m more inclined to believe that spirituality is about being in our natural state, becoming who we really are, and not good or bad.

There is no such thing as a nice person. We all have our bright and dark sides, and have a tendency towards one of these sides, that is all. The ‘bad’ people are more identified with their darkness, the ‘good’ people, with their light. In both cases, there is identification, and where there is identification, there is misery. Haven’t we all heard the ‘good’ people wailing from time to time, about how all the bad things seem to happen to the good people?

I remember harboring a doubt for a long time after meeting Jacqueline. If a person was a murderer, would becoming spiritual mean he becomes a murderer without remorse? I never mustered the courage to ask, somehow, but over time the answer presented itself.

Our bright and dark sides are nothing but aspects of our personality. Both sides are needed, and both sides can be strengths or weaknesses. So, a person who has a strong tendency to kill anyone who violates him in some way, may still have that tendency, but spiritual practice will lift him above the grip of that tendency on him. He might want to kill someone, but he will have a choice – a real one – to kill or not. And anyone who really has a choice makes the sensible one.

As I mentioned, it is not only our vices that trap us. We are more often trapped by the desire to be a ‘good’ person. This leads us into trouble when we have to look bad in front of others by saying, or doing something that makes us look bad. As a result, most people in the beginning stages of spiritual growth end up having their personal space violated quite frequently.

A dis-identification with the ‘nice’ person within, would leave us free to be a ‘bad’ person when the situation requires it, for example if a person is trying to cheat us, or trying to take advantage of us in some way. A person who is trapped by identification will respond either by being submissive or aggressive. When we let go of the fear of being a bad person, we will find that more and more, we are simply assertive, and actually a better person than we were before.

Why the Law of Attraction is Hurting your Spiritual Growth

August 28, 2015 Ashwita Comments 4 comments

The universe responds to your inner state of being.

When the book and the movie ‘The Secret’ came out many years ago, it created quite a stir. It helped people realise that they were capable of walking out of those lives steeped in misery. It helped, and still helps people come out of a state where they’re blaming everyone else, or life, for their problems.

The basic premise of the law of attraction is true – “You create your own reality“. But as with most sacred scriptures, this one is also open to blatant misinterpretation. And the ego has twisted it quite wildly out of context.

You Create Your Own Reality

Of course you do! But what reality are we referring to, over here? Imagine that you are waking down a path. On one side, there’s a barren, dry land, maybe with a few dead animals. On the other side is a beautiful forest, you can hear the birds chirping, and smell the wild roses.

Reality = Perception

Now which side you choose to focus on, will determine your reality. If you choose to keep looking at the barren land and wonder why it is so dry, and why there are so many dead animals, you’re obviously going to be quite miserable. If you focus on the lovely, thriving forest, your life is happier.

The MISperception

The whole law of attraction propaganda has us believe that a completely flawless life is possible. That if you work in the right direction, you can attract the perfect life. And this is where the trap lies, because this is complete hogwash.

So today, followers of the law of attraction, religiously spend night after night making vision boards, setting targets, and willing their wildest fantasies to come true.

If they’re lucky, they’re disappointed sooner than others and wonder where they went wrong. If they’re luckier, they find out.

Why the Law of Attraction is unspiritual

The moment you start to wish for something in the future, there are two inherent flaws in your approach.

1) You’re postponing happiness

You’re not in the present anymore, but in the future, in the common but insane hope that something in the future is going to make you happy some day. If you aren’t happy right now, what you’re doing in the hope of being happy, isn’t going to make you happy either. The more you move away from the present, the more unhappiness you create.

2) You’re creating more karma

What is karma? Karma is doership. Attachment to the outcome. Real spirituality involves nonaction (not to be confused with inaction), where we do what is required of us without any attachment to the outcome. The law of attraction is anything but this. You’re always dreaming about the outcome.

The real ‘Secret’: You reap what you sow

It doesn’t matter so much what you do, but why you do it. If you’re spending days visualising your ideal life while believing strongly that your life at present is far from perfect, you can never create a perfect life, because you’re acting from inadequacy. Actions taken in inadequacy, will only bring you more inadequacy, not fulfillment.

If, on the other hand, you’re visualising from a feeling of fulfillment… now wait a minute. If you’re feeling fulfilled, why exactly would you waste your time visualising? If your life was perfect, right at this moment, would you really be fantasizing about a happier tomorrow? No. You’d be immersing yourself into this moment, trying to experience it as fully as you can.

Yes, you create your own reality. Right now. And your investment in right now, creates the next right now. If you live this moment in complete awareness, complete surrender, the next one will be perfect too, And the next one. And the next. And maybe, once in a while, life will gift you with a vision, and make that come true for you. That’ll be exciting and fun, but also just another addition to an already perfect life. Which you are living. Right now. And that’s the real law of attraction.

