The Truth Liberates Us
I’ll share a personal story of how my own ego mind formed, when I wasn’t validated or connected to my parents.
I grew up in an environment where my parents unintentionally were only aware of the one-size-fits-all traditional education model of our culture: a classroom of twenty children grouped together by age, learning in one environment, with one learning style and one curriculum. It used manipulations to control and direct children, including both rewards and punishments.
I did horribly in that system, at least according to the education standards at that time. So as the system continued to prove my lack of worth through testing and grades and continued to control and direct what and why I should learn, my self-expression, confidence, and self-worth began to diminish and my ego began to strengthen.
Furthermore, my parents failed to recognize my visual learning style and therefore weren’t able to create the environment that I needed to support my natural way of learning, which resulted in me feeling stupid almost my entire life.
Structure and organization came easily to me. So my ego mind began to protect me by overcompensating in these areas, to cover up where I felt inadequate or stupid. These inadequacies can be thought of as vulnerabilities in my image of who I should be.
These ways began to rule my life. And as others deemed them valuable, I felt more and more validated and I began to achieve even higher levels of both.
This continued through high school and into college. And when I began my Event Design business. It followed me into marriage and into giving birth to my son, Jian, which is where I became obsessive.
I had calendar reminders set up so that by the time Jian was three, I had signed him up for Kumon to ensure he became smart (as if he wasn’t already), according to the same education standards his environment deemed smart.
I would sit down with him to do his Kumon lessons, and no matter what I tried, he didn’t want to engage. I tried creating structure through fun lesson plans and organized his routine, to ensure he was fully fed and rested before we started. And within the first ten minutes, we were both in the midst of full-on explosions—him screaming on the floor and me walking away fuming with anger.
It came to a point where the triggers were everywhere. I realized not only was I sabotaging my relationship with Jian but I was also suppressing his natural self-expression and curiosity.
The problem, you see, was that I was misguidedly using him to avoid my vulnerability of feeling stupid. If he did well at school, it would have continued to prove my worth, to show that I was indeed smart.
Whenever anything happens to uncover our vulnerabilities, we get triggered because we don’t want to see our own vulnerabilities.
And so we blame a situation or the other person. We say, “They triggered me.”
Buddha said that with our minds we create the world. But, it’s also true that before our minds create the world, the world creates our mind. It programs us. And so the nature of that programming, and how to disconnect from it, is really what I’m most curious about.
Some of us know the vulnerabilities are there, and there is a yearning to understand its reason.
Others accept their misperception as a way of life, until they’ve hit rock bottom.
The yearning and misperception both lead to seeking a deeper meaning and truth. Because if we believed that this pain was our reality, then we wouldn’t actually suffer. The suffering comes from the awareness somewhere dimly within us that the suffering is illusory. That there is a truth underneath it. And the very purpose of that suffering is to seek the truth.
When everyone’s perspectives are heard, everyone wins. When one person controls and disciplines the other, both eventually lose.
I invite you to explore the truth of this statement with me.
I’m offering a live 3-month Group Coaching Intensive, The Foundations of Conscious Parenting that is designed to help moms of children from 3 to 8 years old create relationships with their children that allows everyone to thrive.
