Example is the Greatest Teacher

We have very few rules in our family. We call it our “way”, like Bushido is to the Samurai. It’s a practice based on our ethos, rather than a set of rules to adhere to. Rules serve no purpose on the path to enlightenment or self actualization.

My wife and I are deliberate in all that we do. If we did something, we did it with deliberate intention and purpose. We explore tons of possibilities. From those new discoveries, we gain a broad spectrum of adventures and opportunities to choose from. We decide what type of lifestyle or experience we want. Then we simply dive in and go for it, believing it will come together as we step out in faith.

We also leave plenty of space for our priorities and desires to evolve. We shift from country to country, continent to continent, beach to jungle, whenever we feel drawn to a new adventure.

Our home is the energy of love we carry with us, no matter where we happen to dwell.

We live freely. We travel frequently, typically to exotic places. We are adventurers. We believe our greatest education comes from living a full life, not from attending an institution. We believe in seizing the day and “sucking the marrow out of life”. And we do it. Every day.

The popular dream of stability, safety, security, low risk and being comfortable is not a dream we share. We want to experience true awe, wonder and the mystery of humanity, the earth and the vastness of the universe. We want to connect with people and understand them. We want to learn and be inspired from their stories.

I want to experience failures so I can learn from them and grow closer to my true self in the process of recovering. I want to learn to give myself grace when it happens.

I want to discover ways to be a better human. I want to go where there is mystery. I want to experience the rawness and deep beauty of humanity. I strive for an exponential evolution towards self actualization.

We’ve packed far more life into our mid 30s than most people do in their entire lives. And we’re just getting started. Now we’ve shed the fear of the mysterious. We’ve learned how to let go and flow with the universal love that is working in our favor at all times. All we have to do is stay out of the way and maintain a constant perspective of gratitude. Not just for the extraordinary, but for everything.

Everything, in our eyes, is a miracle. Everything.

It certainly doesn’t always go smoothly, but we understand what’s happening when it doesn’t and we’re able to step off the ledge with more ease and grace for ourselves each time.

We’re all-natural. We eat organic and absolutely love what we eat. And if we want to go out and eat ice cream for dinner, we do. It doesn’t happen that often, but when the urge hits, why not? We appreciate it so much when we do.

We’re fit. We give our bodies lots of love. Lots of yoga and meditation and healthy living. And we focus on happiness, not rules or status or achievements, and certainly not on what other people think about us. Most people think we’re nuts. And if we were gauging our distance from the status quo, I’d say that’s probably an accurate assessment.

No one in my family ever had any desire to fit into the status quo. Nor have we ever been in any danger of accidentally ending up there.

We don’t have it all figured out. And we definitely have our struggles. That’s part of the deal. We allow those periods to act as the chrysalis process the leads us to our truest selves. We have a worldview perspective, based on decades of first hand experience of a multitude of geographic locations and cultures. We’ve lived a lot and we know what we want, and how to get it.

We’ve spent a large portion of our lives diligently working to unlearn the fallacies and misguided priorities we had assumed as truths in the first stages of our lives. We’ve been stripping ourselves of fear and judgment. And we continue that shedding every day.

We also understand that the likelihood of manifesting our ideal lifestyle is equal to our wiliness to let go of the desire to control it into existence.

So we practice letting go of the desire and habit of control. We practice intentional responding, rather than reacting to the world. And we value happiness, relationships and the quest for self actualization above all else.

Parenting is the most challenging experience a human can ever choose to do with excellence. Not perfection, but lots of love, care, kindness and patience. If you want to raise happy, loving, extraordinary children, there are a lot of implications involved.

The choice to be a parent should be tantamount to the choice to live your life as an example of love, amplifying it through everyone you encounter. We want to raise children that believe in the same basic principles we do, and that are free of the debilitating fear that plagues so much of the world.

We are setting the example for our children whether we intend to or not. But just like any other aspect of our lives, we are very deliberate about this privilege.

Of all our efforts to contribute to a more loving, peaceful and interconnect world, I’ve come to realize that our greatest altruistic act is to raise children that exemplify love, kindness and interconnectedness.

My role as a parent is not to raise a child that merely conforms and contributes to the status quo. And achieving control or domination over my child certainly isn’t the goal. I’m not trying to win anything, from my children, or society.

If I want my children to be free of the shackles of fear and to exemplify love, kindness and interconnectedness and lead an extraordinary life, I must set the example. Despite all my efforts, I know they will learn much more from my actions than they ever will from my words.

It is not my rules, nor my ability to control them that will inspire them into these enlightened beings. It is my actions, and ultimately my example that will truly mold them.

*Incidentally, our daughter’s name is Saoirse Sky Angaza. Saoirse is the Gaelic term for “freedom”. That’s her, pictured above at Nakomis beach in Florida this past January.

The post Example is the Greatest Teacher appeared first on JaredAngaza.com.