MAMA LESSONS: THE GIFT OF GIVING

“A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.”
- Buddha

"We live Meaning into reality by how we live. It’s not about going to heaven when we die, but about creating a small taste of heaven here and now." - Cynthia Bourgeault

We have been fortunate to have been given many gifts in our lives. Firstly, LIFE, the most precious gift. We are healthy and have every opportunity in the world to pursue almost everything that presents itself to us. Both your father and I have been able to educate ourselves at the post-secondary and personal level. The gift of education is a great one and one that cannot be taken for granted.

Your father and I are blessed to have found each other. (NOTE: I speak of blessed in the contented meaning for our beliefs are rooted in the here and now and we ascribe to no religion). I have been given the gift of being able to have children. Some find it difficult to conceive and some never can. We have also been given the gift of choice. Sadly, this gift is stripped from many people. Lastly, we have been given the gift of undying support from our family and friends. Without these beams our tower may have crumbled.

With all that has been given to us, it is necessary to give back. We must extend to others what we have experienced ourselves. Some think of the act as a selfish one, and yes, for many, the act of giving is only a means by which to assert power over others by demonstrating one's success through monetary acquisition. But true giving is a selfless gift. It is done without expectation, tailored to the receiver's needs, and with the hope of casting a smile on a face. It is full of empathy, compassion, and love.

Growing up, I had this innate need to make sure others were happy. I was always deeply saddened at the bullied classmate, the sick friend, the friend with the low self-esteem, the wallflowers at school dances. I would stand up to the ignorant, hold someone's head over the toilet, offer my girlfriend my lunch because she refused to eat, and peel those flowers off the gymnasium wall for an impromptu dance. I would like to think that I gave the gift of friendship, something all of us need to feel.

Below are some other takes on giving. It is my hope, my children, that you give to people, the earth, and each other. For it is in this act that love is magnified and happiness made.

"From Michael Berg:

The real purpose for which we have each come to this life is to live in complete joy and fulfillment. How do we achieve this destiny? By transforming the foundation of our being from getting to giving.

From Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel:

The Dalai Lama often teaches on a famous Buddhist verse that says: “All the happiness the world has to offer comes from desiring wellbeing for others. And all the suffering the world has to offer comes from desiring happiness solely for oneself.”

This simple verse reflects a natural equation: that selfishness causes pain, and caring for others causes happiness. It suggests that if happiness is truly what we seek, we need to engage the cause of happiness by turning our attention toward the wellbeing of others.

Curiously, we have some strong misguided instincts that fool us into thinking that we can find happiness solely through cherishing and protecting our self. Our thoughts and activities most often focus on our own welfare. We spend much of each day struggling with what we want, what we don’t want, and all of our hopes and fears.

The practice of extending love and kindness to others does not require we get rid of our own desire for happiness. It only requires we include others in this wish – a wish we usually reserve only for ourselves, our family, or our friends. We have to expand our sense of “me” and “mine” in order to include others in the realm of our care. And as we do this we move away from a contracted, self-focused and isolated state toward a way of being that has limitless connection to life around us.

When we begin to pay attention to life around us we start to see opportunities to practice loving kindness everywhere. We might give a blanket to a homeless person on the street, lend an ear to someone in pain, feed a stray animal or simply acknowledge the presence of a stranger. These small gestures make such a big difference to others and they awaken in us the best of our humanity. When we see a need and respond to it, the joy we experience can sustain us for the entire day.

The practice of giving is not simply a crusade to do good. It serves as a means of awakening the best of who we are as human beings. Whether we are actively engaged in giving or simply including others in our wish for happiness, we could never find a more meaningful or intelligent way to live out our lives than this. Given its power, it’s no wonder that the great spiritual leaders throughout history so highly valued the transformative nature of loving kindness and the act of serving others.

From Deepak Chopra:

It's not just giving, it's the spirit.

I'd like to talk about the hidden side of giving. People have a vague feeling that God favors those who give. Since Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than to receive, tithing became an established practice in Christian life. In India the focus is on karma -- in order to offset their bad deeds, people want some good karma, and giving to the poor is a way to do that. Still, as religious practice fades in every society, giving has become more secular. Few people feel secure in their conviction that giving has spiritual meaning.

