The Sins of the Fathers

Good morning.

This morning I want to talk about children, or more precisely: about the parents of the children. Usually as parents we worry about the kids, but there's not much which needs to be said about the kids. The kids are fine, but there's a lot to be said about the parents. I received two letters about this subject and I would like to start this video by reading out the first letter, and then I will talk a little bit about it.

"Dear Mikael, I like listening to your videos, especially before going to bed. I don't have many questions. I've only just started on my way, but one question keeps coming up almost every day. My daughter is now three years old. She's an absolute dream child and we love her more than anything. My childhood wasn't great, so I wanted to do everything differently, especially to give her space to express her feelings. She cries a lot and often throws tantrums. You can read everywhere that you should help your child to regulate herself, but when my daughter has a screaming fit, I'm not allowed to get too close to her. She sends me away and screams even louder when I say something. Giving her a loving hug, accompanying her feelings and so on, doesn't work with her. So she sometimes screams for half an hour, sometimes an hour. In the meantime, I try to concentrate on my physical feelings, but I can feel more and more anger rising up inside of me. Thoughts like "I can't take this anymore" also come up. I often even cry. I really need some advice on this. I have already come into conflict with other people because of her crying, because they couldn't stand my daughter's crying. I feel as if I can cope with her crying, but I keep thinking that I'm doing something wrong if I leave her to her own feelings. Please, Mikael, can you give me some advice on how to deal with this situation?"

Thank you for your letter. I'm totally touched, and what you write about is the core challenge of humanity, of all human beings. The title of this video is "The Sins of the Father", and this is part of a quote from Jesus. He said: "The sins of the Father are being passed on to the children." And this means that all the things we carry in us, our old pain, our traumata, our fears we don't know about this, we don't deal with it.... we pass it on. And then our children get it and they pass it on to their children and so on. And this is how humanity remains in a cycle and doesn't develop, because every generation inherits the burden and the pain and the weight of the previous generation. It's like we have heavy weights attached to our feet and we can't walk fast.

So the issue is not about the children. It's not about helping the child to cope with her feelings. You need to help the child to cope with your feelings. That's what's going on. You know... little children, they are... they don't have own feelings. They are empty, they're pure, they're holy. Everything they feel comes from the surroundings. They react to what's going on in their surroundings. If the surroundings would also be holy and pure, the children would just be in Heaven. And that's the bad news, but also the good news, because now you know what you can do. It's easy to feel totally helpless when you experience your child. The child is crying, the child is in pain, in agony, and you have no clue what's going on. And you don't know how you can help the child. And what we usually do is we work on the child.

When I was a kid, I was sent to a psychologist, but I didn't have a problem. My parents had a problem, but I was being treated. And good psychologists know this. They know it's never the children, it's always the parents. And these days, we give medication to the children, but the children are not the problem. The children are just acting out what we as parents don't take care of ourselves in us.

You're right. You want to give your daughter the space for her feelings. Start by providing space in you for your feelings. And if your feelings have space in you, then your daughter doesn't have to take care of them. And this will relieve your daughter. This will help your daughter, when you start taking care of yourself.

Now, how to do this? It's very easy. You don't have to start psychoanalysis. You don't have to dig up old feelings. You don't have to find out what kind of traumata are hidden in you. I mean, you know that your childhood was difficult, you said this in your letter, and all you have to do is start by being with how it is for you.

Now, you don't have to travel back in time. Be where you are. Your child is crying and you feel helpless and you feel aggression coming up in you. Give this what you feel now space in you willingly, happily, right now. Aggression. When this aggression comes up in you, this is a problem for you. You don't want it. You just feel aggressive. You want to act it out. Do the opposite. Invite it in: "Hello, aggression. Welcome. I open my doors for you. Come inside. Be here as long as you want." Feel the aggression. Feel it physically. Don't fight against it. Don't act it out. Just feel it quietly, peacefully. The aggression is so aggressive because you send it away. That's why it's keep coming, right? That's why it keeps coming back. And the same is true with all the other feelings.

As I said, you don't have to dig up old feelings. Life will help you, and one by one, as your ability to welcome your own feelings, as this ability grows, slowly, slowly, more feelings will come all by themselves. Once they know that they're welcome, they will come. And the nice thing about doing it this way, rather than digging it up, rather than doing analysis, is that when you do it this way, only those feelings will come that you are ready for. Yeah, it's a very natural, simple process. And your daughter's helping you with this right now. She is forced to feel your feelings. because you don't know how to feel your own feelings. You don't even know about your own feelings, but your daughter knows.

