Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers!

Motherhood as a path to enlightenment is a choice. When you consciously choose to use motherhood as a spiritual path, your entire relationship with mothering makes a profound shift. I know that once I made that choice my relationships with my children, their father, and people at large became more peaceful, less of a struggle and I experienced greater love.

It is said in Buddhism that when you are fully enlightened you see everything and everyone as your child to love, nurture, care for, understand, guide, and have compassion for. I had dedicated my life to being a career woman, and was truly shocked at the effect my daughter had on my heart when she was born. For years it tore me in half, wondering, “Where should I put my attention and focus?” I perpetually lived in that struggle until one day I had an Ah ha! moment and I realized that my daughter was here to teach me how to become an enlightened human being.

The path of parenting forced me to find a patience I did not think was possible. I had to learn how to get her to eat healthy food, go to sleep on time, wear her clothes in the winter, and stop biting her friends on the playground. I felt like I lived in my laundry room, and resented it until one day, while washing 10,000 socks (at least it felt like 10,000 socks! How can one small creature go through so many clothes in 24 hours?) all of a sudden I had another Ah ha! I felt like I was the mother of the world, washing the karma out of all the souls (soles … LOL!) of the planet and that doing this laundry was a mitzvah (a good deed, a service), a great purpose.

I began to laugh and then sing as I threw the socks in the dryer.

“Oh, now, I am going to dry all the tears of the souls of the planet!” All my resentment about being stuck in the laundry room all day, all my resentment about the career that could not take off—all my struggle with motherhood—evaporated.  All my depression about feeling worthless because I wasn’t out in the world being a leader or breaking a glass ceiling disappeared. I felt completely one with the divine presence of Mother. I felt whole and grateful for this extraordinary realization.

As mothers, we are thrown into service whether we want it or not. We get no paychecks or awards or great accolades from society. But I could choose to accept this role and make it a gift instead of continuing to be torn in half with guilt and resentment. And thus I embarked on my true path of enlightenment. My daughter, then later my son, became my two wonderful gurus—swirling, dancing, climbing, messy, temper-tantrum throwing, loving, adorable gurus.

Motherhood, as a path to enlightenment, became my passion.

With gusto I seized being in union with my children’s fresh experience of the world—the wonder of tiny crickets and the exuberance over flying butterflies and slimy snails. Thus my world became exalted with tiny things.

My intuition and awareness of life expanded as I now viewed every chair, table, and bottle top as potential disasters. I became incredibly aware of everything around me and I swear the eye in the back of my head actually grew. My psychic abilities were stimulated by entering my children’s magical world, and I began to experience their imaginary friends, their angels, and even a few ghosts (which I shooed away. You could say that I was losing my mind. However, I am going to counter that with the thought that I was expanding my consciousness to become aware of our greater realities as a mother. All of this lead me directly to the work I do today as a mystic, guide, author, and founder of the Radiance Healing Journey, a path to enlightenment.

My kids are now 24 and 18 and I am still, fully on the path of motherhood as a path to enlightenment. I am still being pressed into deeper and deeper experiences of patience and non-judgment as I am learning how to guide them from arm’s length, without fully letting go of the tether to mother. I am still in the journey and what is unfolding now is this enormous reservoir of wisdom—our collective, ancestral knowledge built mother to mother to mother throughout the ages—carrying humanity forward one child, one adolescent, one young adult, one adult, one aged person at a time.

No matter what the hurdles of motherhood, with this as my experience, I have to say I am just in the bliss of enlightenment.

 

 

Mystical visionary Deirdre Hade is the founder of The Radiance Journey. She is the co-author of The (not so ) Little Book of Surprises with her husband William Arntz, the creator of the film “What the BLEEP do We Know!?,” and the author of the forthcoming book The 12 Archetypes of Eve: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Achieving Full Feminine Power. Her website is www.DeirdreHade.com