Life is work. Parenting is hard work. Homeschooling is even harder work. It’s an enormously rewarding path that is worth the effort. However, even the best endeavors require parent self-care so we can keep up the good work. While many articles on parent self-care advise you go to the spa, get a massage, or take a walk in nature, I’m will focus here on something deeper. I advise you do all those other things insofar as your schedule and abundance allow, and I think they are helpful. However, in my experience there is something more fundamental which costs nothing and is much closer than the spa. In fact, it’s closer than even your own hand, and in my humble opinion, it is the most powerful form of self-care.
Let’s start by considering the structure of the human being. We are a mixture of universal and individual processes. In our will, we are entirely within ourselves. Nobody can act for us; we have, utterly, to act for ourselves. In our feeling life, we are still individual. What something means for me can be entirely different from what it means for somebody else. This is why two people can have the opposite reaction to the same stimulus, like a song, for example. In our thinking, by contrast, we enter a universal process. I don’t mean you and I have the same thoughts, per se. Obviously, we have our own thoughts, and yet thinking, unlike willing and feeling, has the potential to commune with the universal.
You and I stand side-by-side looking at a tree. Provided we are both of sound mind and senses, we would agree, “This is a tree.” This recognition transcends both your and my individualities. It is simply a fact, even if the concept of the tree takes on an individual stamp in each of us. In thinking, we enter a territory that exists irrespective of our individuality. It matters not what the tree means to you or me. It is a tree, nonetheless. Let us therefore acknowledge that in thinking we touch something beyond ourselves, and this matters as we shall see.
Why the Need for Parent Self-Care?
The foregoing argument provides a clue for where our freedom, and therefore our parent self-care, lies. However, let’s first acknowledge our bondage: we live in a matrix. By that I mean a construction of reality with rules and necessities that bind us. We need to eat, clothe ourselves and our children, pay bills, etc. The matrix gives us feelings of pleasure and pain which further bind us – we want the pleasure and avoid the pain. Insofar as we are beings of this matrix, we are bound by necessities that drain our energy to fulfill. At the same time, this matrix functions as a classroom for our souls; it is necessary for our evolution. It can become gratifying to fulfill these necessities, especially when they involve love such as towards our children.
Nevertheless, it’s taxing, and we burn out if we are not careful.
Who are We, Anyway?
The bondage we experience by virtue of existing as alienated individuals propels us to seek our true freedom. We have already discovered the universal nature of thinking. While recognizing a tree seems a mundane example, daily life provides us more interesting cases. We think of someone before they call. We suddenly intuit something about somebody we didn’t know before. Or, we get a hunch to go somewhere we wouldn’t normally, and we meet someone who becomes very important for us. Materialism calls these “coincidences,” but once they start becoming commonplace, are they still coincidences? Or, are they indicating a transpersonal reality in which we participate?
We are conditioned in the modern age to think we are bound by all our senses tell us. Modern materialistic science – the modern “opiate of the masses” – would have us believe this body is all we are. “If we can’t test and measure it with material instruments, it doesn’t exist!” This circular logic essentially goes, “Only what can be measured exists. Therefore, if we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” That is true for a life strictly bound by senses. However, the countless, well documented supersensory phenomena of the world tell a different tale. There are some things which personal experience validates without the need for a lab nor fancy instruments. I’m not bashing material science. It’s great, amazing, and something vital we teach in our curriculum. It just can’t explain the totality of what we are any more than our senses, alone, can.
An Aside About Materialism
(Materialism can also become a calcified, religious-like worldview that hollows out the soul when taken dogmatically, but that’s a post for another time. On the other hand, some modern materialists claim they no longer believe matter is all that exists, saying that matter is constantly transforming. To which I would have to reply, “Then you risk not being a true materialist because then you have to characterize the nature of this transformative force. You say now something immaterial exists which affects the material. What is that immaterial thing, then?”
(Personally, I would call that the supersensory concept intrinsic to the sensory phenomenon. In other words, the living principle within the phenomenon that drives its transformation. The question is whether or not this invisible driver of material change, like a star exploding, it arbitrary or part of a larger symphony of creation. However, that’s another post for another time.)
How We Spend Our Time
So, in contrast to our matrix-bound life of necessity, experience indicates something in us unbound by time and space. Yet, we still spend most of our waking life attending to this matrix. Consider all you did today and how much of it relates to the maintenance of your matrix-self: food, money, health, transportation, bathing, cleaning house, appointments, etc. We need all these things, for what good is inner peace if you’re starving?
Yet, true health is found in breathing, and many an illness can be traced to improper breathing. Returning to the question of our universal and individual natures, a healthy life results from a proper breathing between them. If we spend all our time attending to the individual, it is like being stuck in the in-breath. It would be just as dysfunctional if all we did was sit in a cave and meditate all day, every day. In other words, attending to the universal. However, since I’m talking to a bunch of overworked, overtaxed, overstressed homeschool parents embedded in the most materialistic culture of all time, I must emphasize the universal, the out-breath, for now. (One could also call sensing an in-breathing process and thinking an out-breathing process, but that’s a post for another time. The more posts I write, apparently the even more posts I need to write.)
The parent self-care question for the vast majority us shall therefore be, “How do we touch this cosmic reality within ourselves and recharge our batteries for our life in the matrix?” I’m not here to prescribe a specific practice to answer that. Each person must find the way for themselves. I have trodden a number of paths, and I’ve found they all work. That’s sort of like saying, “Which practice is the right one? The one you do.” Some work better than others for me, personally. I’m happy to share what I do with anyone who asks.
The Fundamentals of Parent Self-Care
I will outline the characteristics I find most rejuvenating in a practice. First, it gives me an experience of pure thinking. It stands to reason that, if our thinking participates in a universal process, in pure thinking we touch the cosmos. By our senses, we tear ourselves from the world-whole; by our thinking, we weave ourselves back into it. I find so few people do any sort of pure thinking practice, today. Yet, it can be the most rejuvenating activity because it takes us out of duality, which drains our energy, and into non-duality which can release an extraordinary amount of life force.
Second, I consider the fruits of a practice. One must test things and observe the results. That makes it a spiritual science and not a religion. (“Spiritual” here simply refers to the possibility of a reality senses alone cannot observe. It makes no definite assertions about such, only invites the exploration of the possibility. Neither does it refer to any one religious conception of reality.) Religion is based on faith unquestioned, whereas spiritual science is based on faith put to the test. The first fruit I therefore look for is: how well does it enhance my capacity to understand others intuitively? Can I perceive what lies within people “under the hood,” so to speak? That makes me more helpful in the world. The second fruit is: does it bring me more life, and therefore more joy and peace? Happiness is connected to life force.
Third and final is, does it give me greater command of my impulses, indulgences, and expressions of emotions (particularly the unpleasant ones)? Those are the markers I use to determine how well a practice works for me in my parent self-care.
Fellowship
I hope this has been helpful for you. I am considering offering a Parzival book study this summer to support your parent self-care. If you’re interested, please contact me and let me know. I have parents from different time zones interested, and I need to see what time and day works best for people. Thanks, and I hope to see you there!
How We Can Help
Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing and language arts, and empowerment groups for teens.
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