You know, small child children, they're extremely sensitive. They feel everything. They feel all the things you can't feel about yourself. And for the child, it is as if these are his or her own feelings. The child cannot distinguish between the feelings of the mother and its own feelings. There's no own identity. There are just feelings. And the child deals with them somehow. That's why she's crying. When you learn to cry your own tears willingly, happily... you know, like a mother... when you can be a mother for your own sadness, for your own tears, for your own aggression, for your own agony, then these feelings will not spill out to other people and not spill out to your child.

I once reported an example from my spiritual master Soham. There was one evening in Satsang where this master, where he looked particularly peaceful, so peaceful, so quiet that people commented on it. And they asked him: "What's going on with you? You are so peaceful. It's amazing!" And he told them that he had a particularly difficult day on that day. He had a really challenging day. He was visited by very difficult old feelings, but he knew what to do. He just welcomed them. He spent the entire day welcoming those feelings again and again and again. And then, what's being felt on the outside by other people is this peace. He was in peace with his own difficult feelings. And this peace, that is what was being felt from the outside.

Right now, your child feels rejection, you reject your feelings. You don't want your aggression, you don't want your sadness, you don't want your helplessness. You probably don't know about most of the feelings you have, and that's natural. There's nothing wrong with you. This is totally normal, you know, but your child knows, and your child feels your helplessness and your rejection. And when you begin to love these feelings in you, when you begin to be in peace with these feelings, what your child will feel is love and peace. And then the behavior of your child will change. And it starts with you and your own inner feelings. That's the way.

And what helps with this, this will be not a surprise for you when I talk about this now, is the Samarpan Meditation. The Samarpan Meditation helps you in this process of turning inwards, of turning towards yourself, towards your soul. The Samarpan Meditation helps you, it'll make you more sensitive for yourself. And it's easy when you are at this point in your life where you become aware of what's going on with your child, but you're totally unaware of what's going on in you. It's very easy to feel wrong. It's very easy to blame yourself. But this is not needed. And of course, it's not helpful. Your child will feel this. When you are unhappy with yourself, yeah, when you feel wrong about yourself, that's just another feeling your child will feel. It is really like this.

When you begin with the Samarpan Meditation and when you do this regularly every day, you will soon discover a kind of compassion for yourself. You'll discover: "Wow, that's how I am." And you'll discover why you are like this. You'll discover: "I was made like this. It's not my fault. I'm, I'm just the product of the circumstances. I was growing up, the product of the circumstances of my parents", just like your daughter experiences it right now with you, and then a kind of compassion arises for yourself. There's no need to believe that you are wrong or that you should be different. You can't be different.

Now, this sounds weird. I know you wrote in your letter, you wanna do everything different. You know how you feel because of your childhood, and you don't want your child to feel like this. You want to do everything different, but you can't. You are the product of your parents. You inherited all their shit, and you are the way you are. If you want to be different, you make it worse. Your parents wanted to be different. They didn't want to be the way they are, so they suppressed how they were and pretended to be different. That doesn't work. Don't try to do everything different. Don't try to be different. Don't try to be a better mother. You can't be a better mother. You are the mother you are. It's obvious, isn't it?

What you can do is: turn to yourself, discover what you feel right now and deal with that, that simple. That is something you can do. If you wanna do the things differently than your parents did, there's only one way: become happy. When you become happy, that's what your child will feel. And then your child will be happy. If you begin to be in peace with how you are, as screwed up as you feel... when you're in peace with this, that's what your child will feel, this peace, and your child will relax.

So, the challenge is clear for you. For you, the challenge is become happy, become peaceful with yourself. And this is not something you pre can pretend. You can't, you cannot act happy. That doesn't work. You really sincerely have to discover: "Oh wow, nobody told me how to do this. My parents only knew how to be unhappy. That's what I learned. My parents only knew how to feel wrong. That's what I learned from them. Feeling wrong. But how to feel peaceful with myself, how to feel happy with myself, I don't know."

Two things you can do. Begin to welcome the feelings which are here for you right now: with the aggression, with the helplessness, with this feeling of being wrong, with this feeling of being a bad mother. And start meditating. Start with the Samarpan Meditation. This above all will help you on this path. The whole rest happens by itself. That's the path to happiness. When you start with the Samarpan Meditation, you, you begin to give your attention to your own soul, and that's what's needed in order to start to be happy. You can't make yourself happy. You don't know how this works. But just by beginning to turn inwards, by nurturing your own soul, this will happen by itself.

