On the Raising of Fathers

Tags

children, fatherhood, Fathers Day, imperfection, spiritual fathers

Let’s get this out of the way at the very beginning. There are no perfect fathers, just like there are no perfect children. That could be the end of the blog post right here. In fact for some of you, “father’s day” doesn’t exactly fill your heart with warmth. It may even bring back pain, anger, grief and hurtful memories. And yet, allow me share a bit of my personal story with you.

I was fortunate to be raised, and influenced, by three wonderful men who played tremendous father figures in my life. My birth Dad, my Uncle whose family I spent fourteen wonderful years from third grade on, and my Uncle’s brother in the USA whose family pretty much adopted me from the moment I landed in the USA for graduate studies. All three of these men played roles in my life, most of which I did not understand until I became a Dad myself. 

All my Dads taught me more about sacrifice and grace in motion, than I could possibly hope to learn by myself. And this was all before I had ever read a single word of my ’spiritual guides’ like Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda, Ramakrishna, and more. Perhaps I was too busy taking notes in my heart about what my ‘real Dads’ were trying to teach me with their lives. Over the years, one by one, they all went to the eternal flame, as all mortals do. In their passage, they each left me with a hidden challenge —  to keep their flame in motion in the world around me. 

I became aware of the challenge when I was presented with the gift to raise my own. In the process, In raising her, I gained greater understanding that I was really raising myself in small ways every day. Could my daughter be raising me through direct experience of empathy, kindness and listening? Could it also be that the tough challenge of raising me had helped raised my Dads in some way? 

Psychologists stress upon the critical role of ‘fathers’ in their children’s lives, but what if the ‘fathers’ are resentful or afraid of the role presented to them? It is hard enough for willing and dedicated Dads to ‘do raising right’, so one can imagine the challenges of those who feel unprepared or unwilling.  In such cases, could the role of ‘raising’ be done more effectively by teachers, mentors, willing relatives, spiritual guides and more? 

There are no easy answers, because no matter how much we talk about ‘simplicity’, life is messy and complicated. The best advice that I got from my Dads was that they gave very little advice, if any at all. They left the door open for me to figure it out on my own  because they had no way of forecasting what I would be facing when doing my own ‘raising’. If anything, my Dads’ best ‘advice’ was in the kindness with which they all treated their family, friends, guests, and those who asked them for help.

The older I get, the wiser my Dads’ life lessons seem to get. I have a ways to go on my journey, and yet I know that they, and my guides, are raising me up every time I stumble and fall. I also know that there is a loving energy in the universe that raises you too. I hope you believe the same. 

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join our #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday June 20 at 9amET / 630pm India. We will talk about Fathers, imperfections, and raising each other on our path. I will bring the usual goodies and questions. I hope you join us – @AjmaniK

 

The three who raised me… they show up often in nature…

On Fathers and Spirituality

Tags

fathers, Fathers Day, inheritance, legacy, spirituality

I would like to believe that spirituality is gender neutral. If our spirit – that which is beyond mind and body, beyond the influence of space and time, is gender-neutral, then so is perhaps our ‘spiritual path’ that connects us to It.

This is not to say that we live in a gender-neutral physical world. Our very physical inception as humans required the union of two different genders. For some of us, the propagation of our genetic inheritance leads us to one day inherit society’s label of ‘father’ or ‘mother’. In my case, unprepared as (I thought) I was, on that day when she was born, I said – now what?

Many a ‘Fathers Day’ has passed since that day. In times of totally being at sea as a Dad, I have often searched for calm waters and warm breezes among the wisdom memories of my own fathers (birth Dad, my two uncles) and my grandfathers. I have walked, bhikshu bowl in hand, for morsels of advice at the doorsteps of my peers and friends who have walked the path ahead of me. I have asked for many a blessing, invoked many a fervent prayer, in many a house of worship. I have sung many a song to evoke grace and received many a poem in trail, on many a trail of mother nature’s infinitude.

In the process of doing ‘fatherhood’, I have unfolded a ‘becoming a father’. It has slowly dawned on me that the greatest legacy of my ‘fathers’ was their dedication and devotion to their practice. They did not shy away from prayer, from honoring the divine, from practicing their faith, from singing the songs of their mothers and fathers. They subscribed to the practice of silence and stillness as a love-form, speaking soft yet weighty words with lovingly measured tones, and looking me in the eye with tenderness when they deemed that I was in veering towards being lost at sea.

As I reflected on the spirituality of my fathers this week, I realized that I have much to learn and practice. I have discovered that I am fortunate to have a wisdom treasury to draw upon when needed – for they all conspired, in their own way, by their own spiritual walk, to connect me to the treasury of the Infinite.

Kumud

P.S. This is not an eulogy to my fathers, or fatherhood in general. I realize that your experience(s) as fathers, with your father(s) and those that played such role(s) in your lives, may be far from, or totally opposite of what I have described. No matter your experience(s), I hope that you will choose to reflect a bit, and join us Sunday June 16 at 9amET in our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – Namaste. Kumud.