I think that East and West are offering the same piece of wisdom: it's not what you give but the spirit in which you give that counts. At the level of the soul there are really three levels of giving:

1. Quid pro quo: you give in order to get something back. Whether you want a bit of good karma or a smile from God, the spirit here is selfish. Tit for tat is the rule. The giver expects to be appreciated. Big donors, whether to a political candidate or a prominent charity, expect to be noticed and praised. In small ways we all harbor a selfish part of ourselves. Imagine how you'd feel if you gave a lavish Christmas present to someone and received nothing back, not even a word of thanks? Suddenly, the act of giving would turn sour. When you give in order to add to your self-image, the act may be generous, but the spirit isn't. It's even common for this kind of giving to involve a good measure of guilt.
2. Charity from the heart. This is giving out of love. The word "charity" comes from the Latin "caritas," or love. In early Christianity caritas became one of the three great virtues, along with hope and faith. By the time of St. Paul it already meant charity in the modern sense, but the spirit of love was always understood. One gives as a child of God to another child of God. In this spirit there is no expectation of return. One may give anonymously or to strangers. Charity is selfless. It leaves the ego aside, if only briefly, with one intent in mind: to add to the sum total of love in the world. The spiritual significance is to expand the heart.
3. Giving everything that you are. This is true generosity of spirit. There is no separation between giver and receiver. You offer up your whole life, and in return life makes you more whole. This isn't just a mystical wish. Once you realize that everything comes from the universe and goes back to the universe, there is no need to make giving be about "me." Possessing nothing, you can give everything. You know that the universe has infinite resources; therefore, life itself can be based upon giving.

Looking around, one realizes that giving everything is the most natural way. You and I are here because Nature stinted in nothing. The air, the sky, the plant and animal kingdoms enrich the earth freely. The creative source that gave rise to life allowed single-celled algae and bacteria to evolve into the human brain, the most complex structure in the known universe. When the spirit of life really sinks in, and we realize the incredible gift we've received, the only possible act of appreciation is to give back with equal generosity.

In other words, giving should be twenty-four hours a day. At the level of spirit you can give of yourself completely. That's the goal we are all evolving toward. At certain moments we sense this, all of us. A mother's attitude toward her infant child is one of complete giving, out of wonder that new life has become hers to nurture and protect. In expanded form, this attitude becomes Ahimsa, a Sanskrit word often translated as "reverence for life." As a doctor I also like the definition for "harmlessness," because a physician's first duty is to do no harm. When you revere life, violence disappears, and it is only natural to do no harm. You are linked to all life, and by magic, every gift you give becomes a gift to yourself."

This was borrowed from Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP.COM.

MAMA LESSONS: Finding a Partner in Life and Nurturing that Relationship

Found on sweetfeelingsandcandydreams.tumblr.com

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping; For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together; For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

- Kahlil Gibran

Each morning I awake, slowly, with a big grin on my face. From the kitchen I hear the pitter patter of little feet and the calming voice of a great man. This man is my partner, best friend, love of my life, my rock. He is not only my husband but more importantly the father of my children, the person whom I trusted with the greatest responsibility.

My loves, you will come across many people in your life who you will find connections with. Some will become the greatest friends. Some you will love deeply. My hope is that you will be lucky enough to find that ONE person who you are willing to commit to for they feel that you are the ONE person whom they were lucky enough to find, as well.

This ONE person lives up to your standard of genuine love. I speak of genuine love and not perfection because those who seek perfection will be disappointed always. We are all beings who experience life through success and failure and it is in those falls that we learn to become our perfect selves. But it is a journey and we all will tumble. I speak of standard as well. This isn't about creating such high expectations in your head that no person could ever live up to. However, standards must be established because my loves, you are amazing in every way, and you deserve nothing but that from another.

My standards when looking for love were as such:

1. Love does not hurt and those that love do not hurt.

2.Change will happen, and how willing you are both in accepting that must be similar. It must also be embraced if you are to grow together.