New Moon Meditation

August 14, 2015 Ashwita Comments 2 comments

A little over the last two months seem to have been tough for many I know. And I can see that it is really cleansing, some sort of flushing of old accumulated toxins that is happening, but these processes are never easy. This is only one of many rounds of purification that we have been going through, and it is bound to continue, whether we like it or not.

Two people in just the last 2 days, have told me that they don’t want this anymore ‘I just want to be a normal person like everyone else’. This is something we’re all going to feel at some point in time or another, and it is ok to feel this way. These are powerful times, and the soul often ends up choosing more than it can comfortably handle, much like going a bit crazy and buying more than we can carry, at a supermarket with an extraordinary sale. It hurts, but just stay with it.

The New Moon

New moons are special, and this one especially so, because it is associated with the release of accumulated trash, as well as a ‘ghosts of the past’. In some cultures in India, people throw out the trash tomorrow morning, chanting something to the effect ‘let the old go out and create space for the new’ – something that sums up the essence of the new moon.

Burn It

Fire is a great tool for transmutation. It alchemises base, fear based emotions to those based in love. It has the power to transform and heal. Using fire to burn away old patterns can hasten the process. The next time you witness a fire, just gaze into it deeply and surrender into it everything you wish to let go of. Even better if it is a sacred fire.

What to Burn?

One thing that often accompanies cleansing, is some sort of illness. Cleansing is rarely a cause for illness, the resistance to it, is. Absolutely any illness is possible only where there is some sort of resistance at a mental or emotional level.

There is a common tendency to want to get rid of everything we don’t like – like disease or discomfort, but these are the result, and surrendering them to the fire can only help so much. On the other hand, if we surrender our attachments, and our resistance to what life brings us in the present moment, we will find a lot of problems vanishing quite quickly.

Meditate

I experience a lot more thoughts and disturbances during new moon times – so much more comes up for resolution. Meditating with fire can make it easier because it gives the mind something to focus on. Here’s a meditation that uses fire to transmute past baggage.

It makes references to mango wood and ghee, materials that are used for sacred fires in India. Ghee is clarified butter. Best to meditate at sunset time during a new moon, but it will work just fine at any other time as well.

Want Love? Be Useless!

July 26, 2015 Ashwita Comments 12 comments

Straight, useful trees are the first to be cut. Twisted, useful trees get to live long, long lives. — Straight, useful trees are the first to be cut. Twisted, useless trees get to live long, long lives.

When I was in school, we had a lesson in English, where the author shared the story of a cousin who was utterly useless, but managed to have a better life than others. Being hailed as a good-for-nothing by family members, it turned out that women always wanted this useless man, giving him access to a lifestyle he hadn’t earned. Eventually, he married a rich old woman, who left him an insanely big inheritance. I think including a yacht.

I don’t know why this story stuck with me. Maybe because everything else we heard those days told us that hard work was the key to success and that life was fair, punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. This story told a different tale. Life was unfair. Unpredictable. It was a hard lesson to forget.

Osho Agrees…

The lesson that people could fall for useless people repeated itself in front of my eyes in real life every once in a while, and I’d remember the story every time, silently shaking my head.

And now, as I read ‘Intimacy’ by Osho, I found something that left my head reeling. ‘Be useless’, he says. (Click here to read an excerpt) The more useful you are, the less love you will have and the more you will be used. How on earth could that possibly make sense?

But when I dwell upon it, it starts to make sense. I’ve said many times before, that love and need are mutually exclusive. And a useful person is needed by many. He is so useful that he attracts people that have use for him. He will eventually get manipulated, used, abused. A useless person, on the other hand, can only mingle with people who have no use for him at all. Indeed. the only reason they would want to be with such a person is because they love him.

And then of course, there are the deeper aspects. Those who become useful, expect returns for their efforts, either materially, physically or emotionally. They help because they want to feel important in other people’s lives. And the compulsion to make this person feel important can be very tiring, very stifling for those receiving the favors. Even more reasons for a lack of love. This relationship is a burden, not a gift. Deep inside the subconscious, this person knows that people are with him because he is useful. It leads to a very unsettling feeling of a constant lack of love.

A useless person on the other hand, expects nothing. There is space and openness for the other person to feel whatever they are feeling.

How Useless is Useless?

So does this mean that we must all drop whatever we are doing, quit our jobs, and sit in wait for someone to put morsels in our mouths? No. We do need to drop our desire to be useful to other people so that they can value us in some way. Stop doing anything because others want you to, need you to. Do it because YOU want to.

We might sometimes be useful in love – but those are actions stemming from a deep love, not from an expectation of gratitude or anything more. These actions don’t commoditize us, but they just might add an extra spring in our step.

