The Ego Trap of Parenting

This is an automated transcript and may contain minor errors.

Michael: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Upbuilding the Self. I am Michael Sloyer and I am here with my partners and dear friends, Rasanath and Vipin. And today we are going to be talking about the role of ego in parenting. And I think I can very safely say that there's gonna be no shortage of material to talk about today, because from our years of doing this work, it's very clear that the ego shows up most intensely and very stressful situations.

And parenting, although it can be and often is incredibly rewarding, is also incredibly stressful. So we can get started with some fun and we'll go around with a little lightning round and each of us can share an embarrassing example of how our ego shows up in parenting. Thing, would you like to get us started?

Vipin: Would I like to? I'm not sure. I'll, um, the way that my ego shows up consistently. Parenting is wanting my kids to reflect well on me.

I could give you a hundred examples of this, but the generic version is we're at a gathering and one of our kids is acting out whining or behaving rudely or something, and instead of responding with. Curiosity and calmness. I feel a surge of irritation and it's not just at the behavior, but at the fact that it's happening in front of all these other people.

And my instinct isn't how can I support my child right now? But instead, it's what are all of these people thinking about me as a parent? And my worth is tied to how my child is performing publicly so I can feel myself tightened up and overcorrect or even scold, and not because the moment demands it, but because my image feels threatened.

And maybe even to prove that I know what I'm doing as a parent. As you saw that happen with my child, but watch how I handle this now. So that's the scenario that happens. Not infrequently, let's say

Michael: amazing and very relatable. Ana,

Rasanath: I have to agree with everything that had been said. I experienced pretty much each and everything that you shared with him.

Also, we have. By some DT of, I would say foolish enthusiasm, perhaps taken on the responsibility of homeschooling our kids. And every day I have to really prepare my own self for the experience of teaching math, because every day is a different experience. Some days my older daughter, she's just not interested and.

Some days she's goofing around, you know, math class becomes art class. And then I'm looking at my watch because I have a half an hour between two coaching sessions, and this is where I discover how my ego shows up, is I have a checklist of things that I wanna make sure that she excels in. I'm coming into the math class with a sense of, okay, these are the three things, and then I have no control on how she shows up.

And then every day is an experience of irritation and it is very hard to then control the situation and I lose my sense of cool. It happens at least four days out of the six teacher, so. It's something I have to

Vipin: every single day deal with. It's so funny, we were talking about homeschooling last night at dinner with our friends, and we all were saying, none of us are resourced to be able to do this because the challenge of.

What you've taken on is really incredible, and I would say you're teaching six days a week. That's pretty good. It sounds like something is working if you're able to teach math for six days a week.

Rasanath: I have to also repeatedly look at, so when I wake up in the morning, one of the most painful things that I know I have to go through is teaching math.

This is a daily experience, and then when I ask myself. Why am I putting myself through this and why am I putting her through this? And then the shift actually is, well, I'm actually not teaching her math. I'm teaching her learning. And when I can come from that place. Then I also realized that that is the actual role of a teacher is to work with what is available at that moment, and then that's a very different experience.

But when I'm teaching her math skills and how then it starts to reflect on my own abilities around math, my understanding of fundamentals around math, and every time when I've approached it from a place of, well, I'm teaching her learning, it's a joyous experience for both. Because it suddenly shifts the energy.

Michael: You're already helping us reframe some things around parenting to get us out of the ego trap, which is great and we'll certainly get into more of this to share from my side. all, I just have to acknowledge in your first sentence, Ana, and you were sharing about homeschooling, I felt a tinge of envy and also self-criticism around, man, I don't have what it takes to do that, and I know Ana is such a high consciousness person and he and his partner have made a very.

Conscious choice to homeschool for specific reasons, and they're hoping to translate their high consciousness to their child. And I am just not able to do that. And I think that speaks to a larger experience that many of us have as parents of constantly feeling this feeling of envy when we see other kids excelling on the soccer field or excelling in school.

