Parent Evening: Compassionate Response Meditation

In Autumn 2016, I signed up for Kim John Payne's Simplicity Parenting Course.  I am ever so grateful that I did.  I learned so much about how to host parent gatherings.  The topics were specific to Kim's book Simplicity Parenting, but the method can be applied to any parent evening topic.  I have done one on physical and soul warmth two years running with much success.   Check out simplicityparenting.com for more information.  I can't recommend the Simplicity Parenting course training enough.  It has really positively affected the way I hold my parent evenings and hold my relationships with class parents in general.

In the second parent gathering on "Soul Fever", there is an added section that a facilitator can choose to do with parents called "Compassionate Response Meditation."   Kim provides students of the course with an Mp3 of him leading and explaining the meditation.  I went over this a few times before the evening.  I also noted some excerpts of his leading of the meditation to actually play for my class parents at the appropriate time.

This meditation is very powerful.  It has the meditator imagine clearly the Archetype or Golden aspect of the child in question starting at their physical presence and moving toward their ego presence with the etheric and soul/mood presence in between.  A verse* is used to set the mood:

Thou Angel who keepest watch over the destiny of ______

Through the waking and the sleeping and the long ages of time,

May my thoughts filled with hope reach her/him through thee.

May s/he be strengthened from the fonts of will

which bear us toward freedom

May s/he be illumined by the fonts of wisdom

which warm the inmost heart.

May s/he feel peace from the fonts of love

which bless our work

--Adam Bittleston

(*you can choose to use any verse that speaks to you, this is just an example) 

Once that was completed.  I had the parents keep that image in their minds and invited them to paint using the wet-on-wet method.  This is the watercolor method that their own children use in class several times a year.  I had the painting set up before the evening began

They used the water colors to paint their golden image. When they were finished we returned to the meditation corner and imagined clearly the shadow-self of the child or the Doppleganger using the aspects of physical, etheric, soul and ego presence during a time when the child was not at their best.  The images when dry the next day, were stunning.

Then we returned to the meditation corner to begin the actual movement of the the images in our minds during meditation.  The mediation is such that the parent draws in close the shadow-self of the child while releasing the archetype of the child.  This allows the parents to overcome the antipathy that can arise when a child is not at their best.

The purpose of the activity is to strengthen one's compassion muscles.  The painting need not be done each time.  The painting was set up to firmly set the process in the participants mind as well as add an artistic /movement component to the evening.  If done regularly, this drawing close of the doppleganger and releasing of the archetype, one should be able to experience a pause before  reacting to the child's less than best behavior the next time.  This pause will allow the parent to respond to the child with their authentic self, free from any antipathy or sympathy.  Hopefully, inspiration will come and help with the situation at hand.

This verse from Shakespeare was used to end the meditation:

My Bounty is as boundless as the sea

My love is deep

The more I give to thee

The more I have

for both are infinite

Blessings on our work and on our striving to tap into our full human potential both as parents and educators.