Becoming Conscious

Exploring the significance of Conscious Conception, Mindful Parenting, and Living Consciously for the New Age

About

This space features primarily the works initiated and facilitated by Viji & Chitra, volunteer resource persons and facilitators for BhāratShakti. Their writings do not stem from a place of subject expertise, but carry the freshness of learners, seekers and fellow travellers on the path of Integral Yoga. The Blog – Conceive with Awareness – features reflections on:

Conscious Conception
Pregnancy in the light of Integral Yoga
Parenthood as an inner journey
The Mother’s guidance on education before birth
Sri Aurobindo’s vision of human evolution
The spiritual significance of welcoming a soul into earthly life

We invite you to explore, read and reflect on these offerings with awareness, sincerity and love. Perhaps the greatest preparation we can make for a child is not only what we are able to provide, but the kind of human beings we are becoming. May every new beginning be guided by Sincerity, Aspiration and Grace.

Inspiration – Words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Conscious Conception – The Mother

Significance of Mother’s Aspiration and Will

Welcoming a Soul

What is Conscious Conception

Featured Blogs

Why Conscious Conception Matters Today?

There are ideas that remain relevant in every age. Some of them become even more meaningful as time goes by. Conscious Conception is one such idea. At first, the question may seem unnecessary. Why should we speak about Conscious Conception today? After all, children have been born for thousands of years. Every generation has welcomed new life with hope, love and dreams for the future. Parents have always wanted the very best for their children. What has changed?

Perhaps it is not only the way we bring children into the world, but the world into which we are bringing them. If we look around us, we can see how much humanity has progressed… Our lives have certainly become more convenient. But have we become more conscious? This is not to say that our times are worse than earlier times. Every age has its achievements. Every age has its difficulties too.

The question is not whether humanity has progressed. It certainly has. But has our inner growth kept pace with our outer progress?

Preparing Ourselves Before Preparing the Nursery

When a baby is expected, we naturally begin to prepare. Lists are made. Appointments are scheduled. Books on parenting are purchased. The tiny clothes are chosen with extraordinary care. The room is cleaned. A cradle is brought home. A thousand little things are thought of before the baby arrives.

There is something beautiful about this preparation. It is love taking practical form. We want everything to be ready. We want the child to be safe, comfortable, healthy and well cared for.

But while we are preparing everything for the baby, what about preparing ourselves? What about the person who will be caring for the child? We prepare the nursery. We prepare the clothes. We prepare the medical arrangements. But how often do we pause to prepare ourselves?

Not to become perfect parents. Not to know every answer. Not to eliminate every weakness before a child arrives. But simply to become a little more conscious of the person we are. This is where The Mother’s teaching becomes remarkably direct. She tells us that the first thing necessary for educating a child is “to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself.”

Living Consciously with Sincerity over intensity; progress over perfection

Is sincerity an important value in spiritual life or in daily life? As per Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, there is no difference between the two.

Sincerity is like Meera’s song of love to Krishna, intensity is Chanakya’s speech on politics. Both have their place in the world of magnanimity and greatness but one is a slow burning of the wick and the other is the flame that surges bright as the wick supports one last time.

When living consciously is our goal, where our purpose is to bring in awareness into each second of our life, to be vigilant of our actions and the words we speak, to be attentive to the thoughts that take up our mind space, to be careful of our reactions to others, irrespective of their behaviour, we typically have a social, moral or at best an ethical standard and peg our thoughts, actions and progress on those parameters.

However, if we are to go by the Mother’s teachings on a lasting and enduring change in the way we live, not sudden and short-lived, then we may wish to adopt the Divine way and not the limited human method; what do we mean?

Learning to be a parent

If A taught me parenting through byte sized lessons and examples, D threw challenges at me every now and then to test how my learning was going…

But A and D are not the only ones that taught me how to be a mom – even a tolerable one. There were many inspirations along the way, they may not all be perfect human beings in all the roles they play, but the way they navigate a phase of life or an incident, or the values they live by become inspiring rungs of the ladder of your own life as you watch and learn….

But the most precious lessons are saved for the last. The lesson to value relationships over ambitions, to put sincere attempts above outcomes especially when it comes to kids, to note the improvements not the comparisons, to learn what triggers act up for me and my children and exercise maturity for both sides when handling difficult situations, finally as the Mother has said, the best way to teach a child is to be the example that they can emulate; these I am still trying and hopefully getting better at.

There are many failed days, when my expectations rise above their efforts, when my frustrations are too evident to hide and their mistakes want to hide behind lies, but luckily there is the Mother to both my kids and me who watches over us and teaches us how to be. To her we go, when life gets too much and sit down to learn one more lesson.