From Running With The Wolves to Holding Them At Bay...

What is a father?

Part of being a father, for me, is knowing where to draw boundaries. 

Boundaries for Corrina, but more importantly, boundaries for myself. Because so much of her development is influenced by what I model with my own behavior. What I reverberate, she picks up and learns to transmit. 

Shadow included. (gulp)

The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. ~Douglas Engelbart

Now, there’s a part of me will always be a 22 year old. Like Huck Finn on Dead Tour, deep down, I’ll always have a desire to hit the road and explore the world. Especially with friends.

Last weekend, Corrina & I went camping in Ithaca (rated one of the top 10 places in the world to drop out of “society” by Outsider magazine). It was perfect weather, and we were totally in the flow - the kind of flow that only happens on road trips!

My friend Teresa and her daughter Corina shared the adventure with us.  We made a weekend of waterfall walking, gourmet hippie cuisine - it’s great to see the girls trying things they’ve never had before, and loving them! -  swimming, blackberry picking, hiking, crystals & best friend pendants and a dozen silver dollar sized, vegan pancakes down by the river with baby ducks to feed... it was heaven.

A strong man and a waterfall always channel their own path. ~Anonymous

The waterfall walking was, by far, my favorite part. The 3/4 mile hike through the gorge is magnificent. Shale walls forever crumble inward toward the limestone creek-bed. All along the way there were small waterfalls where the girls would wash and “recharge” their new amethyst crystals - a gift from Teresa.

We reached Toughanock Falls at dusk, after everyone else had shied away. 

A “Do Not Enter” sign hung from the foot-bridge 50 yards from the plummeting water. 

We decided to brave it, taking responsibility for our choices. 

Corrina and I often talk about the paradoxical “Circle of Freedom and Responsibility” and how making good choices, even when difficult, will get her more freedom - with me, and in life.

I hung back with the girls, while Teresa ventured right up to the 200-foot falls with the kids’ crystals - named Shimmer & Shine - in her pocket. She came back drenched! We all had a good time. 

The next day, leaving town, we stopped by the lower falls. A few brave souls were leaping from the 30-35 foot drop of limestone. I got it in my mind to try that. 

“Don’t Die Wondering" has been my motto for some time, now. And it's served me well... to a point.

Naturally, Corrina protested. I told her I ‘heard’ her and motioned to move on with our adventure. We skipped some excellent shale stones on the shore as the jumpers waded to our end of the pool to exit. Corrina reiterated her fear and I hugged her and told her I heard her. Of course, I’m not all punch and pie... the third or fourth time she brought it up I shut her down, told her I had heard her and that I would get angry if she brought it up again.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

We all got in the water - fully clothed - planning to change back at the car. I decided I was gonna teach Corrina a lesson in physics (there’s magic in ledge-jumping... you land further forward than your mind can project since you aren’t used to the additional 20-30 feet of drop) and in “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” 

Since it was right there in front of me I began my ascent, climbing up the pile of falling water over majestic, mossy boulders of the lower falls. Every step and finger-hold was blessed by some magical intuition that I wouldn’t fall and die (this was a harrowing mindfulness practice).

At the top I thanked the terra firma and reflected on the day prior, where we had followed the riverbed to the source. I thought about my Source, and I thought about my death. Jumping from heights is not something I do often. Ever, really. Not once, actually, have I ever jumped from heights above 6-7 feet. 

In fact, I’m terrified of heights. Not fear that I will fall... but that I will jump. So this seemed like the right thing to do. Face my death. Cuz I’m a spiritual warrior... and shit...

An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. ~JFK

So, I peered over the edge of the drop-off. The girls were on the shore opposite me, camera in hand. I turned to the source and I closed my eyes, stood tall, stretching in the sun, and considered the man I’ve been up to that point. Then I felt into my back-body and I thought of my impending “death” and the man I would be, walking up onto that shore. Proving to my frightened little girl that I’m a man, I tackle challenges like they’re munchkins, or face a part of myself that other kids’ fathers won’t face... I wondered what new pattern this would kick-off for me as a father, as a man. It got me pumped, so I turned to face death.

