Imagine you are alone in front of a mirror, and try to think about how you feel.
How is your relation with yourself? What do you see when you look into your own eyes?
Do you feel love and compassion? Or do you feel anger and hatred?
Take note of your thoughts.
The relationship with mother and father
Now, sit down, and visualize in front of you your father and your mother.
Then, go through the same questions again:
How is your relationship with your parents? What do you see when you look into their eyes?
Do you feel love and compassion? Or do you feel anger and hatred?
Take note of your thoughts again.
The relationship with our parents is a mirror
Compare the feelings you have toward yourself with those you have toward your parents; you will probably discover remarkable similarities. For many of us, if we grew up in a conflictual relation with one or both of our parents, we may involuntarily extend that conflict to our own person and to others.
If you think that your parents did not or do not love you enough, I invite you to meditate on the following questions:
Is it possible that your parents gave life to you because they were looking for someone to hate and to punish?
Do you think your parents behaved with you with the purpose of making your life painful and sad?
Are you sure you would be more skillful than your parents in the matter of raising kids?
Rethinking the relationships to our parents
If we all understand that our parents are human beings who, like us, try their best in the best of their knowledge, we can maybe try to put ourselves in their shoes, and think about the following questions:
Was it really easy for them to rise kids?
How was their own childhood and their own relationship with their parents?
If my parents did not give me enough love or understanding, do I give them enough of those things?
–> “Self love 2/2 – Healing the relationship with ourselves”
In collaboration with:
Nadim Mekki, philosopher, writer, and strategist. He published two books on philosophy at Les éditions du Net. Nadim Mekki speaks six languages and travelled 2 years in Asia, where he learned about Buddhism and other old Indian traditions. On his personal blog, Nadim writes about philosophy, politics, and life: www.nadim-m.com
Together we wrote the book series Buddha to go.
[…] meditating about the questions we asked in the first part of this article, you must recognize that our views and feelings about ourselves and our parents are not only highly […]