I know... as a mother, you want your child to be happy. You want to do everything possible so your child is fine. This is beautiful. This is "mother", and the paradox is that now you have to start taking care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you'll relieve your child of your own burden. This is very important. This is something nobody tells you, but this is the way. Thank you for your letter. Thank you so, so much.

And have a second letter about the same subject. And I want to read out this letter too. I received this letter from Turkey. I'm happy about this. And when I read the letter now and you recognize that this is your letter, please send me your postal address via email. I received this letter... I received both of these letters in regular mail, handwritten. I invite everybody to send me handwritten letters, because there are so much more emotions in handwritten letters. And I promise everybody that I will answer the same way. I will answer with a handwritten letter. The actual answer to the issue, the answer to the questions I always give in the video so everybody can hear it. But I will answer every handwritten letter with another handwritten letter, and I would like to do this with this letter too.

But the Turkish Postal Service put a nice big stamp onto the letter in just such a way that I can't read the sender address anymore. I can't really be sure that I read the correct sender address, and I don't want my answer letter to get lost in the mail, so if you hear this, if you recognize: "Ah, this, is my letter", then please drop me an email with your mailing address and I will send the letter to you. So, now I'll read this letter out.

"I'm the mother of three wonderful children between 11 and 16 years. And I consider it a blessing to be able to learn so much through my children, but it is also always a challenge to grow as a mother for the benefit of the children. Could you perhaps say something in one of your videos about children in these special times? How can I accompany my children without manipulating them? How can I support my children to go their own way, even if it doesn't fit into the framework of society?"

Thank you. Thank you for your letter. What a beautiful letter. What a beautiful challenge. I want to talk a little bit about how children learn. Children do not learn by what we tell them. Children learn by how we are. Children just look how we live life. How is mother living her life? How is she, how does she feel? How does she deal with herself and with life? And that's what the children copy. What you say is totally irrelevant. If you say wise things, if these things you tell them correlate with how you are, then they will hear it. But usually the things we say do not correlate with how we are. We tell the children one thing, but we live in another way. We are in another way. We tell the children: "be happy", when we are unhappy. And then they can't hear our words. They don't fit. They see how we are, and that's what they copy. Then they become unhappy.

So, you want to know: how can you avoid manipulating your children? You do this by having no need to manipulate them. Be happy. When you are happy, your children can do whatever they want. You will teach them what's good for them, but you don't need to teach them anything in order for you to be happy, because you already are happy. Then you are clean. When you are happy, when you are fulfilled as a being, as a soul, when you are in Heaven... I'm not talking about this shallow feeling of happiness, I'm talking about a deep contentment in your being... when you are resting in Heaven and you don't need anything else out of life, then you will not manipulate, there's no need. And then you can teach the children anything they need to know. And then you can be sure you don't manipulate. But if you are not content, if you're not satisfied, if you're not happy, you will manipulate the children, you can't avoid it. You don't even know when you do it.

You want to know how you can teach your children to go their own way even when society is completely different. There's only one way. You go your own way. You'll be in peace with how you are, even when all the people around you tell you to be different. When you are in peace with yourself anyway, when you're just naturally the way you are, that's what the children will copy. This ability, this matter-of-fact-ness, this natural way of being. So the challenge is clear. You have to become happy. You have to discover how to be the way you are no matter what the people around you think.

You want your children to become independent of the opinions of the people around them, of the opinions of society. There's only one way. You become independent of the thoughts and opinions of the people around you. You become independent even of your own thoughts and your own opinions about yourself. And then they learn this. That's the only way. And this means you have to start taking care of yourself. You have to start discovering how you can become truly content and happy as a soul in this life. The rest is easy. The rest, the children will do by themselves.

That's what a Guru does. You know, I'm not a Guru, but that's what I'm doing. I'm not doing anything for other people. I'm just the way I am so you can copy. You have to do the work. You have to do the copying. You feel how how I am. You feel it. And then there are things you feel like: "Oh wow, this is beautiful". That's enough. Just by feeling this different kind of beingness of me, as soon as you feel it, the copying already happens. That's why you like watching the videos.

I'm not doing anything. I'm not teaching you anything. I'm not putting effort in it so something comes over to you. That's not possible, and that's not needed. The only thing I do is: I take care of myself. I meditate every day. I turn more and more inwards. More and more. I only take this one thing important: my connection, my inner connection to my soul, to God. And then, you feel how beautiful this is. And then this becomes possible for you too. Just like this, I'm not doing anything. I'm only taking care of myself. But you can feel it and then it becomes possible for you. And in the same way, your children will pick it up from you.