And it's like. Automatically we make it about us. So that was a live example.

Let us get into the topic at hand here. What are some common ego identities that parents hold onto that cause them to act from the ego?

Rasanath: I think very broadly classifying at least the way I have.

Seeing the ego identities manifest is in terms of competence and character. and that means They have certain skills that people really begin admiring. They have skills to navigate the world, and the complexity around the skills then becomes that it's not just about having the skills, it's about exceeding.

Somehow the baseline of survival is excellence. Nila, my older daughter, she wanted to learn chess and so I started teaching her chess and then she would always forget how a n moves on board. And then at a certain point I said, ah, just feeling disappointed that she just doesn't have this skills.

I mean, she was four, four and a half and then we started doing this. But you just looking to see what you impose on a four and a half year, like the expectations that are just unconsciously imposed on the mind of a four and a half year old that actually run the risk of killing their interest in, you know, you stop engaging.

Because you feel like, oh, she doesn't have the skills. Let's just focus on the areas where she's naturally demonstrating more skills. And while there is some truth to it, you also see they pick up on your disappointment. They may not have the vocabulary for it, but they pick up on their disappointment and they internalize that.

The other is character.

Michael: What is the. Ego identity at play for you as the parent, I'm hearing you talk about the competence and character of the child, but what's at play for us as the parent?

Rasanath: in Sanskrit, there is a word for a child. A child is called art maja.

Art maja means born from the self. And there is also a connotation around it, which is an extension of the self. So the child is the extension of our own ego. And so what I want to feel admired by and appreciated by other people is naturally imposed on the child

So if my child is appreciated for being so good at chess at a very early age, somehow I feel like I am being appreciated That's the extension, and the same thing happens even in character. So if a child is well-behaved, kind, polite, mannered, then it also reflects on me

There are so many identities of us as parents. I mean, it's the same thing when we talk about our ego identities that are infinite. I think we have infinite parent identities that are based on the ego. So Ra, what you were talking about, I see that as this identity of I'm an image manager and.

Vipin: This is what I was talking about in my first example. My children are a reflection of me. Whether it's their competence or their character, all of it is a reflection of me. And if they are highly competent or if they behave well, then I look good. And that shows up in everything from school drop offs to family dinners.

Uh, I think there's other identities that I have experienced myself are. Being the boss, as a parent, as a father, that I'm in charge and respect means obedience. And so any disobedience feels like it threatens that identity of I'm in charge and I'm the boss of these kids. I remember when ti and I, before we had kids.

She was pregnant. We talked about how do we wanna be as parents. And I, I remember saying to her how I wanna be very good friends with the kids, which is very different than my father was with us. I wasn't gonna be this disciplinarian and I wanted the kids to really like me all the time. And that was, again, another identity of this identity of being a dear friend of the children.

And then. That didn't happen that way. I actually took on a lot of the disciplinarian identity that I think I experienced with my own father, and between Hy and me probably was more biased toward me being that person. So there's another identity of being a good parent if I just try hard enough. I'll raise the perfect kid who will never mess up.

And so I think it related to the managing image, but there's so many identities that we're carrying and everything our children are doing is either reinforcing that identity or threatening it, and then

Michael: we react. This is great. And when you were sharing that there's an infinite spectrum, it made me think that all of the identities that we had.

Before we were parents are still at play. So for example, if I think of myself as somebody who's on time and responsible, and now my kids are getting in the way of me being on time or responsible, there's often a reaction, anger, something that might be a little over the top in relationship to my kids because I'm trying to preserve that other identity that's

Vipin: at stake.

Yes, yes. Very, very, very true. I mean, even identities that seem. They have nothing to do with the children are catalysts for this kind of egoic reaction. So maybe every identity has a relationship to the children, but an identity of, I think I'm a, an intelligent person and then all of a sudden when my 7-year-old starts beating me in chess.