I walked down to the place everyone had jumped from, and peered over the edge looking for the right place to land. Corrina had turned away. She sat sulking on a stone, facing the other direction. It made me sad that she might miss my moment of raging glory, tearing through the veil of fear, seeing into the heart of my own masculinity... 

Taking some practice steps I got a feel for the leaping energy I would have to push with when I left the rock ledge to pencil dive into the bardo, only to arise, baptized into some new life. Honestly, I live for this. If I don’t have a breakthrough experience a few times a year I go stir-crazy inside my soul.

So, there it was... my moment of departure. Camera girl giving me a thumbs up. Teresa arrived from below to see me off. I rocked back and forth, dialing up my adrenaline, revving my testosterone, thinking how smart I was for not just exploding my circuits, but workin up to it...

And there’s Corrina looking up at me, shoulders slumped forward, pouty lips and a fluttering heart...

Everything was lined up. My trajectory was plotted. I was tuning into my intuition, feeling whether I needed to be cocked a little more this way or that... I was just gonna trust it. Trust myself. When I felt like it was right, I’d let my gut carry me into the fleeting moment of abyss, sweep me into my next life-time. My next incarnation...

And Corrina.

Thoughts bucked through my mind. “It’s scary, yes, but I know I can push myself through my fear.” “I can always come back and do it with my buddies.” “If I don’t do this, what will it say about me?” “No, I have to do it! I said I was gonna do it, and here I go... dammit!”

I felt into my heart. My intuition slowed me down. I followed it. I did what I felt. 

I sat down.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless with yours. ~Mary Schmich

After a few minutes Teresa sits next to me and, like the incredibly powerful woman she is, puts words to what I’m realizing for the first time in my life. By letting Corrina know her heart is more important to me than my transient adventures and epiphanies, however spiritual they may seem, I’m setting a pattern in motion in her that will alter the course of her life.

And mine. 

When I got to the bottom of the rock formation Corrina was waiting for me on the other side of the stream. 

We met in the middle and she held me in an extra-long, extra-silent hug.

The man I became... was not the man I had expected. 

Follow the child. ~Maria Montessori

I’m so grateful or these teaching moments. Children have a way of teaching that eludes me, until it’s upon me. My own Circle of Freedom and Responsibility got turned on its head. 

I didn’t know what to do, so I wrote this post to share.

Actually, finishing up this post a week later, I’m still a bit shaken up by the experience. If you know the feeling, please chime in. I could really use the support... as I’m sure we all could.

To Your Enlightenment Experience!

Craig

Creator EnlightenedChild.com

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The Heroic Journey of the Adopted Child

What is it like to be adopted?

How can anyone answer that? It's painfully subjective.

My experience of adoption; of life, is uniquely mine.

Yet, I have come to recognize patterns and landmarks along the path that are common to all adoptees. Common to all humans, in fact.

We all share a similar journey to some degree. Whether you’re adopted or not. Your journey and mine, when we learn to see with archetypal vision, show all the signs of The Hero's Journey.

The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. ~Campbell

The Hero’s Journey is a template. It’s what Joseph Campbell called the Mono-Myth.

Monomyth is THE deep, underlying pattern of our private dreams, collective myths, timeless songs, popular stories and well-lived lives.

The cycle is always the same: we are all mired in some "unsupportive" environment, questing for healing and redemption. Our series of adventures  along the way are what personalize our version of this perennial story.

This story is told and retold in classical tales from the Greek gods and heroes to the legend of the Holy Grail. The Hero's Journey is so deeply rooted in each of us that the pattern replicates even today in blockbuster movies like Star Wars, The Matrix and Back to the Future.

Joseph Campbell's great work The Hero With 1000 Faces has influenced timeless musicians like Bob Dylan and members of the Grateful Dead who recognized the inexhaustible, archetypal source of their inspiration.

It's no surprise these musical troubadours have careers stretching nearly half a century, inspiring millions and millions of people.


