I started off my therapeutic career working with parents with adolescents who were struggling. I saw the impact of substance abuse, eating disorders, school refusal, violent outbursts, arrests, running away from home, suicide attempts, and self-harm on parents and families. I sat with parents who felt hopeless and scared, but who were also courageous enough to do things differently. Even in the intensity of fearing for their child’s life they chose to do their best to walk a path of love and connection rather than one of punishment, judgment and seeking control.
Now as the parent of teenage daughters I am that parent. And I see for myself how normal it feels to judge myself as a failure when my child is struggling. Being shut out and not knowing the whole truth looks like a failure on my end in an area where I don’t want failure to be an option.
I see that no matter how much I love my child, I do judge behavior and that is felt and taken personally. I recognize there is no such thing as judging the sin and loving the sinner. The opportunity to love it all has never felt so hard.
Someone said to me having a child is like having your heart walking around the world outside of your body. I don’t think there is any other experience in my life where I have felt this vulnerable. I am writing this because I am not alone, and I am sharing this so you know you are not alone.
I see now in my early work with parents I was sharing valuable truths. Pointing them in the direction of the healing power of love and relationship. Asking them to trust the wisdom in their child. Pointing them to their own wisdom and helping them not act from a place of fear. I stand by all of this today. The difference is I am humbled by the gut-wrenching challenge this can be. I have more compassion, understanding, and empathy for the humanness of losing your temper, breaking rapport, resorting to a power struggle, trying to control, being judgmental, threatening, punishing, bribing, manipulating because I am that parent.
I don’t mean to be that parent, but at times I am, and the damage seems so real. The behaviors are scary. It is hard to see resilience. The stakes feel too high. And what is required is always the thing that feels impossible to do.
And even with all of us having innate well-being and resilience not all of us survive our decisions. Death comes early for some. I have sat with those parents and held a loving space for their loss.
Recently I was part of a conversation about free will and how we have choice. On the human level, there are plenty of choices, and on the spiritual level, there is no choice. How to reconcile the two? It is my fault. It isn’t my fault. In the world of form, I could always be better. In the world of formless everything is unfolding as it should. How can both be true at the same time?
Sydney Banks would say we live in two worlds both occurring at the same time both real. This apparent enigma points me in the direction of oneness where seeming opposites co-exist. Where my human frailties exist, and I am perfect exactly as I am. Where terrible things happen yet everything is in divine order. My intellect can’t conceptualize this. I have to drop into the feeling of knowing this is true because my head just runs in circles.
This brings me back to the practical spirituality of the Principles. When I stay with my grounding, I do know that love is the solution. And even my imperfect way of loving is my best so it is good enough. I also know that each of my children are on their own journey of living life and waking up to all of who they are.
I have the blessing of sharing that journey with them and loving them however their journeys look. I get to learn how to love more fully and unconditionally. I get to wake up from my anxious thinking and feel more liberated to trust life, trust what is and know I have the resilience to navigate whatever life serves me whether I like it or not. I don’t get to control the menu, and I get to have the experience of choosing from the menu I’m served.
It is okay for me to be the imperfect mother I am and to love as imperfectly as I do. It is okay for this to be known and seen. My imperfections are only real from one perspective. Just like a rock is only solid from one way of seeing it. A scientist will tell me it is mostly empty space even though it feels real in my hand.
Everything is imperfect and perfect at the same time. Rocks are solid and empty — both are true. I make mistakes as a parent, and I can’t damage my kids. Living in both worlds opens me up to possibilities. It opens me to the miraculous potential in each moment and helps me to settle into what is. — knowing I don’t see the whole picture. My human vantage point is limited. But, I can feel the truth of a larger context in which I am that parent, doing the best I can, with the level of understanding I have, and that is the expression of the oneness of all things. That has to be good enough.
Rohini Ross is excited to present The Soul-Centered Series in Santa Monica starting October 2018. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a transformative coach and trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Barbara Patterson
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Clare Dimond
Michael Neill
Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
Spiritual Facts 
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Monica Henderson
18.06.2018 at 03:07Rohini
Always inspired by your words! Waiting for your next book on parenting from the perspective of the three Ps!
Rohini
05.07.2018 at 15:23Hi Monica, So wonderful to hear from you! Thanks for your comment!
Joan Hoedel
18.06.2018 at 04:28Rohini, thank you for your honest sharing. The more we talk about this, publicly, the more lives will be saved. You have what it takes. Your light IS guiding her, helping her to remember who she is. Your love is far more powerful than your fear, and you are held. Your daughter is held too. Sending your Love!
Jane Storey
18.06.2018 at 05:16This is so beautiful and so timely. I have a teenager who I see struggling with the challenges of life (as he sees it, and as I see it) and the angst I feel at all I know that will challenge him in the future. This exactly summarises my feelings of confusion about the practicality of the spirituality of the Principles. The knowing that ‘love is all we have’ but seeing that at times it (and all the wisdom in the world) just doesn’t seem enough, or answer the questions that arise in those challenging moments. Yet somehow, the imperfect love that we offer is actually all we have to offer so what else could the answer be? It is all we are meant to have, SO THAT they look to ‘wake up’. It’s kind of painful, but made easier by the acceptance of what is. Thank you.
Sue Lauwers
18.06.2018 at 09:32OMG Rohini, this was so helpful, you reminded me that everything is perfect and imperfect at the same time. After feeling both incredible joy and anguish beyond your wildest imagination, I sit here reading your words crying because what you share is so familiar to me. Thank you so much for putting words to this.
Sue
Malka Arons
18.06.2018 at 13:40Wow. That was so helpful to read! I’m sending it to all my friends with kids! Thank you.
Rohini
28.06.2018 at 17:30Hope they enjoy it too! Thanks for sending!
Emma
18.06.2018 at 14:12Love reading your words, Rohini. So spot on in terms of how we try & fail at being the perfect loving mother. Even saying sorry seems somehow wrong sometimes… as if we’ve become the child (I’m refering to me here really, of course, not that more comfortable ‘ ‘we’ ?). And the desire I had to keep all communication open, only to also find that I found it almost unbearable to hear about everything… perhaps it would have been better to have been that ‘innocent’ parent who things are hidden from, out of fear or respect or shame or love…
Rohini
28.06.2018 at 17:26Dear Emma, Thank you for sharing your experience. It is quite a ride, and I think we just have to accept the perfection of what is even if we can’t see it. Sending you love!