Within each one of us lies an instinct which can be the center of one of the most important parts of many people’s lives, being a parent. Unfortunately many of us have become disconnected with this natural and intuitive part of ourselves. The result is that we raise our children in the same disconnected manner as is common in Western society. The reason why you might want to end this cycle is because this disconnection from Parent to Child, and from the Parent to themselves, creates, and is the source of unfathomable amounts of suffering.
This booklet is a summary of concepts which are based on the Parenting Instinct. While the details of the booklet may not be exactly accurate, or may not be exactly true for you, they serve as a close reminder, and refresher that will point you towards and support you in reclaiming your inner instincts.
“It takes courage to trust your intuition because people around you are not doing it. The benefits of trusting your intuition are; a sense of strength, feeling connected with all of life, feeling peace, and embodying true success.” True success is a feeling of fulfillment and completion that perhaps only you feel. The outer world may not acknowledge it, or may even shun it. In our culture, we typically identify success as someone who as made a lot of money, is famous, or is recognized in the world. In following these practices the joy and fulfillment within you will increase.
This booklet is mostly a collection of information from a variety of sources. The links to the sources are included so that you can further your own research. I have chosen sources which convey ways of life that support our natural instincts.
What is the Parental Instinct?
Many people have an intuitive feeling within ourselves when something is right or wrong in our lives. We have senses of intuition, that direct us into different life situations. We know sometimes what we want to eat, and sometimes we do not know. The Parental Instinct is the idea that there is a sacred and deep part of ourselves, connected to our nervous system, rooted in the DNA structure of our cells, and in the deeper more mammalian parts of our brain, that knows how to raise children. This same instinct is in mammals, our closest relatives on earth, they inherently know how to raise their young in harmony with Nature. Humans posses these same instincts. While all of us have these instincts, few of us live by these instincts. The instincts are a feeling sense of aliveness, they are a cross between a feeling of energy, and a conscious awareness that permeates the mind and body. When aligned with your internal instincts, your cellular structure resonates with the whole of creation. This instinct, helps us align with the cycles of life, the seasons, birth and death, and so on.
Key Signs of the Instinct
The parental instinct is a movement towards unity. It seeks union. It is an energy set in motion which seeks to stay connected and feel unified. It is an energy which seeks and desires to reproduce. It longs for and seeks safety, it knows truth, and protects its children at all costs. The instinct at best can be described as a feeling of connection within your body, that is accessed when the mind is quiet and at rest.
The Loss of the Parental Instinct
Our culture is inundated and is based upon the loss of this instinct. Rather than work with Nature, and her principals, we fight them. We do not walk on and feel the earth beneath our feet, we feel carpet and concrete, and hardwood floors. When we look towards our parents, we do not see this instinct. Many children feel alienated from their parents, or disconnected and so seek to move away from them during adult hood. When we grow up, and seek to have our own children, we may, without thought, habitually follow the old habits of our parents, or we may look outside of ourselves to our culture to decide what to do. What if what our culture does to our children is wrong? We see children screaming, children in day cares not with their mothers at even 6 months old, children strapped into restraints, children being wheeled around in strollers.
Many times children our forced against their will and comfort to be strapped down in car seats and strollers. Parents then make up mental excuses for confining their child instead of feeling the pain and discomfort they are causing their children. There are many things we do not see, women suffering in childbirth, over 150,000 babies are born with birth defects yearly, over 27,000 babies die in their first year of life. As these infants grow, the preference of our culture is to abandon them; we do not feed them milk from their mother but from a factory in a plastic bottle, if they are fed breast milk, it is usually for a very short length of time, we let them cry without consoling them, we send them off to daycare at a young age, as if we would prefer someone else to be their parents.
Many of us where raised in a manner such as this, and after many years of being treated like an object, or as if our feelings where not important, we numb out and we become disconnected to the feeling vibrations in our bodies, we loose our parental instincts, and eventually as adults we raise our children in the same manner as we where raised, or how society suggests.
