But the Buddha Didn't Raise Children. Linda Stein-Luthke
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learn how to be a giving, caring person before I was mature enough to know how important this attribute can be.
The moment I met the man I was going to marry, the first thought that came to me was that he would be the father of my sons. And he was. By twenty four, I'd had my first son, Zack. By twenty nine, Todd was born. By thirty, I was a single mom.
As we negotiated the divorce, my husband offered to take the boys. I refused. My children gave meaning to my life. They kept me going. I had to feed them, care for them, house them, and nurture them. My parents had died by then, so the job was mine without support from anyone else. I was on my own. And I did it all.
After a few years of single parenting, I remarried. My second husband was a wonderful support. He was my step-brother whom I had known since my dad remarried when I was eighteen. He is a good man and a good dad. We married when Todd was four and Zack was eight. We also eventually chose to foster-parent a son and an infant daughter.
Parenting was in my blood. I had a full life outside of parenting, however. In addition to my work career, I began my journey to awakening around the age of thirty. I felt compelled to find out what else there was to life. I thought this could help me be a better mother to my sons.
I do believe that the knowledge I've learned over the years “on the path” has helped me be a better person and therefore a better mother. But the information came from inference. The teachings I received did not give any direct guidance as to how to be a mother. This subject was never addressed. Never.
I didn't even think to ask. It was just assumed that what I was learning was for me alone, not for me and my children.
After my second marriage ended, and my children had moved away from home, I had a period without children in my life. After some time of mourning over the loss of my marriage, family home, and children, I remarried.
Thus began a fruitful period for me that took me in a whole new direction. My third husband, Martin, and I were growing into awakened awareness in the Light. Our body of work, including the many books we wrote together with the help of the Beings of Light fulfilled many of our creative desires. But still, we yearned to have a child of our own. Would I be a different mother now that I'd learned so much about the Light? Martin, eleven years my junior, had never had a child of his own.
For years, we tried. After several miscarriages, we received guidance from the Light to pursue adoption. The information that there was a child waiting for us in Ukraine came to us during a channeling session. And so, our adoption journey began.
Over a year later, after countless hours of paperwork and extended trips to Ukraine, we adopted two siblings from an orphanage. Anya had just turned six and Evan had just turned seven when we brought them home with us.
Thus began a whole new adventure in parenting that helped me to understand that all my training in metaphysics and Buddhism had ill-prepared me for the demands of two very special children. All my years of parenting experience were not enough – neither was Martin’s training as a child psychologist. These children were going to be a far greater test than I'd ever faced before.
Where was the information that would guide me through this journey? The Beings of Light were telling us that choosing to adopt these children was a major part of our awakening process from this point on. After nine years of parenting our “little darlings,” Martin and I know this to be true! It is an ongoing process and the guidance how to do this has had to come from within.
That is the foundation of what we will share with you here. The Buddha may have been part of the inspiration. But we've had to figure out how to apply what we've known at a level we never knew would be needed on our journey. It's been a humbling experience. And on those days when we've worked in concert with the Light, sometimes a miraculous or gratifying experience.
Our children are 44, 40, 16 and 15 now. The journey continues.
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Chapter 1
A Mother on the Path
I began my journey into metaphysics after my first marriage ended. I had helped to care for my stepmother before she succumbed to cancer -- which did not help my marriage. My husband didn't want to stay as I suffered through the loss of yet another parent. My own mother had also died of cancer and seven years later my father had died of a heart attack. Thus, at the age of 30, I was now officially an orphan as well as a single mother with a one year old and a five year old son.
The burning question in my mind was why were we going through the motions of trying to have successful lives when death could claim us at any age without us knowing why we had ever lived?
My parents had tried to hit all the marks and do the “right thing.” They had counseled me to do likewise, and yet they had all died unhappy, unfulfilled by life. As I looked at my two small children, I vowed that I was not going to leave my children with the same legacy I had received from my parents.
I wanted to know why I had been born and what life was really all about before I left the planet to my children. I would leave a legacy, a path that they could follow. I would find the way and show it to them.
Little did I realize, as I made this resolve, just how convoluted this path would become and how amazingly unreceptive my children would be to the answers I was handing them as I learned more and more about the true nature of reality.
My children would prove to be my most unreceptive audience.
The main lesson I would glean from this was that each must forge his or her own path. All of our journeys are unique. When my children found their questions, they would seek their own answers. I could not provide the answers for them.
The other amazing fact that I have unwillingly learned on my journey to awareness is that my children would prove to be my best teachers! They would repeatedly be the Masters that would force me to grow past what I thought was necessary for my awakening process.
So, my question has become, how did the Buddha do this without kids to drive him crazy? Conversely, how would he have done this with kids?
I know Siddhartha did have one child before he began his quest, but he left his son because he had more important things to do. Or so we've been led to believe. But is there one great Master that we know of who stayed with the kids while on the quest to enlighten humanity? I asked Martin this question and then thought about Mary. His response was, “But she had Jesus; we don't!”
So there you have it. It seems that the modern mystic must travel the road to awakening with the children in tow.
It does make things just a bit more complicated, to put it mildly. Yes, our children can be a wonderful catalyst to soul growth. But they certainly do limit the time under the Bodhi tree!
On my journey to awakening, I traveled through various stages of soul growth and brought the treasures and nuggets back to my children to share and also to see if this new way of being could improve my relationship with them. Invariably, I was disappointed. But why was I doing all this soul searching? Was it to be a better mother or to simply awaken for my own sake?
Inevitably both. As I have learned in the course of my life, once you become a mother, you will always be a mother. Yes, you can focus on self, and that's all well and good. But you and the children are inextricably linked forever. Any mother will tell you that is simply the way it goes. Nothing changes that fact. Nothing. If you've had a child, there will not be one day in your life where you do not think about that child.
So, how does this affect one's ability to become an enlightened being? Enormously!
Yet, who has actually thought about this fact, or written about it?
If you look at the metaphysical literature you will find statements to the effect that these beings who have come through our bodies are sovereign beings of Light who must have their own journeys. We must let them go for their own soul