That identity feels a cha challenge, and all of a sudden I'm like, okay, what is the role I'm in? Am I in the role of teacher? Am I in the role of a competitor with my own child? What's happening here and how do I serve this person versus how do I start competing with them? Very dangerous.

Michael: Yeah. It also made me think of how.

Especially as our children get older and we might not have exactly the types of relationships that we would want to have with them, there might actually be some distance or they don't see us as a trusted advisor. Now all of a sudden, the type of relationship that we always thought we had, which is part of an ego identity.

Is in question. And so we might act in certain ways to try to preserve that either actually or just the image of that on the outside. But really it's because we're feeling the loss of that and we're not able to healthfully work through it. I often think of the quote from Carl Young that the greatest.

Burden a child must bear is the unlived life of his parents.

Vipin: Mm-hmm.

Michael: And how so much of what we want for our kids is actually what we wanted for ourselves, but just weren't able to get to for whatever reason. So what else would you guys say to help us distinguish from acting from an ego versus not acting from the ego as it relates to a parent-child relationship?

Rasanath: When you do act from a place of ego, the child over time begins to realize that they are just objects of your own ego extension, and it's just natural Then that. They do different things even when they conform. We talk about this when we talk about the controlling levels of consciousness, when we talk about the Enneagram, but sometimes in the controlling levels of consciousness, we still get the validation that we want, but it doesn't feel fulfilling.

There's something about the relationship that just feels off, and there is a similar feeling that happens when. The ego is very present in our parenting role where the child gets reduced to an object and the child feels that, and when the child feels that way, nobody wants, nobody wants to feel like an object.

But when the child begins to feel like an object, then they begin to silently shut down. We may get the obedience, we may get the conformity, and we may feel satisfied that they're doing the things that we want them to do, but something about the relationship gets arrested.

Michael: So there's the. Behavior of objectification that we're doing to our kids, and the cost of that is some block in the relationship, and it can also be that the child takes on the object themselves. So they start playing into that A whole notion. Yes,

Rasanath: that's a whole other thing that happens when the child feels like the parent is disappointed.

Then the child then takes on the task of then wanting the parent to be happy with them. Which means they stop living. It's so interesting. They stop living their life. They start to take on the burden of living a life for their parent, and now it's not coming necessarily from a place of loving reciprocity.

It's coming from a place of feeling the obligation that otherwise I'm just going to repeatedly experience. This look on my parents' face, I don't want that. I feel I inherit the shame. So the child begins to inherit the shame of the parent, and they start to then act from that place of shame, whether it's overly conforming and wanting to become what the parent wants them to become.

Or then it can go in the other direction too.

Michael: So we have to see how this works where the parent is feeling the shame themselves. Then they. Are usually inadvertently making their child feel shame, and then the child acts from that place of trying to have all of the shame go away, but it doesn't work.

If the child is constantly being corrected or improved on, made to feel like they're not enough as they are, then they learn to see themselves through that lens of deficiency. So I'm only lovable when I meet expectations. So that's the transfer of the shame. I think you also get a much more fragile sense of self.

Vipin: A child is always being shaped to reflect the parent's ego, be polite, be impressive, be smart. Then they may grow up unsure of who they are beneath all those roles, all those identities that they take on, that the parents have cultivated for them.

Michael: Carl Young quote again,

Rasanath: right?

Vipin: Yeah.

Michael: Is there anything else to mention in terms of costs that we see in relationships or in the long-term health of the kids?

Rasanath: Emotional distancing is definitely one. living the life of somebody else, is that another. And then sometimes these things are only unearthed much later in life and. Then the resentment that actually builds from that. It's pretty painful.

Parenting is a very sensitive, responsibility. It cannot be trivialized. It cannot be outsourced either, which is why it's one of the few things in our life that in order to really do it as well as we can, we have to stay so present to it.

Vipin: A couple other. Costs the name for the child. And then there's also costs for the parents that we haven't spoken about, but there's the fear of failure and people pleasing.

That happens when love or approval feels conditional. So then as a child, I might develop perfectionism or anxiety and I just have a chronic need to please others.