3. Acceptance of my faults (Not the complete unwillingness to deny them but the realization that I am a being on my own journey.)

4. Being okay away from each other. Independence and nurturance of your inner soul, physicality and dreams is essential. A relationship cannot survive if one person relies on the other entirely or out of need to fill a void. Relationships thrive on nurturing the times together and also spending time apart, but it is the time together that the partners should value the most.

5. A deep respect for the world and those creatures living in it.

6. And as Aunty El recently quoted Dr. Seuss, "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." Your father is the partner whose weirdness matches mine and we have grown to call it love. Our ideas are farfetched but they generally fall in line. We see each other in our futures and the future in each other.

7. You must be everything to yourself before you can expect everything from someone else.

But how does one nurture this LUCKY, LOVING RELATIONSHIP? I went to some spiritual leaders for guidance:

"Deepak Chopra replies:

Relationship Is a Daily Rescue

Relationships are happy where love is nurtured. They begin to fray around the edges when love is compromised, and they end when love is gone.

What causes love to go away?

Many answers have been offered — boredom, routine, various distractions, outside obligations, fixation on work, lack of trust. But instead of dealing with such a long list item by item, there might be a simpler way. If you can rescue love every day, bringing yourself back to the place where love is, all the other problems don't have a chance to grow.

To rescue love, you first must understand what it is. Love includes affection but is more than affection. It associates itself with desire, kindness, compassion, altruism, and mutual regard. With those things in mind, many couples turn love into loving acts and loving feelings. But such efforts are the effect of love, not love itself. You cannot turn an effect into a cause.

If you can discover how love works as a cause, you can rescue it every day.

Love as a cause goes beyond the individual. It's transpersonal or as spiritual teachers say, transcendent. That's not the same as mystical. To transcend means to go beyond. In this case, we want to contact love that goes beyond the ego. The ego is often put in charge of love. When love becomes what "I" want, then relationship is a negotiation between two selfish points of view. There's nothing wrong with negotiating the everyday details of your relationship but love isn't about trade-offs.

Love beyond the ego has to be on a new basis. It's not about quid pro quo, giving as long as you get to take. It's mutual. It exists in a space between two people. The only way to be deeply happy in a relationship is to find that space every time you lose it. In this way, love goes beyond affection and being nice. Loving acts blossom naturally once you find the place in your own awareness that is love. Needless to say, becoming aware is a process, in love as in everything.

Consider how relationships develop. We get along well with someone else who agrees with our point of view. We feel an intimate connection; we feel validated in their presence. Then the spell is broken. The other person turns out to have many opinions and beliefs where we don’t agree at all. At this point, the war between right and wrong starts and the road to unhappiness unwinds.

The very fact that you are intimately related makes it even more painful to find areas of disagreement. At the subtle emotional level you feel abandoned. The beautiful sense of merging with someone you love is shattered. At this point love is compromised. Both people feel the return of the ego, which says, “I am right. My way of doing things is the only way. If you really loved me, you’d give in.”

When the need to be right fades, we stop having so many grievances and resentments, which are the fallout of making someone else wrong. Instead of wasting time with the ego's version of love, return to the place of love. To detach yourself from anger, resentment, and the sense of being a victim happens only in the space beyond ego. You can only find this space by devoting yourself to knowing who you really are. Leaving the ego behind is the same as the spiritual quest for the true self.

When two people are on this quest, they are on the journey to a kind of love that can never be taken away. The differences between a man and a woman fade in the light of a shared goal that is bigger than any ego need or desire. Every day becomes both a rescue and a surrender. Not a surrender to another person's ego, which can only feel like defeat. Rather, both partners surrender to the larger goal.

The ego's path is much easier to walk and far more familiar. I know that someone is on the path of love when they ask the following kinds of questions about their relationship every day:

• Which choice is more loving?
• What will bring peace between us?
• How awake am I?
• What kind of energy am I creating?
• Am I acting out of trust or distrust?
• Do I feel what my partner is feeling?
• Can I give without expecting anything in return?