The Return of the Parental Instinct
For thousands of years, our ancestors have followed a very specific formula for creating and raising children. This formula was not created from the mind or by science, it is a formula encoded in our genetics created by the mysterious force that moves through life. The formula, and formula is not necessarily the best description of it, is a loving way of being connected with life that compels humans to follow their nature to live in a certain peaceful and harmonious way. This way of living, prevents illness, prevents birth complications, and ensures for the highest probability that nature will create a robust and healthy child. This way of being, also shows the child, how to be an adult that lives in harmony with life. An adult that is at peace with themselves, that does no harm to other’s because he loves them. And that seeks to create a feeling of unity everywhere he goes.
The Natural Instinct Will Create Fulfillment & Give Life
That Natural Instinct seeks to fulfill itself. The reason why we are creating this is because there is a great need in the Western world to start raising children humanely. When we raised our daughter, mirroring our parenting after the style of parenting found in many indigenous cultures, we found that we had no support. People mostly, even our families, where in complete disbelief of our child raising habits. Meanwhile, we are in disbelief about how anybody can raise their child the “normal” way. We find it to be a type of unconscious way of living which denies the existence of life. The purpose of this paper is to educate you about how we raised our daughter, and to dispel the common notions of child raising, in an effort to bring a new more loving presence to the process. This not only will DRAMATICALLY change your child, it is the key to finding deep fulfillment as a parent.
These practices, are life giving. Many things written here you will probably never even hear about even from a majority of alternative minded doctors or midwifes. Yet these ideas constitute the re-emergence, for those of you who wish it, of a way of child raising that fosters a deep connection and sense of belonging. In raising children in this manner, we bring people into the world who feel connected to life. When they are connected to life, they care about nature, about other people and the planet. Conversely, in feeling disconnected with life, we can easily inflict pain or violence on others, and on our planet with little regard for life and not even be aware we are doing it. Living in a disconnected manner is an unconscious way of living because nobody is or can be separate from life, and yet many of our child raising practices are done in a manner which assumes a separated existence and a world in which life is paralleled with suffering.
Inner Wisdom and Listening to Your Instincts
What each individual needs is different. All too often we are easily influenced by what the outer world is doing. We do not listen to the quiet, delicate, and strong voice that comes from within. Everything in this booklet, is meant to be a reminder of what that voice might be telling you. Wisdom is like a babbling brook, it flows from within, and all it needs is an ear to listen to it. Take a moment now, a pause and break from your normal stream of thoughts. Feel your breath coming into and out of your nose. Inhale… Exhale… As you take deep breathes, you not only expel toxins that are from the cellular metabolic process, you may also notice a deep sense of peace, tranquility and inner knowing.
This instinct also guides us to healthy nutrition, raising our children consciously, and avoidance of negative practices in the western world. Take this moment as an opportunity to be open to that creative part of yourself that longs for deeper fulfillment in life.
Rami
The article is the introduction to a Natural Parenting booklet I wrote.
You can view it Free here at http://www.yourreturn.org/Articles/Child_Raising2.htm
or download the PDF file Free at http://www.yourreturn.org/Articles/NaturalParenting.pdf
About The Natural Parenting eBook
A variety of complications related to Pregnancy, Conception and Birth are a result not of a genetic dysfunction, but from a build up of toxins in the body and from the previously mentioned deficiency of certain nutritional factors. You will learn key points to how our ancestors naturally raised children, by holding them close to their skins, for their early years of life. Other conditions are discussed from a holistic perspective, they include Infertility, diet after birth, the birth process, midwifes, self care, motherhood, dietary myths, circumcision, vaccinations, morning sickness, natural cleansing, miscarriage, breastfeeding, self care, slings, schooling, fatherhood, and natural healing.
Learn about the cause of disease and how to prevent and heal disease, http://www.yourreturn.org
