Reflecting on Birth and Silence

When my son was born I was the first to see his head emerge. It was a water birth and I was the only witness to this  moment. In the days and months that have followed the birth I have revisited the moments of that day, reflecting on how it went and what it meant.

When my son emerged and laid on his mother’s breast, vocalizing his first sounds with the sweet, robust cries of purpose, my heart raced through a storm of emotions and my breathing barely could keep up. All I could muster were heaving cries with the mysterious, powerful energies triggered by the genesis of life. A holy trinity was born in that moment – a son was born and in being born gave birth to a mother and father.

I can’t articulate much of the feelings coursing through me at my son’s birth. This makes sense since I too was born at his birth, experiencing a new world of being. The old world was washed over with new rains, my vision immersed in strange waters, and any articulation retreated to the twilight of our mingled creation.

The absence of words serves a great purpose: it sharpens the receptive sensibilities. Words and any kind of projection  muddy the waters of sublime experience. There are moments that deserve our best silence. Those moments need to remain in the emergent state, never quite arriving, when the only sign we seek is the breath, telling us that life is present. And that is enough.

With pronounced receptivity we glean the whispers of illumination contained in hidden rooms of silence.

Yet, there’s more.

If we persist in our deference to the silence we may hear the invitation by more silent forces that reside within our being. Our own lives and the living of it take on added nuance and meaning, and to us are revealed previously unknown aspects of our being that can inspire us through their revelations.

For the same reason, and by similar dynamics, great visual art remains wordlessly compelling, and yet its story can be told, or even better, new ones created, for centuries and millenia by the observers that choose to tell them.

The art, much like the life-changing experience and the memories that follow, remains in silence – watching, observing, looking for the sign of life, and no more. It knows better than that.

Learning to Listen Again

Solomon is a zen baby. He is always at peace, quietly immersed in his moments of being a baby. Caroline and I find parenting very easy because of Solomon’s lovely disposition and our teamwork (although, I have to admit that our teamwork is 85% Caroline, 15% percent me, and 100% Solomon).

Last week, however, on August 23rd, Solomon was anything but peaceful. The morning went smoothly as usual. I was in my home office working and Caroline was upstairs mothering Solomon. At some point, don’t know when, early afternoon I’m guessing, Solomon could not be put down in his baby rocker without him crying in fits of agitation. Only when he was in his mother’s arms or mine was he ok. This continued throughout the entire day into the night.

At around 3:30pm on that afternoon my mother called to ask if I had heard about the earthquake in NY, where she lives. I hadn’t. Even though I work online I had not checked out any news.

‘It scared me,’ she said, with the anxiety still obvious in her voice. ‘It was a 5.9.’

I quickly went to news site and sure enough there was a quake that rocked D.C., New York, even as far north as Boston. I had no idea.

I hung up the phone after our talk and continued working. Later, well into the night, I joined Caroline and Solomon. The baby was still in fits, but only when Caroline attempted to put him down.

It then struck me that the possibility of Solomon in some way sensing the disturbance of the earthquake was behind his extreme agitation. I cannot, of course, say this with 100% certainty but I don’t believe in coincidences. And if animals can sense subtle energetic shifts and disturbances, even before an actual event, then who’s to say Solomon didn’t.

In fact, I believe we all have this innate sense of things that fall outside of the realm of 5-sensory perception. And through many factors, which can be summed up as the distracting, disruptive elements of modern living, we become disconnected from our intuition. Intuition can atrophy if not tapped and exercised regularly.

However, intuition can be revived in us as well. Time, commitment, diligence, and open-mindedness are needed but it can happen. I should know, because I had to learn, or re-learn, to listen in this way again. Yet, I too fall into the dizzying pace of modernity so that I grow relatively insensible to more subtle transferences of thought and energy.