Ultimately…

So if you merely want to reinforce your ego and your false sense of security by being surrounded by people you can control because you have something to offer, then by all means, be useful. But, if you want to eliminate egoic, need-based relationships from your life, if you really want to be surrounded by people who just love you, be useless.

Six Ways Spiritual Guidance May Be Misleading You

June 28, 2015 Ashwita Comments 5 comments

One of the biggest obstacles in one’s spiritual growth, is conditioning. This conditioning is a set of beliefs we have formed as a result of hearing something repeatedly from parents and other family members, teachers, friends, the media and the like.

And one important aspect of this conditioning, is that life is meant to be problem-free. In pursuit of a problem free life, people try a variety of things. First they seek ‘security’, then they want to ‘start a family’, then they seek success, money and when they realise that none of this brought them a problem-free life, they turn to God. Some give up on that too and turn to something else, but mostly people are dead by the time they realise that that didn’t work either.

It is this pursuit of God, this wonderful chase, that has created a probably multi-billion dollar industry catering to religious and spiritual seekers. There are, of course, people that are fake outright, meaning to con people. But I believe that for most part, people are genuine. However genuine is not the same as never misguided, and even the best can have a few misguided moments some times.

Here are a few signs that the guidance you are receiving is taking you down the wrong road.

1. It takes you to the future (gives you hope)

One very popular tool in this regard, is the tool of prediction and divination. It could be tarot, clairvoyance, communicating with angels, tea-cup readings, and many more things. People turn to these when there is confusion or too much pain in their lives, seeking some respite through a happy prediction of the future.

If the guidance you receive – either through someone else or through your own sources, maybe through the angels or in dreams, talks about the future – it is not spiritual guidance. Even if you are being given hope that a desired situation will come true. Such information encourages you to take away all the energy from the present and invest it in an imaginary future. This prevents you from learning the lessons you are meant to learn through this ordeal, and postpones and retards your journey.

2. It takes you to the past (brings you guilt)

It is of course, very important to learn from one’s lessons. However, guilt and learning lessons are mutually exclusive. Guilt is a trick that the mind uses to avoid learning lessons, so any guidance received to that effect, whether from a teacher or from some other source, is not beneficial to you in any way.

3. It makes you feel small

In a path where the very essence of the teachings is oneness, there is no place for big or small. The ego however, loves to trick itself and create separation. With gurus, people often put them up on a pedestal and make them big, even if they don’t encourage it themselves – and some do. Then there are those who communicate with beings from other realms or dimensions, and convince themselves that they are higher, purer and better.

Take a rain-check if you feel like you’re so small that you have a million lessons to learn and a long journey to make. Again, it takes your energy away from the present and places your hope in a distant future where you might be happy. While happiness comes when we give up the chase, this path makes you chase harder.

path

4. Or big

This one’s a no-brainer, but it is a mistake that most spiritual aspirants make anyway. Of course, the obvious trap is when a sect makes you feel special simply because you are a part of it, but there are subtler ways.

You can sometimes receive guidance that you are special. You’re here for a purpose, to improve people’s lives, to change the world, etc. Then there are ‘spiritual’ paths that award titles, or articles that help you attach yourself to a label, like light-worker, empath, earth angel, etc. Anything to make you special, to give you an identity. These are tricks the ego usually conjures up to avoid coming face to face with its own insignificance.

5. It is confusing or vague

This is more relevant to information received through inner guidance or dreams. It is easy to mistake them for spiritual guidance when they come from this source, but if the information you receive is unclear, vague or confusing, without an option for you to ask for clarification, then it is definitely not meant to take you in the right direction.

6. It takes your power away

Any system that gives an object, a place, an institution or a person greater importance than your daily practice and personal conduct, is clearly more a marketing gimmick than a spiritual pathway. We see this everywhere – religious people skipping their daily practice and feeling redeemed by visiting places of worship, energy healers cutting corners and trying to substitute practice with crystals and symbols, even yoga practitioners thinking that getting into a complicated asana is somehow better than learning to say, follow the yama and niyama.

Spiritual guidance can be very powerful, and life-changing when it comes at the right time and in the right way. But be careful, and assess it well before embracing it and making it a part of your life.

Transcendental Meditation: A Review

June 9, 2015 Ashwita Comments 0 Comment

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a simplistic mantra meditation which was popularized in the early 1960s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It involves mentally chanting a beeja mantra with every breath. This, I was told, tricks the mind, helping us bypass it and making meditation much easier than usual.

I had been hearing about TM for a very long time, but I didn’t feel drawn to it up until a month ago. Usually, I practice mindfulness and it has brought a fair bit of balance into my life. I must mention before I proceed with my views on TM, that these are my personal views, and it might be different for different people.