These questions don’t have automatic answers. They serve instead to wake you up spiritually. They attune you to a process that is more than “me” and “you.” When you become devoted to that process together, you and your partner will accomplish what seems impossible: your happiness will be as full for each of you as it is for the two of you together."

"Monica Berg replies:

1. Consciously focus on the good in one another. We need to make a conscious effort to focus on the good because this is what allows us to appreciate our partner. Only through a conscious effort can we create a consistent kindness, fondness and appreciation towards one another, where we actually want to honor “until death do us part.”

2. Cherish small moments of intimacy and laughter. Finding the opportunities in day-to-day experiences to engage and create beautiful moments and memories together is what it’s all about. Making a commitment to each other that no problem or obstacle will be bigger than your commitment to each other is so important.

3. Be vulnerable with one another. I know the word itself doesn’t sound appealing, but giving your heart to somebody you trust and love is a beautiful and necessary thing. Even if it is hard to do. We may be too proud or untrusting to become vulnerable, but so much love and connection can come from this type of openness.

4. Repair.

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

There are no stable relationships. There may be happy ones, but not stable ones. Either we are growing forward or falling backwards. This is true in all areas of our life. There is no constant; there is only change and movement. This is “the law of life,” which is why I believe nurturing relationships is so important. We owe it to ourselves and those we love not to settle for mediocrity in any way, and instead to nurture and allow our relationships to become the source of joy, support and love that they were intended to be."

Monica Berg is a spiritual teacher and guide. She is creative director at the Kabbalah Centre and leads a monthly forum in Los Angeles, Kabbalah for Women. She is also the co-founder of the charitable organization, Raising Malawi.

This was taken from goop.com and edited for you my loves.

NOTE: That if your Daddy doesn't like them, they may be a bad egg, because your Daddy likes mostly everyone.

dear littlest BABE

Oh how you amaze! This morning, we got bundled and headed out to go and get passport photos. I undid your comfy snowsuit and I guess that means I served you up for a cry. One look at any one that isn't me and you usually burst into fearful cries. I usually assure the receiver of your attachment to me, just to be polite. You don't know many people and you have a strong trust in me, which I respect and honour.

Some people I talk to, do not understand the attachment. It is actually quite secure. You were in my body for nine months, you were slung on me like a spider monkey for the same. How could anyone expect anything less. You sleep closely to me, each night to nurse and feel safe. I am your security blanket, thumb, soother. We are great friends and our bond is strong. Your sister is just as amazing and my love for her has made loving you easy.

Most nights, if my presence is not felt, you are agitated. This has resulted in many bed time knitting and reading sessions. Of course I look forward to a night when you will sleep through, I sleep soundly. But I also fear the time when I possibly won't be needed. It will come. You will develop strong bonds with others, trusting them as you do I. My touch will be comforting, but you will have the strength, intelligence and support system that will be comforting in and of itself. The bond between your sister and you will grow and strengthen. Secrets will be shared.

You will come to me for wisdom lacking judgment, but will come to me nonetheless out of need rather than necessity.

For now, I embrace all that you require of me and ask nothing from you, but growth and continued trust.

xoxoxo

Mama

READING by Self

I love that my daughter reads. It is absolutely her favorite thing to do. Each morning, she awakes before us, usually. She picks out her favorite book, comes into my room and wakes me up to begin a story. Our ventures to the library are enriching and we very rarely leave without signing out 5 books. She knows several by heart and on this particular day I found her in her room with her favorite "The Paper Bag Princess" open and the Biggest Babe reading aloud, fully animated.

JUST DANCE!

Daily, the Biggest Babe races to our radio in my bedroom and presses the power button to turn on the club beats. I really can't stand the obnoxious station. We started listening to it to try and tune in to hear the Katy Perry song "Firework". The Babe adores this tune, knows most of the words (yes she does sing "do you ever feel like a plastic bag?") and loves to dance to it. The Littlest Babe however, is beginning to look like the dancer in the fam. As soon as she hears a beat, the head starts bobbing, the butt starts bouncing and the music just takes her. Above are snippets of our clubbing days.