My intuitive sense is always strongest whenever I live, or at least remain for a time, in the country in the midst of natural surroundings. It is more than the quiet and ease of being among the denizens of Nature. I believe that more than the physical surroundings, it is the spiritual or energetic womb which make me more predisposed to subtle receptivity and non-sensory awareness and communication. Being closer to my origin of being in terms of the pristine energetic web of consciousness woven among the trees, flowing waters, uncultivated earth, and wild animals bring me into closer  touch with that part of me that breathed, and still does, before this earth-bound life.

Essentially, I am born again in Nature, an infant in perpetuity. Solomon, like all children, represent the wild and free in all of us who have grown up and maybe lost touch. I learn, and more often remember, so much from observing Solomon and imbibing the pure waters of his life. He reminds me what it means to live in the moment, to see, hear, and absorb each falling grain of time’s sand with total wide-eyed awareness and receptivity.

I am revived and learning to listen again.

The Soul of Solomon

In the 3 months since my son, Solomon, was born I have learned so much from him. Witnessing his being and his growth, day by day, moment to moment, there is no shortage of wonder and inspiration.

Caroline and I celebrate his smallest achievements – ‘Look how he grabbed the cloth with 2 hands!’; ‘Listen! He’s mimicking the sound of the crow!’; ‘He’s holding his head up on his own!’; ‘He coos so beautifully!’.

Wonders never cease and our amazement grows with every loving notice of his unfolding. Solomon, I noticed, has an awareness and understanding of what he beholds that are clearly communicated through his eyes. I sense his knowing. I recognize its feel. While true that he does not have the verbal language skills to express his thoughts, they, with his communication, are no less keen.

It’s up to me to attune my hearing, my listening, to open wider my receptivity to the language and song of his soul. Because it’s there – the words may not be, but the meaning is; the lyric may not be heard, but the poetry is being written; the melody may yet remain unformed, but the rhythm can be felt.

Solomon is teaching me to listen again; to feel again; to see again. He’s teaching me to feel my way through the sea of silence, to see the sun in its depths, to move fluidly, with grace, in the liquid stillness. In his presence, tomorrow has no meaning; only the moment is present while the eternal remains our domain. Heaven comes alive in ways that no book, no church, no god can come even close to offering.

Solomon’s life, his soul, are his alone; and mine I give freely, willingly, for him. My heart overflows with the inundation of unspeakable love, its overflow pours from my eyes, and my seeing feels born again.

As I celebrate his accomplishments I learn that life is more than just having big dreams and big achievements and going after them; it’s more about recognizing what you have, what you are and being at peace with it. I still have aspirations, it’s just that I’ve learned to accept all things as they are.

Solomon’s soul crystallizes the wisdom whispered to me by Spirit. The unmanifest is made manifest, the ineffable finds expression, and the dark becomes the light through the soul of Solomon.

How To Relieve Infants of Colic

As an awe-struck, first-time Father for only 3 weeks I am experiencing all the unimaginable new joys and challenges of Fatherhood. My partner, Caroline, and I are as much newborns as our beautiful son and together the 3 of us are weathering the changes of a life in transition.

One thing, however, that neither one of us was prepared for, in spite of advisories shared by others to help us prepare for it, is the issue of colic in our son. Endless crying — I mean those cries of pain that will cause your system to flood with the most intense feelings of sympathy, sadness and fear for your little one — keeps us awake all night or constantly pacing during daytime and can be a big source of pain and stress for both baby and parents.

We went in search of a remedy for colic. And we found one that works.

As to the causes of colic it can be a combination of things:

1) A newborn’s digestive system right after birth is not fully developed and most likely will experience gas.

2) Feeding too fast can cause a baby to gulp air along with the breast milk (we choose natural feeding over formula).

3) Mother’s diet – foods eaten by the Mother that produce gas in the newborn are:

• cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, etc)
• dairy products (milk, cheese, ice cream, etc)
• legumes (beans and bean products)
• citrus fruits and juices
• wheat
• strawberries
• peanuts
• soy products

4)  Crying – the baby’s crying due to gas pains will cause more air to be swallowed, and therefore, more gas.

So we can see from the causes that there are preventive measures that we can take, namely, changes in diet. But what if you’ve made the necessary changes to your diet and the baby still is colicky?

