If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.
[...]
‘Honor your father and mother,’
and
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
—Matthew 19:17-19
Ram Dass once said, “If you think you’re enlightened, spend a week with your family.” What he meant, of course, is that the pursuit of enlightenment in isolation is one thing, but revisiting the root of early traumas and triggers is a different story. Going back to spend two weeks living at home recently was a good check-in to see where I’m at along the enlightenment journey. I’m certainly not there yet, but I am much closer than I’ve been in the past.
My first reaction to reading the Bible quote above was something like, “Well, that’s easier for you to say, Jesus. Your father was an all-loving God and your mother was a virgin who seemed like a very nice lady! You never had to deal with any kind of physically abusive father or crack-addict mother. Who are you to be the authority on parent-child relationships?”
(For the record, my own parents were not physically abusive or crack addicts. I simply used extreme examples for anyone else struggling to relate to this topic.)
After thinking it through, I realized that regardless of whether or not you think your parents deserve to be honored, harboring negative feelings toward anyone is detrimental to your own well-being, especially your parents, who were supposed to love you the way you’d hoped for but instead bumped and bruised you in various ways. But if you can get over any hurdle to honoring them, big or small—recognizing they gave you life and made you who you are—then that might just be the key to your ultimate liberation.
This shift is also the biggest step toward loving your neighbor, and, therefore, being able to navigate the world without the kinds of negative reactions that plague us when dealing with people who trigger us.
It’s not your job to change your parents but to be able to honor them for who they are.
It’s not your job to change your neighbor but to be able to love them for who they are.
Because ultimately, these things help you to live a more peaceful life for yourself.