And then Sana been mentioned emotional regulation, but I've seen if we as parents are uncomfortable with our children's big emotions, then we may be rushing in to fix or to quiet those emotions. Then the children don't learn how to.

Feel how to name those emotions, how to move through them, and instead they learn to suppress or numb or perform their feelings for other people.

And what would you say about the cost on the parents? Well, one is that it's just exhausting. It's exhausting to be always trying to manage performance of the family unit, the children, to trying to control every aspect of how your children are showing up. It would require constant vigilance. You're always trying to manage or correct or curate your children's behavior to meet some expectation or some ideal, and it's unsustainable.

You'd face chronic exhaustion, you'd be completely depleted. Ana, you spoke about this or alluded to it, that the loss of authentic connection between parent and child, if you're always reacting from the ego and defending, fixing, micromanaging, it's hard to be truly present and the relationships. Starts to feel transactional and the children can feel that.

When our kids were really young, I noticed that even when I was reading to them, I always had a goal in mind, like I'm trying to teach them how to read here, and I was reflecting on how my mother would be present with us without any agenda and the kind of. Health that that provided to feel the unconditional nature of someone's presence and attention and love.

And I realized I don't even know how to do that because every moment it's like, oh, I have this time and how am I going to use it and make it improve things for them and their lives. And so I was just thinking, gosh, that must be exhausting for the child to always feel that. My parent is trying to work on me.

And again, it's very implicit, but it leaks into the relationship so that authentic connection then gets altered. It gets distorted because it feels like it's always transactional.

Michael: That's amazing that your mom was able to do that for you. And it also, your example speaks to the challenge of this for so many of us.

For most people, they don't get that kind of mirroring from their parents. And so even if this is challenging for somebody who got it as much as you did from your mother, then for those of us who might not have gotten it from our parents, the task is just so much, it can almost feel impossible. 'cause we, as you were talking about earlier, we tend to repeat the things that we have gotten ourselves from our parents.

Vipin: Well, I think also. Some of this is in one's nature and I see the difference in my mother's nature and my own nature, and so I have a different battle that I have to be able to bring that kind of presence. It is very helpful to have a model, but then. It's still an uphill battle for me because that's how I live my own life.

Every mo moment is what can be done to improve myself or things. And so like RA said, the children are just an extension of that and then, and it's coming from a place of deep love and care, but it gets distorted.

Michael: Okay, so I can imagine if I'm listening to this podcast so far, I'm thinking, well, you guys haven't told me anything that I don't already know.

I know that I do this to my kids. I know that I'm acting from my ego. I know that I'm not as good of a parent as I should be, and I'm placing a burden on them. That is really my own burden, but it's still, it's crazy. Parenting is crazy. We're busy with our lives. How can I even start to work on this if I'm even interested in working on it?

The bad news is it's hard work

Rasanath: and uh, I think it's unavoidable hard work too. And the reason why it's unavoidable hard work is so much of parenting is a reflection of our own relationship with ourselves. It holds an unescapable mirror in terms of what we have to look at. So as an example, when the child does something that brings up shame for me.

I have to really fully understand my own shame before I can then respond to it. Otherwise, my response many times is disproportionate, and the child has to bear that extra cost of me not dealing with my. Stuff so there is no escaping from the hard work. The work begins with the self to genuinely understand the things that I have to look at and systematically work through, which then and directly has a relationship in terms of how I show up with anybody what to speak up my own kids.

Michael: So what I'm hearing you say is even before we looked at tactical solutions to this, we actually have to do the deeper work of our own ego.

Rasanath: Well, the deeper work of our own ego, but also that's always the starting point. As soon as we externalize it, then we are not really creating a solution that is sustainable in the long term.

The starting point is always us. In any relationshipAnd so when somebody is so dependent on our full emotional awareness and availability, and then the mirroring happening from that place, it becomes even more of a sense of responsibility that we have to work on ourselves.