The Initial Reaction

Now, for most part, mindfulness can be quite torturous. The mind bombards you with thoughts, and you try desperately to keep your head above water. There are moments of stillness of course, but it can be quite hard to grapple with the mind sometimes.

TM, I realized, did trick the mind. It was such a joy to be able to just bypass it. It was almost like a relief, after practicing mindfulness for so long. It was actually so easy, that I should have been suspicious.

… And then…

Time flies much faster when you do TM. This was my experience, and I’ve been told this by others as well. I enjoyed the practice in itself, but I found myself becoming increasingly un-grounded everyday, at quite an alarming rate by my standards. I found my mind much more active the whole day, and I don’t mean this in a nice way. I’d drift off in my thoughts, losing touch with the present. It was as if I lost touch with presence. I was also sleeping more, and not feeling completely rested when I woke up.

One month later, it just became too much for me to handle, and I stopped. I switched back to my mindfulness practice. Before I tried TM, I was meditating easily for an hour without problems. After a month of TM, I could do just 20 minutes, after which I got up, feeling completely frustrated and unable to continue. 2 days of the mindfulness practice and my mind is already calming down during the day. The meditation practice of course, is back to being a difficult period.

The Conclusion

TM is a very effective tool. But like all tools, it must be used at the right time for it to be useful. I think if people are spending a lot of time doing physical work – gardening, farming, construction, etc., then this is a wonderful technique to lift them up and bring them into balance. For a person who travels a lot and spends a lot of time on electronic devices, I’m not sure this is going to be helpful.

It may even be a decent place to start meditation at. When a person is totally trapped by the mind and has lost all control, then probably it is easier to start with TM. There are several studies that show TM to help with reducing blood pressure and several other stress induced health problems. But for the long term, I don’t see this as a complete path in itself – for a generation which has lost touch with the earth, it needs a method that is more grounding in reality, than something with takes them further away from it.

Let Your Baby Cry

June 4, 2015 Ashwita Comments 6 comments

The first time I saw a woman distract a child when he fell and was crying, I was confused. Why would a mother want to do that? My mother explained that when distracted, a child stops crying because it forgets its pain. It still didn’t make sense to me. Why would you want a baby to forget its pain? Took me a lot of years to realize that I really was onto something.

Needs Vs Wants

Until a baby is three months old or so, it can only cry every time it has a need. It is either hungry or has wet itself, or there is some other problem. For these three months, a child needs the complete attention of the parent, and mothers often see an (almost) inhuman increase in endurance and capacity during this time.

After this though, the ‘drama’ begins. The child starts to learn that crying has its own merits. The easiest way to manipulate its parent is to scream its lungs out. It drives most parents crazy, and most of them relent, thinking oh come on, how much damage can it do if he gets this one extra toy, or plays that one extra game?

How Much Damage Can it Do?

Children are learning rapidly at this age, and this learning is geared to teach them how to survive in the world. Parents represent the world at this age. Therefore, when we fulfill their needs every time they cry, we teach them that the world is a safe, nourishing and loving place. Every time we give in when they cry for the wrong reasons, we teach them that crying is a fruitful exercise. If you want something from life, just cry.

We can see this in play already. Our own generation was mostly raised by working parents in nuclear families. Depression today is at an all time high, and the numbers are only rising. What did our parents do wrong?

They taught us that it is profitable to cry.

When you really delve deep into depression, you find that it is essentially your fight against life. Life hasn’t given you what you wanted. And now you want to be miserable, because maybe if you are miserable long enough, life will feel guilty enough to give you what you want. When you’re deeply connected with yourself, you realize that you don’t really want to get out of your depression or anxiety or anger, because then you fear that things might remain the same. So you hold on to the misery. Is it worth it?

What are we doing to our kids in the name of love?

Every time we distract a child, we teach it that the best way to deal with pain is to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to focus our attention on something new. Over time, the child has no idea how to handle his/ her emotions and will end up having physical or mental disease when things reach a breaking point.

Every time you give in to your child’s unreasonable cries, you are teaching your baby that whenever it cries, life will fulfill it’s demands. It will grow up to be a miserable, depressed person, because there are many times life doesn’t work out our way, and this child was taught that it is not through hard work but through crying that you get what you want. And the child wasn’t taught that sometimes you never get what you want, and you’ve just got to deal with that.

So what do we do?

Well, the title says it all. Let your baby cry. Not the sort of crying where you look the other way and pretend nothing is happening. Look at your child. Let him/ her cry. Watch. Just don’t reach out and hug or try to comfort in any way. Remain at a distance, and feel your own pain. Let your heart scream. Of course it will, that is natural.

And when you settle into your own pain, without trying to run away from it, you teach your child by example, that sometimes bad things happen, bad feelings come. But if you just sit through it, it will go away. Then you just get up, wipe your tears, and move on.