The grateful dead man is somebody who helps the hero on his journey, his quest, which will take many forms. ~Trist

Campbell was friendly with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, who tapped into the power of a 2000 year old legend to name their band. He worked with George Lucas to ensure the original Star Wars Trilogy had all the depth and emotional engagement of a truly Heroic Journey.

Here is a description of the basic outline:


1.) Departure - A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder.

2.) Initiation - Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won.

3.) Return - The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Every version of this story, whether a legendary tale or the story of your personal lifetime, reveals the same cycle.

The way the story unfolds is your unique contribution to the chorus of heroes who answer the call and live the adventure, overcome the challenges and return home changed, with some great gift to share.

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. ~Bob Dylan
 

Recognizing these patterns and similarities has brought a tremendous amount of healing to my life. I've stepped out of my wound enough to see that we all experience a separation from Source at some point on our journey. It's no longer personal. It's no longer my "fault." The separation, the trials, the path to wholeness... it's THE common framework of all human experience.

We all know what it’s like to be Luke Skywalker or Neo who is called to the journey. We all know what it’s like to feel doubt, fear, guilt… resistance to answering the call. Yet, just like in the movies, life has a way of working out, and before we know it…

We all know what it's like to be hanging from the Cross: naked, exposed, vulnerable as an infant in the wilderness, wracked with fear, riddled with existential levels of betrayal and abandonment; every cell in our bodies screaming:

Why have you forsaken me!!! ~Jesus

And to that cry for help... a resounding, deafening silence.

It’s from that darkest place on our Journey that we experience the deepest transformation.

The depths of our soul is the mine from which we draw forth our gold. If our body is a microcosm of the entire universe, this is when we experience the supernova on the other end of the black hole we get sucked into.

What happens to Jesus in the story? He wakes up.

He realizes he has never been forsaken, and it was only his own ego blinding him to the truth of his Source. And he comes back to show the world the reality he has discovered. The reality we all must come to experience ourselves for it to be truly true.


A good life is one Hero's Journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure... ~Campbell

We can’t just read the story. We can’t just watch the movie. We can’t just imagine what it will be like when we sack up and answer the call. We can't just sleep, living vicariously through our imaginations…

We must LIVE it. Over and over again, we must become the Hero in our own Monomyth.

In the next blog post, I’m gonna share some more of my personal story. More of my own journey. More of my own quest and awakening. And more of the deeper, universal patterns of the Hero Myth we all share.

Meanwhile, I'd love to hear more of your story... enter your email and you can email me directly. (Kid info is optional.)

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Craig
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Recovering the Soul of the Adopted Child

I was adopted. At birth.

By all accounts, my life could not have been more fortunate.

I was afforded every advantage.

Yet, by in large, I was mis-er-a-ble.

"Your children are not your children...

You may house their bodies but not their souls" ~Gibran

My folks are amazing people. They've built a life of affluence from very modest upbringings. They've traveled the world many times over and quenched their appetites for all things refined and cultured. I've watched their circle of friends share and support one another in this very boomer endeavor, and I've benefited from the cultural literacy and business acumen of this consciously cultivated extended family.

What has most impressed me about my parents is the way they've developed their marriage, and continue to deepen it to this day, after nearly 45 years together.

I would never say I resented them for adopting me. Certainly, this makes no "logical" sense. But there has always been something missing. Something all this external blessing could never ameliorate.

I have deeply resented being adopted.

Why? Even writing this feels like a knife twisting in my solar plexus. How rude of me! How ungrateful! What a spoiled brat I must be!

"Adoptees are not grateful, they are grieving..." ~Verrier

Several years ago my godfather passed along one of the most illuminating books I've ever read: The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Newton Verrier.

Essentially, this book explains that adopted children experience a profound psychic-emotional wound that a.) goes totally unaddressed by society - families included - and b.) creates a "false self" that the adopted child puts on in order to protect from being rejected and abandoned again... particularly because the deeply wounded, deeply grieving authentic self inside is not accepted, or even acknowledged.