The more you dare to become happy, the more you dare to give you attention towards yourself and to worry about your own happiness, the more you do this, the more your children will do the same. And then, everything is easy. You become the way you want your children to be. That's it.

You know, I make these videos because I know both, I know both ways. I had a childhood like the first lady described. My childhood was also not so easy, to say it in an understatement. I got all the rubbish of my parents. I had my fair share of traumata as a young child. I know how it is to be the waste dump for the parents, for this natural process. It's not that my parents were bad. It's not that they were bad people or that they did something wrong. No, they had no chance. They couldn't avoid this. They were the way they were, and then this happens. There's no way parents can avoid this. They have been made unhappy by their parents and they can't help it. They will make their own children also unhappy. That's what happened in my childhood, of course, naturally.

But then my parents discovered how to become happy, each of them in their own unique way. Each of them had a totally different way of going about this. But I learned to be happy. Now I'm in Heaven, I'm content. So I went from the old to the new in one life. And that's why I can talk about it because I know both sides. And that's why I can tell you that it works and that it's easy and that it's natural. I'm not talking about theoretical wisdom. I'm not talking about philosophy. I'm just sharing my own experience.

My parents were totally, totally different than the rest of society. They were black sheep. That's why I can be a black sheep. That's why I can be totally different than anybody else. Now you do the same. Now you be the way you are. Start loving yourself. Start discovering yourself, meditate every day. That's all you need to do. It's a very natural, very simple process. I talk about it in all of my videos and nothing else is needed. The rest happens by itself. You don't have to worry about your children. You become happy. And as I said before, when you meditate, your awareness and your feeling for what's right for the children in in any given situation will increase. And you will naturally know what to do, and it'll be very easy for you. That's all. It's actually simple. Once you know the real challenge, then it's easy. Thank you for this letter. Thank you. I love the subject so much, the subject of children.

You know, my guru Swamiji says something very interesting. He says: "it's our task as parents to, to create children who can be the parents of girls of Gurus, of his Gurus so to speak. It's like this: our parents were parents for unhappy people. They were unhappy by themselves, so only unhappy souls can be born through them. That's the way it works. But for us, already it's different. As I said, my parents were totally fucked up when I was born, but they were already different. They were already black sheep, black sheep, blind black sheep. They didn't know how it works. But they were different. Something about them was different. And that's why I could go my path. They made it possible.

And now the same is true for you. Both of you who were writing to me about the subject, you are already different because your parents, as funny and as strange and fucked up as they seem for you, they are already different. That's why you can be the way you are right now. That's why you can wonder: how can I do it differently? How can I make my children happy? And now the challenge is: you become happy, you become enlightened. You become a Saint in this life, so your children can be different parents. And then through your children, another kind of souls will be born. Then that next new generation will be on a different level. The children which will be born then through those parents, the parents which are your children right now, they will be born happy. They will be gurus from the beginning. And with this, the whole world will change.

So, by you beginning to take care of yourself, by you doing the unheard of... everybody teaches us to take care of everybody else. And by this, we only make it worse from generation to generation. And now you do the opposite. You start taking care of yourself. You start worrying about your own happiness, about your own soul. By you turning inwards, by you turning to God inside of you, you'll make you children happy and you'll make it possible that happy children will be born, and that the whole world will change faster and faster. It's an amazing game. And it starts with you taking care of yourself.

That's what a Guru does. Swamiji says... my Guru says: "I'm not doing anything for you. All this I only do for myself." A Guru is not somebody who sacrifices his life for other people. A Guru is somebody who's so stubbornly only looking inside, only taking care of the God inside of himself for his own benefit, and he becomes more and more full of Heaven, full of God. And this overflows. It's not that he's doing it. It's like he's a pot and he's filling himself up, up to the brimm and more and more. And then the pot is overflowing. And this overflowing, this is what the disciples feel. This immense grace. It's not the doing of the Guru. It's not that the Guru gives you something. The Guru keeps bathing in God, and this is overflowing, and that's arriving at your end. That's how it works.

I'm not doing these videos for you. I'm doing them for myself. Since I started doing these videos, my sensitivity doubled. More and more do I feel when I truly am inside and when not, it's like every word I say becomes a challenge for me to even be more authentic and more inside. I'm doing it for myself. And that's what you feel and that's beautiful. And that's what you can copy and what your children can copy from you. That's how it works. Actually it's very simple.

Thank you for listening. I'm so happy that you are here.

I love you.