Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Writing in the London Sunday Telegraph, British Prime Minister David Cameron said today that runaway dads should be stigmatized in the same way as drunk drivers and should feel the “full force of shame.”

It’s true that there are dads who don’t involve themselves with their children. Single mothers and those mothers who are separated or divorced often find that the dad doesn’t participate in the raising of children, at least not effectively.

The psychological construction of the gender divide is clear and boundaried:

Female = feminine = nurturing, dependent, passive. 

Male = masculine = assertive, independent, active.

 Our fear of crossing this divide is great. Our sons are growing up paranoid of displaying tender qualities, terrified of appearing dependent. Our daughters are taught to stay away from assertive behavior and sacrifice daring for "good."  

While these stereotypes may come naturally to many, they stifle those who simply do not conform.

The reason many of us are unaware of our boundlessness, our infinite potential and limitless essence is because we are confined by the cages of our thoughts. One thought after another.

Racing. Running. Jumping.

Hoops, curves, and narrow alleyways.

First we had Tiger Mom making the rounds with her extreme views of parenting. Now we have Jessica Beagley, a mom who appeared on the Dr. Phil show with confessions of disciplining her child with hot sauce and cold showers. She admitted that the reason she was on the show was because she had run out of options and wanted to get help. Disturbingly, an informal poll done by the Today Show revealed that 33% of moms felt the hot sauce method of punishment was appropriate.

Ms. Beagley was recently found to be guilty of child abuse. Unfortunately, this was only considered a misdemeanor.

Daily Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Boredom is a big issue for many people. TV channel flippers, for instance, are often whiling away their time because they are bored.

Children, too, can become bored in our technological society when they aren’t provided with the entertainment to which they are accustomed.

Says Eckhart Tolle in his second book Stillness Speaks:

For the last few days we've been talking about the "ego" and how there are different understandings of this word. Today we want to share insight from a brand new Namaste Publishing book that we at Namaste got to hold in our hands for the first time yesterday as shipments began arriving from the printer.

Dr. Shefali Tsabary writes in the opening chapter of her book The Conscious Parent:

The question was asked of a client by a counselor, “What is our responsibility in helping create our children’s unhappiness?”

The client simply couldn’t wrap her head around the question. She responded, “You mean happiness.”

The counselor came back, “No, I mean unhappiness.”

The client kept saying, “You must mean our responsibility in helping create our children’s happiness.”

If you have a child, grandchild, niece or nephew, do you want them to be paddled in school?

The issue of paddling children in U.S. schools made it into the Washington Post Friday, as a central Texas city decided to bring back the paddle, banned long ago by most school districts across the country.

In Temple, it’s claimed that behavior has improved dramatically at the high school. But at what price?

Sure, you can cause children to shape up by hitting them. Violence has always been a way of controlling people. But what’s happening to their inner being?