This primal wound causes a tremendous amount of pain and suffering in the adopted child. A loss no less painful than that felt by the spouse and children of a loved one who dies unexpectedly.

The difference is that, in any other experience of trauma or loss, our society accepts and acknowledges this grief, and encourages a period of deep grieving for the loss of the loved one, or in the case of abuse or rape, the loss of self that has been ripped away and wounded.

"Grief is the gateway to all other emotions." ~Bly

The adopted child's wound is characterized by "premature ego death" and the very authentic grief that wells up beneath the surface, just like all that toxic oil billowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil wreck.

It's a mess that nobody wants to have to deal with. Least of all adoptive parents who most likely have never grieved their own loss due to their inability to birth their own biological children.

It's a big game of make-believe fantasy-family-land at some level. I'm sure it varies by degrees in each family, particularly in more recent times as adoptions are becoming more open, and parents more enlightened about what being adopted means.

"Cry, baby, cry..." ~Beatles

I know, with my own daughter, when she cries for mama at inconvenient times - like bed-time - that if I just stop myself from trying to reprimand, shame or otherwise convince her out of her feelings, hold her and acknowledge her sadness, she is able to cry it out. The tears run their course quickly and it's only a moment before she's kissing me goodnight - feeling seen, held, and okay just the way she is.

Simply learning about this has given me permission to accept and acknowledge my own deep grief. By owning this grief and beginning the process of feeling it, consciously, for the first time in my life, I have experienced a tremendous amount of healing - more than I can possibly express with words. I've begun recovering my soul.

This grief, I've learned, comes not only from the loss of connection with my birth mother after 9 months of hangin out together like BFF's, but also from the lack of mirroring for my soul growing up.

Now that I, myself, am a father I can clearly feel the difference between the way I know my daughter and the way my folks know me. Sure, they could sense that I was sensitive, intelligent, artistic and creative in general. And they sent me to all sorts of great camps and lessons for art and guitar and science...

 "Teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by..." ~CSN&Y

But when I look at my daughter, I know in a quantum flash precisely what just went through her mind. I can sense what multi-generational karmic chord is vibrating in her, and how to help her get aligned with the process of healing that karma she's inherited from me... or celebrate the brilliance of her soul that only a biological parent can recognize, because it's been directly imparted from a very intimate part of my own soul.

I longed for that kind of connection all through my adolescence and early adult-hood. Instead I felt projected upon, or completely unseen for who I was. This all happened at an unconscious level, and only served to deepen the wound, the grief of abandonment, the resentment and self-doubt that lies at the core of nearly all adopted children.

"You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts." ~Gibran

It didn't help that I had no language for expressing my deepest self. It didn't help that I had no map of the possible forms or dimensions of expression available to me. I was expected to model the staunch, entrenched attitudes and values of my war-generation parents, even though I'm a child of the 70's, born of parents a decade younger than the ones who adopted me. It was a poor fit on many subtle levels, and I've suffered in the deepest recesses of my soul... with no ability to explain how I felt, and no moral grounds for justifying this grief and resentment.

In the following blog posts, I will share more of my journey of awakening, and how I found a collection of tools (which have become the basis for Enlightened Child) that ultimately provided me with a mirror for my deep, authentic self. The one I was born with, before the "premature ego death" and construction of a false self.

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." ~Campbell

The work of self-discovery... self-excavation, really, is not only a fascinating story, it's also incredibly instructive for anyone on the path of self-mastery and awakening.

And if you're adopted, or raise adopted children, it's my heart's prayer that you will learn to connect with the deep, authentic self that lies at the heart of every adopted child.

Here's a link to The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child - please read it, or pass it on to those you know who are interested in the experience of adopted children, and their path to wholeness.

To Your Enlightenment Experience!

Craig
Creator EnlightenedChild.com
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Sir Ken Robinson: TED Talk on Creativity

"Around the world, there were no public [schooling] systems, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So, the hierarchy is based on two ideas:

1.) The most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered away from subjects you liked [art, music...] on the grounds you'll never get a job doing that. Benign advice. Now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in revolution.

