By Sherry Rothwell
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| http://motheringwithsoul.com |
During
the birth process, we transform at the cellular level and become the
archetypal bodhisattva. The process of being aware as we conceive,
gestate and open our wombs to the creative force or the all that is,
becomes our attunement as woman healer, giving rise to the higher
functioning that we need to mentor our children into their vast
potential and greatness. Parenthood is a spiritual path and awareness
is the practice. As mothers, we have great honor and great
responsibility. The consciousness and tone with which we
conceive, gestate, birth and parent our children, becomes the fabric
from which they create their very lives. We come to conscious
awareness through mindfulness meditation, although it often looks
different for the householder. “Householders are challenged to
watch our natural attachments to our children and let them be
manifest in their fullest and purest sense. It is a goal to revision
this attachment with eternal eyes, not just with temporal sight”.
(Jeannine Parvati Baker). On the spiritual path of parenthood, we do
not go to the ashram or to the monastery. We instead make our homes a
Sacred Space and the practice most often looks like kneading bread,
shelling chickpeas or washing dishes and sweeping the floors. We sit
in awareness for 15 minutes at a time, rarely longer with little
hands just begging to pull us off the meditation mat. We breathe
deeply when we notice our self about to rote respond to the
discomforts, whining or misbehaviors of our children; instead we stop
in that moment of awareness and we respond to a child, rather than to
a behavior. We know that our relating to them comes first and
that right action follows, never the other way around. We are
connected so deeply to our children that we feel their pain to
greater degrees even than we feel our own; and our love for them is
eternally unconditional.
The
actual process of opening to give birth is a gateway for complete
transformation on all levels of our being. Inherent in this
transformative process is the awakening of dormant capabilities that
give rise to expanded states of being and self empowerment that
include knowing how to raise this child. We come back to relating,
just as we come back to our breath. This relating informs our way of
being with our children. As mothers we give up the freedom to live by
our impulses, yet what arises in its place, is awareness and expanded
states of being that could not be experienced by any other means or
path! No other practice but motherhood could conjure up the sensation
of a heart beating inside our wombs or the experience of feeling love
again as though for the first time; and even again with the
subsequent birth of each new child coming thereafter. From feeling
the life force move through our yonis as we give birth, to the awe
that comes with seeing our babies for the first time outside of our
bodies and simultaneously getting that, it was this baby that we
nurtured in our womb for nine moons. There are so many altered states
of consciousness inherent in co creating, carrying and birthing a
child; right from the time of conception and before that, as a
women’s climax coaxes the sea-Men into her watery depths. The whole
journey of Motherhood is an altered state of consciousness that is
informed by the birth process; just as the birth process is informed
by who we are, that life is. The altered states that we experience
are unique to motherhood; there is no other path by which to attain
such incredible states of being and awareness.
As
pregnant women and mothers who have taken great care to nurture the
souls that gestate or have once gestated within our wombs; we are
privy to the very sacred task of mentoring the evolved souls who come
to us disguised as children. Yet in the modern context of motherhood,
we are often not acknowledged or celebrated and rarely apprenticed
and finally initiated into the bodhisattvic path of service called
motherhood.
Mother
as bodhisattva, is a very real, honoring and empowering archetypal
image in which to view motherhood in the modern context. The path no
longer chooses us, for today we have the freedom to choose not to
mother a child. Let us acknowledge ourselves and one another for
putting aside our own personal nirvanas, to instead merge in service
for the highest good of our children, and subsequently for our
planet. As we choose to offer ourselves up to mother in awareness, we
consciously raise the consciousness of our children, and ultimately
we generate the enlightenment of humanity as a whole.
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