Can you say more about the idea of mirroring? This is one of my favorite topics, uh, the idea of monitoring is. Very simple in the sense that we need a mirror to really understand who we are.

And in the physical world, we need a mirror to look at our own faces, which is essentially the seat of our physical identity is our face. We cannot do that without a mirror. It's impossible to do that without a mirror. And so thinking about how mirroring is. One of the most basic, if not the most basic functioning of parenting, it is through the eyes of the parents that the child begins to establish its own identity, right?

So the parents become the mirror. And so if the mirror is distorted, meaning if the child is then seeing through the eyes of the parent what the parents, the unfulfilled life of the parent, then the child then can't really truly see themselves. And so that will be something that then they will carry with them for the rest of their life.

So that mirroring function, if that mirroring function needs to happen, well then the mirror has to constantly work to be kept clean. That's why this work on the parents is the most fundamental work that needs to be done.

Michael: Beautiful. And it also. Relates to coaching as we were speaking about just before we were recording, how we define the role of a coach as serving as a human mirror to reflect back somebody else's gifts and also their challenges and to be able to see things that might have been their blind spots previously.

And it's very much the same thing for a parent and child. Absolutely. So we should work on ourselves. We should work on our own egos. What are some other things that we should be thinking about as parents that might be different from the default way of operating?

Rasanath: I think it's important to acknowledge that as a parent, you do have a bigger map for the life of the child. like how the child needs to grow up, what values does the child need to inculcate, what skills does the child need to inculcate?

those are responsibilities of parenting. By the sheer dent of the relationship. So this is not to say that we should not be holding the larger map. It's very important to hold the larger map. And as we hold the larger map, we also need to be aware, is it the larger map for the life of the child, or is it the larger map for our life?

And that requires self-work. And then it also requires us to constantly live that question. What is the larger map that I'm holding here? The nature of the relationship is a very dynamic. Nature. The child is also mirroring back to the parent what is working and what is not working. And so what is important as a parent is that you are also learning about the child, and it's so important not to tamper with the fundamental nature of a child.

We all have. A certain basic nature, and when we start to tamper with the nature of the child, then we are making the child something else and the child is not right. So to be very aware, as we are holding the larger map and the mirroring is happening in both directions, what is important for us is to also learn.

From how the child is responding, right? Which is why this is never a static relationship. And as soon as it becomes static, then the relationship gets the potential then just immediately starts to decrease. So what is important as a parent is that we are actually students. For us to then bring in the consciousness that we have.

First of all, we have never done this. If we have children that are spaced apart, yes, there are some skills that we can bring to raising the second child learnings that we can bring to raising the second child that we didn't have when we were raising the first one. That that happens a lot, but even like a gap of three years, there is some learning, but then the learning actually doesn't stop there.

It is just. So much because a new child is a different learning because their nature is very different. So the techniques that worked on the first child may not necessarily work with the second. What do you learn is that this is a new relationship. This is fundamentally a different human being, so I have to learn.

How this child is working. That learning and keeping the dynamic of learning ever fresh as the child grows at different stages is going to be so important for parenting.

Michael: Thank you. I am taking away many things from what you just shared about one of the key things that you shared in the beginning of what you're saying is really checking in with ourselves around where am I coming from?

Is it for the benefit of the child that I am acting in this way or taking a specific angle on something? Or is it for myself

Rasanath: Yes, and sometimes the answer is both. Many times the answer is both, but the question is, which one of those is actually showing up emotionally more powerfully?

Which is why the work on the self, the constant work on the self is going to be important.

Vipin: What

Michael: would you share?

Vipin: Well, I was thinking about what has helped me operate a little bit less from the ego as a parent. is this tool that our dear teacher and guide such swami gave us. Of the emotional traffic light.

And this is a concept that's simple in nature but not easy to execute on. And it's that when I feel triggered, if I feel disrespected or ignored or anything in relation to my children, I mean, this is not just with kids, but particularly poignant with the kids and my system wants to react. That's when that indicates a red light.