2.) Academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence. The universities designed the system in their image. The whole system of public [schooling] around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized.

And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

...Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything.

We need to rethink our views of intelligence."

To Your Enlightenment Experience!
Craig
Creator EnlightenedChild.com

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Kahlil Gibran ~ On Children

On Children

Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.





To Your Enlightenment Experience!
Craig
Creator EnlightenedChild.com
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Program or Be Programmed!!!

This is probably one of the single most important issues I can think of when it comes to the freedom of our children and our society.

The nature of culture is to define itself by what it values, and build context by patterning language and replicating that language in the minds of the people in the the culture.

What Douglas Rushkoff is talking about here is the way technology (from the invention of written words to the printing press to the blogosphere) has impacted the development of culture. The implications make me want my daughter to have a solid understanding of computer science!

The realm of the possible begins with the imagination of the programmers. The ability to translate that vision into applications that shape the interactions made possible for our culture, and the way these interactions are shaped by the very technology that enables our interactions are all core to the freedom we experience... or lack thereof.




Click here to view short video from SXSW

To Your Enlightenment Experience!

Craig
Creator
EnlightenedChild.com

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What's Real & What's Imaginary?

What do you do with a Pisces child?

They're so deliciously dreamy, and yet, as a father I feel it's important to help my daughter make distinctions between what's really real (like objectively existent) and what's imaginary.

When she was 3, 4, 5 years old we played "Dragons" all the time. They were as real as anything in her world. 

About 6 months ago she called me up because Jeni  finally leveled with her about the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and good old Santa Claus. She had just lost a tooth and was curious, as kids inevitably get.

I did my best to explain that when she was a little kid she believed in the dragons, but now she knows they're not real. Still, it's fun to pretend. Same with these other imaginary beings.

We talked about her little cousin who would call you a liar to your face if you told her Santa Claus isn't real. And how as she grows up she'll go through a period where she "knows" the truth, but still lets her emotional attachment to the imaginary rule her mind. And that it's totally okay.

What's important, I explained, is to "just notice" when she's believing in something imaginary, and when she's dealing with something really real.

Lately, Corrina has been telling "stories" about things that seem perfectly reasonable to a kid, and probably correlate with very vivid imagery in her incredibly imaginative Pisces mind. When I ask her if these things really happened she snaps back, "oh yeah, I saw it on YouTube," or, "oh, well my friend told me, and I trust my friends." Sometimes I get aggravated, but I know it's part of growing up.

Again, as her father, I feel responsible for helping her start to "just notice" when something is really real, and when it's part of her imagination only... or when it's a little of both. I know I was gullible to things my friends said well into high-school.

So, we talked about the difference between dragons and dogs. Between Santa and something you can take a video or picture of. And we talked about how sometimes something starts out being real, and we remember it just like we took a video of it, but then our minds start to make up things that didn't really, actually happen.

She seemed to understand. I mean, I don't want to shame her for it. It's natural. And it's also natural that she grow out of this eventually. 

The Enlightened Child piece in this is letting Corrina know that it's okay. Every kid goes through it. And that it's a process. When she was a little kid, like her cousin, she fully believed all this fantasy stuff was real. Even though I knew it wasn't I let her revel in it because I understood where she was at developmentally. And I explain that she's not ready to entirely let go of Santa Claus. Even though she knows he's not "really real" a part of her wants to go with it for a few more years.

Rather than asking her to grow up all at once, or simply waiting until she does, I'm inviting her to "just notice" what's real and what's imaginary. Planting the seed and nurturing her ability to make that distinction, so that over the next several years she will become clear on what's really real, what's just in her imagination, and how each of these is important, valuable, and useful.

She is, after all, a Pisces. Her imagination is one of her greatest strengths. So I want her to learn to use it, rather than leave it under-developed and susceptible.

I'd love to hear from you if you have any similar experiences, questions or wisdom to share.


To Your Enlightenment Experience!

Craig
Creator
EnlightenedChild.com

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