Children of Spirit

My Way or the Highway

20 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by childrenofspirit in Parenting Tags: acceptance, allowing, authoritative, beliefs, children, co-dependent, communicate, compassion, empowering, feelings, harmony, listening, parenting, permissive, relationships, truth

We all want what is best for ourselves and our children, yet who has decided what is best?   Whose belief or truth am I following?  Who am I listening to, and believing without exercising my innate truth?   Do I know I have an innate truth?   Am I aware when I am being coerced into a state of being that does not resonate with who I am?  Do I know how to access what I am really feeling, and am I given the tools and nurturing, safe space to not only access those feelings, but share them in an empowering, compassionate way?

Living life, parenting, relationships, and growing UP comes in many forms.  Most often we learn to be authoritative, permissive, controlling, co-dependent, and enabling, just to name a few.  Yet in all relationships, whether with ourselves, our children, parents, friends, lovers, co-workers, do we really know what kind of space to hold?  Do we know how to listen and communicate so that each individual is heard through a process of allowing, acceptance, and compassion?

In all of our relationships, do we state what we feel, what we want or long for, and offer our request?  Are we willing to hear and embrace the same from the other?  Do we allow, and accept what the other is feeling, wanting, and requesting without evaluation, assessment, interpretation, or judgment?  To accept and allow what we ourselves are feeling, wanting, and requesting, as well as the other, is compassion.  We are not here to change or fix the other, but to listen from our hearts, and feel the other, empathize with the other, without judgment, blame, guilt, or shame.

When we listen and begin to evaluate, access, interpret, and judge we usually inflict blame, guilt, and shame through our judgment.  We begin to share words that define the other through labels, and often the receiver begins to identify with those labels, and this creates more resistance than harmony.  The whole scenario of the relationship, or union, is based on my way or the highway.  Who is being in-power…empowered?  When we live a life that conveys my way or the highway, there is no winner, there is no harmony, there is no one BE-ing there true essence.

Allowing, acceptance and compassion are the way, the opening, for love at its highest purpose and potential expression.  Are you creating the space for every individual in your life to become a conscious, active, and responsible participant in their own lives?

 I invite you to contemplate this concept coined by Marshall Rosenburg.  Is your intent to have ‘power over’ or ‘power with’ the other?