And a need to pause and allow myself to feel whatever it is I'm feeling. Feel the emotion. Take a breath and ask, where am I coming from? As you guys were just talking about, am I responding from a place of love? Am I responding from my ego and this yellow light is processing? How can I respond from a higher consciousness?

Then with more awareness, I can actually proceed. And that's the green light I had written about an experience with the children. This is a few years ago now, in a reflection about the space between. Stimulus and response, and I think of the traffic light as exactly that. It's just giving us a tool to hit the pause button between stimulus and response so that we can move with more intentionality.

When I can remember this, this is the greatest gift to my parenting and my consciousness.

Michael: Okay. So as we come into the final part of our conversation, what does the parenting journey offer us in terms of the potential to move away from the ego, towards the real self?

Vipin: Something that we've been talking about throughout this conversation. This is that parenting reveals our ego with incredible precision.

Children are so good at exposing the exact parts of us that are attached, that are reactive, that are controlling, that are insecure. They pinpoint those nerves, and when they do, we get the chance to notice. Ah, there's my ego again, trying to dominate, trying to perform, trying to protect, and each of those triggers becomes a, a mirror as we've been talking about.

So I can either react or I can respond. And I think the other big part of this is that. Parenting softens the illusion of control that I was much more attached to before parenting. I mean, it constantly reminds me that I am not in charge of how things unfold, and I can guide and love and set boundaries, but I can't script.

Child's nature or their choices or the timing of things, and that requires surrender and it's really hard, but it's an invitation to surrender. I tell many people that my kids are the mirror that shows me my shortcomings more than any other aspect of my life. They trigger my anger, my shame. My fear, they show me my ego every single day, and hopefully they will also help me crack some of these layers of ego so that one day I pray that this real self can shine through.

Beautiful. So it's actually a sacred gift for this reason that we get to see all of these things about ourselves. And when you use the phrase illusion of control, both Ana and I had giant smiles on our faces and I was just thinking, bring two young kids to a restaurant and see how much control you actually have.

Rasanath: So the first thing that I want to acknowledge is that parenting is a thankless task. Because many times the kids are not actually aware of how much work goes into parenting.

And if you take it very seriously, the self work that you have to do, the kind of self work that you have to do to show up as a parent, as a good mirror for, for the children is enormous. And in an age where. We are conditioned for at the best, any kind of relationship. So when we enter marriage, there is a baseline level of reciprocity.

That we expect from a partner, you know? And when we are coming in with a sense of duty, reciprocity is the absolute baseline on which that relationship lives. And I don't feel that reciprocity is unreasonable. It is not unreasonable. Now, what's interesting with parenting is takes to a, it takes that to a whole other level.

Where the reciprocity is also not available, right? You do all the hard work and you know, think about control. It's not just the immediate control. You also don't have control on how the children will turn out to be. And so it's in that sense of the term, it is a task that genuinely teaches us non-attachment.

Michael: How they'll turn out to be and how they'll feel about us, how they'll feel

Rasanath: about us. Yes, absolutely. And usually, and I've heard this, I have experienced it and I've also heard this from other people, is that only when they become a parent do they actually. Begin to understand what their parents had to go through.

And even then, it's not fully understood of the circumstances that were surrounding the family when the parenting happened. Like all of that, like the, the amount of hard work that needs to go in into parenting. It's a lot of hard work and it's, in many ways it's thankless, but what it really teaches at the core of it, which I think is a fundamental basis for one's spiritual journey, is non-attachment.

And the ego by definition is attached. Right, so this is completely working against that.

our social structure works in such a way that if we didn't like anything, for example, I didn't like the job that I'm working. I didn't like my boss. I can hit the exit button. The marriage does this to some degree, but with parenting, the fact that the child is dependent, that's why a lot of people feel like parenting is a trap.

