This is a YouTube video titled "Should I Tell My Children How to Parent?" containing a monologue or talk focused on the psychological and spiritual aspects of parenting and letting go of parental roles. The speaker discusses the ego's attachment to the parental identity, the challenges of releasing control as children grow into adults, and the importance of presence and awareness to overcome dysfunctional thought patterns related to parenting. The content appears to be a reflective and instructional discourse rather than a conversation.
My emotions and thoughts are mostly occupied with worry and guilt about my daughter's marriage and children. I feel the need to often tell her and her husband how to do things better and bring up their kids better. It feels that this destroys my life. I mentioned that kind of thing briefly in A New Earth. I believe that to be a parent is a function, an important function for many people. It's not only a function they identify with a function of being a parent. Then it becomes a role that you grow into, that it gets hold of you, and then you remain a parent because that's become part of your ego function. It becomes a role that you cannot get out of. And even when your children are already adults, might be 30 years old, you still are forced to act out the role of parent. And that usually does not have a good effect on the relationship. And it is quite possible that you know better, or it is possible that you just think that you know better. But in either case, perhaps, yes, you have more life experience, you have seen more things. So why aren't they listening to you? Because they want to be free. So to give, to let children go, to let go of your identity of parent after you have fulfilled the function of parent. And you have to start doing that when your children reach adolescence. Gradually you have to let go. You have to allow them to make mistakes. Advice? Yes, up to a certain age, you still can impose your will, but not for too long. Then they reach 16, 17, 18. If you're still trying to impose your will when they are 18, 19, things get problematic. You can still guide, diplomatically, gently, but then realize they will go their own way, and they will and must make mistakes. So that can be a significant letting go, which requires a certain amount of consciousness. If you have been identified with the role of being a parent, because that's become part of the ego identity has a certain inertia to it. It does not want to let go of whatever its identity is. Every psychotherapist knows that patients come to him or clients, whatever they're called, and there's always a point is reached when in many cases, the patient or client sees the possibility of going, going beyond certain types of dysfunctional behavior or misery. But they are attached to their unhappiness because it's become part of their sense of self. And that is often a critical point in therapy. And often clients or patients disappear just as they reach the point. There's a possibility of transcending these limitations because the ego feels, I need to. I'm going to lose myself. So what you need here is presence. So, and especially self observation. Rather than focusing all your attention on what your children are doing with their children and so on, and how, what they can do better, put at least as much or more attention into the workings of your mind and see how it is associated with not being able to let go of the role of parent. And here you say your emotions and thoughts are mostly occupied with worry and guilt about my daughter's marriage and children. So even when you're not seeing them, you're thinking about it. Now, this is just another example of the uncontrolled use of mind, which is not a use of mind. You are being used by the egoic mind. Is there enough awareness in you? You have to ask yourself and verify it. Your own experience. Is there enough awareness in you? When this happens again, you start thinking about her, worrying about her. They're making mistakes at that moment. Are you able to know that this is what your mind is doing? And perhaps in the past that wasn't possible. Perhaps after this retreat your awareness has grown. So the awareness can be there when the mind does its usual thing. And then you recognize that actually it serves no useful purpose to worry about this except to keep this identity alive in you. You're not helping them by boring, and you're probably not helping them by giving them advice that they don't want. So to recognize the futility of what the mind is doing. This is so futile, isn't it? That's still a thought, but it comes from the awareness that's a true thought. The rest are unconscious thoughts. You can have true thoughts that arise out of awareness. And often those true thoughts have something to say about the unconscious thoughts. Say, this is so crazy. Do I want to do this for the rest of my life? I'd rather not think these thoughts anymore. And therefore I will put my attention on the fact that I'm breathing. And I'll put my attention on looking at the sky and be in the present moment. And then a few minutes later, you will find the thoughts trying to creep in again. And they want your attention. One little thought. Come this way. And you watch that. I'm not going there again. Sorry. I've had it for years. It solved no purpose, Just made me unhappy, made my relationship with my daughter unpleasant. I don't want it anymore. Thanks, but you've been very kind. Thank you. And then you choose to put your attention on something else. Your inner body, the aliveness and preferably present moment and preferably not annihilate yourself by having a few Drinks, I mean, those kind of drinks that annihilate you, that doesn't work. You don't need that. Another way of annihilating your own thoughts is by turning on the tv. Now you may notice, interesting thing, when you turn on the tv, you are not thinking anymore. So one could think that occasional thoughts may come in, but you could actually sit there in a trance like state for a whole hour watching whatever is there and even changing channels, and you would still be in a trance like state. And you can't even get out. You know, there's nothing because there's always the next channel. I'd have something interesting. And even if it's, every channel is totally uninteresting. There's always what about the next one? And you're in a trance like state in which actually you might think, oh, isn't that good? I'm not thinking anymore. But you have fallen below thought. And if you're actually watching a program, a sitcom or whatever it is, then you are linking into the thoughts on the screen that people are talking. This drama on the screen, you're linking into. So you're not free of thought, you're free of personalized thought, but you exchange personalized thought for that kind of thought. So that's not the way to go, to become free of dysfunctional thinking, because that's just another way of falling below thinking. So you need to rise above thinking. It could be other things that plague you on a daily basis. So certain types of thoughts that recur that if you look at them clearly, fulfill no purpose except to make you unhappy and to strengthen your fictitious sense of identity. So your psychological function. You're not a mother anymore. It's not your identity. But biologically, yes, you are the mother of this daughter, but your identity is not being a mother anymore. You have to transcend that limited identity, Sam.
