Ram Dass liked to joke that 'if you think
you're so enlightened, go and spend a week with
your parents.' I write these words having
just spent three days with my parents, and,
while I don't claim to be enlightened, I do
know what he means.
Parents, it seems, are exceptionally skilled
at bringing us back down to earth just when
we thought we were getting somewhere in life.
We can experience feeling states around our
parents that no-one else seems able to evoke
in quite the same way. Our parents know just
how to elicit our oldest and most annoying
behaviour patterns, usually without even
realizing they are doing so. And nothing is
quite so alarming as catching yourself
passing on the same outmoded conditioning to
your children as your own parents passed on
to you.
Some of us have such a hard time with a
parental relationship that we reject one or
both of our parents, only to find ourselves
haunted by the parental shadow until we're
ready and willing to face up to it. Bert
Hellinger has shown through his family
constellation work that our parents will
always be our parents, no matter what we
think of them, and we cannot argue with that
reality without suffering in some way.
One of the paradoxes of healing work is that
the further along the path we travel, the
closer to home we find ourselves. Often, when
we undergo a major transition as an adult, a
temporary regression takes place to an
earlier stage of our life, and we must
complete what was left unfinished before we
are free to progress to the next stage. The
formative experiences of childhood,
especially the difficult ones, become the
transformative agents of later life, if we
are willing to make use of them.
Many parents notice that when a son or
daughter reaches a certain age, it touches
something in themselves which resonates with
that same age or life-stage, and the
challenge here is always to take
responsibility for our own reactions rather
than trying to control or manipulate the
child's behaviour. It is helpful to keep in
mind that it is only those things that are
hidden within ourselves which disturb us when
we see them outwardly reflected in our children.
Much of the tension in parent-child
relationships arises from what Jung called
the 'unlived life' of the parents being
projected onto the children in the form of
hopes, fears, expectations and such like. I
like what Kahlil Gibran writes in The
Prophet on this theme: 'You may strive
to be like them, but seek not to make them
like you'.
Just as destructive can be the expectations
that we, as children, project onto our
parents, wishing them to be somehow different
to the way they are. I know that in my role
as 'healer' I have often felt frustrated at
my parents' refusal to consider alternative
treatments, despite the obvious failures of
orthodox medicine. What they have
relentlessly taught me, and continue to do
so, is that to accept them as they are is
perhaps the most healing thing I can do for
them. And for that I shall always be grateful.