I can't leave it. I just can't leave the unit. I can't just hit the jack button and leave. Of course, you know, in some cases it does happen,

Michael: but you can just walk out. It's the teaching from the Bagga, agita, and many other wisdom traditions around. Do your work. But don't be attached to the result of that work.

So the first part of that is extremely crucial. We have a sense of responsibility and we have to follow through on that responsibility,

Rasanath: right? Uh, and there is no, we can't hit the escape button or it's how much harder to hit the escape button given the, the nature of the relationship itself, right? So it forces the work, it really forces the work of non-attachment.

The faster we embrace it. In two ways. It's extremely helpful. It's very helpful for the relationship itself, but it's also helpful, immensely helpful for our spiritual journey, which is how I feel nature is designed parenting.

Michael: So what does it mean to really operate from the true self in a parent child relationship?

Rasanath: And what we have to fundamentally understand is that the child is spirit, a spark of consciousness with its free will. Having its free will, and one of the definitions of objectification is to treat the other as an object, which means not having a free will. So the important thing to recognize is right from the time the child is conceived, the free will of the trial exists, right?

And the manifestation of the free will only takes, it takes a little more time in terms of. How it shows up, how it manifests, but the free will exists. And what is so important is that we have to honor the free will.

Vipin: I would just reinforce what Ana said. I mean, for me, what does it mean to operate from the self in a parent-child relationship? It starts with seeing your child as a soul and not as a project, which I often up seeing my children. As you stop measuring them by how well they reflect on you and how successful they are from the self, you see them as their own.

Being on their own path and unfolding in their own time. And you move from, I must shape you to, I'm honored to accompany you in the BTI tradition, BTI teachings frame parenting as a form of sva, as a form of sacred service. And in serving another soul, we're not. We're not the controller. We're not trying to control the path for that soul.

We're a caretaker. That's such an important word here. We're a caretaker, entrusted with this soul's journey, and the meditation is that this child does not belong to me. It's not a possession. This child belongs to God. And that softens the grip of the ego. That then can reorient me to serving another, as Ross said, another spirit, soul, another spark of consciousness that I've been entrusted with, and it's a great

Michael: honor.

This is one of the things that has most affected my parenting journey, right? When my wife got pregnant with our first child, I had a call with one of our community members who has three kids, so he's well, well further along on the path and than I am, and he's somebody who has been through all of our spiritual courses

And I asked him for his single most important piece of advice, and it was the same thing that you just shared, just don't think of your children as your children. They are here and you have gotten this incredible privilege to be able to just guide them as you're able to, but they are not yours.

Ultimately, they're gonna go back to where they really belong. And it just, it shifts everything. It, it takes the pressure off. It doesn't mean that we relinquish the responsibility, but it takes the pressure off in, in a big way where we can start to be in relationship to them in a way that's much more authentic to who we actually are and who they actually are.

Anything that either of you wanna share? In closing, I

Rasanath: just wanted to underscore the idea of Sava, the consciousness that I am actually a servant of this particular soul.

and that means I have to do this. I have to take this responsibility with so much care and wants. This is such a big and such an important responsibility, and I have to be so attentive to it, so attentive to it.

Vipin: Parenting has been the hardest journey in my life, unquestionably, and it's also. Been of course rewarding and deeply meaningful, satisfying, but also the most illuminating. So the hardest and the most illuminating. And when I think about my growth one, anyone's growth, then the illuminating aspect of this journey is so precious it seeing ourselves.

With new eyes and seeing other people in our lives with new vision, couldn't get that any other way, at least that I've experienced. So I find it's very precious,

Michael: as taxing as it is. Thank you very much guys. There's a, uh, term in Japanese that's very common, emi, which is used in different cultures, but often in work culture to mean somebody who's further along in the path.

Your mentor, somebody who you look up to for advice and appreciate, and, uh. I view you both as my sempai for many things in life, but especially as I think specifically about parenting your, kids are both older and I learned so much from each of you as I see you as parents,

So very grateful for that. And thank you everyone for listening.

Vipin: Thank you.