There is a remedy that TRULY works!

It’s a homeopathic remedy called Colic Calm and it has helped restore peace, comfort, and joy for our precious child (and for us!).

The (active) ingredients it contains:

• chamomile
• fennel
• caraway
• ginger
• peppermint
• lemon balm
• aloe
• blackthorn
• vegetable carbon

It has a reported success rate of 95% (100% for us, so far) and is totally free of side effects (We have found ZERO complaints and ZERO reports of side effects from parents online).

I’ve read that it can also help with hiccups (my Son gets frequent hiccups and, yes, Colic Calm works on hiccups!) and can even help when the Child starts teething (we’ll see about that soon enough).

If you are dealing with a colicky baby then -
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND COLIC CALM!
(I’ve read that it can help adults who have acid reflux, indigestion, and gas).

How To Restore Human Familyhood

Have you noticed how many  in the West, in your neighborhood, in your memories, have identified paternal siblings as ‘half-brother’ half-sister’, while identifying maternal siblings as brother and sister and non-blood related ones as ‘step-brother,’ ‘step sister’?

Now let’s widen the circles of relation to all Humans – do we view one another as family or as unrelated strangers? Do we form bonds with one another based on our shared Humanity or do we remain divided amongst ourselves in national and tribal clusters?

Could this be a reflection of something buried deep in the western subconscious within which traditionally resides a conception of god as ‘Father’ not ‘Mother’?

Could our ascribing to ‘God the Father’ the virtues intrinsic to Motherhood, like nurturing and compassionate, be as warped in its effects as a father attempting to breastfeed a baby? Could it be that by restoring the Motherhood of Creator we might restore the intimate bonds of family among all peoples?

And if so, if this possibility, however remote, could be realized according to its imagined potential, the potential that incubates within the balancing grace and compassion inherent in Mother, then doesn’t it become necessary to include the recognition and participation of the Feminine Aspect of Creator??

For this to happen we Humans must allow ‘God’ to evolve. Due to our static view of Source, that which we have come to identify as the creative Principle (or Person) behind all that is, ‘God’ has not fulfilled His greatest potential – and that is Her!

Surely, if ‘God’ were a person, ‘God’ would not be too pleased that the same old issues and derivatives of fear, selfishness, and greed abound in human conditions and transactions. History and myth speak clearly and convincingly on this in an abundance of cautionary tales  but we do not heed their warnings. I have to believe that ‘God’ as ‘Person’ feels torn – having all this wasted potential of healing and creative power to apply effectively to the world’s ills and not fulfilling its need and desire for full expression. This creates internal schism, tension, and war.

This is why I cannot subscribe in any way to the beliefs or system of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism whose externalizations of the internal, and reverence for these externalizations, are easily confused as the substance of spiritual expression. Externalizations, synonymous with objectification and personification, run the extreme risk of our reflections of them being only as deep and alive as our perceptions of them, thus rendering us the same as our ideas of personages and events which are almost always a projection of our own conceptions.

Therefore, when I say we must allow ‘God’ to evolve it is exactly as stated because ‘God’, whatever our personal conception of this idea, is the externalization of our highest ideals. ‘God’ can go only as high and as far as we allow and doing so might free us and lighten us enough to give higher loft to our ideals and greater depth to our actions.

Symbiotically, ‘God’s’ ascension becomes our own in a mutual yield of love, grace, and compassion which is simply yet most truthfully measured by our actions toward women, children, men, animals, plants, lands, waters, and skies and all phenomena related to each. Setting forth clear principle, clear actions and policies will follow.

We, better yet, I, must examine, re-examine, and revisit the beliefs, constructs, and agreements I have accepted and nurtured throughout life as these serve as markers by which I can examine my defining self. Doing so makes it possible for someone else to do the same, not in the same way or to the same exact conclusion yet with harmony of spirit and intention. Doing so will make it possible for us to call one another ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ sincerely and fruitfully through Mother and Father and Grandmother and Grandfather.