evolve.

The only way we will have a fully functional adult

is to have a fully functional child.

- Joseph Chilton Pearse.

I recently received a newsletter with a link to a two hour long interview with Joseph Chilton Pearse. I have previously read a couple of his books - "Magical Child" and "The Biology of Transcendence: a blueprint for the Human Spirit." In these he explores concepts that inhabit the space where space and mysticism blur together. I love that space; limitations drop away and old fossilized assumptions crack open. The interview - I listened to it while on a bunting-making session last night - covers a lot of stuff: natural human intelligence and the current phenomena of intellectual interference with the unfolding of this intelligence, natural childbirth, human potential and the vital role that parents play in the opening or closing of the mind/brain structure.

Here's a taste:

"The parent has to be involved in the child's education...not to be there to help

with homework and so on. That has nothing to do with it. What the parent

must be trained in is to be a parent, being an adult and learning to respond to

the child that doesn't bring about closure in the mind/brain structure. The brain will either open up or contract back in on itself as you see with our whole schooling, our whole behaviour modification - all interference of the intellectual with natural intelligence."

"As a society we need to support a real concentration on being a parent and

changing whole patterns of responses to a child....this is what we would have

to do to shift the cultural deadlocks we have right now."

Listen to the interview. I recommend it. If 2 hours is just too much there is another good interview only 30 minutes long, "play is learning" - a good recharge on what we already know.

Here at our house, today was another one of those opportunities for some work on patterned responses! Living most of our daily lives together, there is always ample juice for growing personally. Apart from the children learning each day, I learn to be a better parent every day and we all grow as human beings.
This morning I reacted to Ruby.
As always the details do not matter.
What matters is we ended up yelling at each other.
For a brief second I watched the yelling and wondered at the mix of emotions, memories, imaginings that tipped me backwards into yelling.
I knew this was not what we wanted to do.
It didn't last long. I said sorry. We hugged. We laughed.
We learnt some more.
I have needed all the time I have taken as a full-time mama to learn to be the parent I wanted to be. We all bring so much emotional patterning and habituated responses to our parenting and it takes time to tease this old stuff out.
Listen to the interview if you can and tell me what you think.