Dear Spiritual Companions,
Yesterday was Father’s Day and I became aware that I have been a Dad for 36 years. It is truly one of the most wonderful things that has happened in my lifetime. The greatest compliment I have received from both my daughters is that they both feel they are my favorite and they are right. I had a strong desire to be blessed with girls and it happened for me. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have loved or cherished a son, but for me it seemed right to want girls. When they were born my spirit soared and has continued to rise over their time in my world!
What does it mean to parent someone? Does that mean it has to be a biological child? Does it even mean it has to be a child? I believe the answer to those questions all depends on how you would define Parenting. I find my answer in how God Parents me. Unconditional Love is what comes to me immediately and is my definition. God doesn’t love me because of my doing, but rather because of my being. I do not have to earn God’s respect. I already have it and always have had it. I do not have to please God in any way because my being in God already pleases God! Every time I become aware of my breathing I remember who has placed that breathe within me. Every time I breath I take in this knowledge of God’s Unconditional Loving Parenting and every time I exhale I release any thought to the contrary.
Over my 61 plus years on this planet I have come to realize how much I need to unlearn about God to find out who God truly is. Our childhood experience with our biological parents, or those who took on that role in our life, is quickly and unconsciously transferred to our image of god. So, depending on who our parents were, they have given us the material which enables us to uncover who God ISN’T by working through the failures of our parents to love us. We are not being critical of what they did because our parents are only transferring onto us what they have learned. Everyone does the best they can and FORTUNATELY they are not God. I say fortunately not because of our pain from their actions, but rather because now we can reach out to the one and only unconditional lover – God. This Being will help us to heal and unlearn what our parent figures taught us and by doing that we discover God’s Nature. We begin to see what was said in the previous paragraph as truth.
As have told my daughters, they can thank me for my failures as a Dad because it has helped them to grow closer to God. I can also be kinder to myself with my mistakes. I now know I did the best I could with what I had. This than allows me to learn from my failures and stop them. I am no better able to love them in more ways that are like God’s Ways of Loving them. Because I am not centered on what I did wrong I can rejoice in those wonderful moments over the years which brought us closer to each other. Good times are remembered more so than the bad. We can build on those instead. Isn’t it incredible the way God works? The pressure on us lessens because we are letting go of strange notions of who God is and who we are in God. Just Being beats just doing any time. This is why God really doesn’t care what we do! That is not a rational line, but rather a mystical one. Leave your mind and thoughts behind to embrace your spirit and God’s Parental Love – one that reminds us how each one of us is God’s favorite!
Peace,
Gary