I'm Oprah Winfrey.
Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
It's not a surprise that I was so excited about Dr. Shefali Sabari's work.
Turns out she was deeply influenced by Eckhart Tolle.
An award-winning author and clinical psychologist.
Shefali's East Meets West approach is the perfect melding of her life experiences.
She was born in Mumbai in 1972, where spirituality, or consciousness, is just a way of life.
When she turned 21, she came to the US where she pursued her dream of studying psychology, eventually earning a PhD at Columbia University.
Afterwards, she opened a private practice in New York City, where she still resides today.
She's been married to Oz, a pilot, since 2000 and they are conscious parents to 11-year-old Maya, who Shefali says is her greatest teacher.
Today, Shefali works with families around the world, sharing her new way of thinking about this age-old topic.
She is the author of three books including, of course, The Conscious Parent truly one of the most profound books on parenting I've ever read.
I have not been this excited about about a book since I think A New Earth was the last time I was this excited about what can happen to transform people's lives.
I started reading The Conscious Parent Although I'm not a parent before I finished the first chapter.
I was calling.
I was just literally thinking about who do I know?
Who do I know that has a child?
Who do I know that has a child?
And passed out the book to all of them, so that they too could start to see what you're trying to message to the world.
So first of all, congratulations.
I think this book is so important.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It means a lot that we can now take this message forward.
So what does it mean to be a conscious parent?
A conscious parent is not one who seeks to fix her child or seek to produce or create the perfect child.
This is not about perfection.
The conscious parent understands that this journey has been undertaken.
This child has been called forth to raise the parent itself, to show the parent where the parent yet has to grow.
This is why we call our children into our lives.
Wow.
You know, on Super Soul Sunday we use the word conscious and consciousness interchangeably with spiritual and interchangeably, I think consciousness awareness, spirituality are all the same.
Yes.
Is that what you're talking about?
Definitely.
As a parent however, it becomes slightly different, because the parent-child relationship, I think, is like none other.
It's like none other.
Because what other relationship will bring you to the core of your ego like the one you have with your child?
I mean, children will trigger us like no one else because They are ours.
My child, I will be a parent.
I'm going to be the best mother.
You know, we enter the journey thinking that our children will fulfill this idealized version of ourselves.
And every time they do that, we applaud them.
But every time they fall short of that, that's when we get triggered and we get activated.
But what our children are really doing is showing us a mirror to our undeveloped self.
I love this quote.
Just on page two.
We're not even in the book yet.
We're just on page two.
When you parent, it's crucial you realize you aren't raising a mini me, but a spirit throbbing with its own signature.
Wow.
That's a wower.
Yes.
That's a wower.
Because we do.
We not only want them to represent ourselves, we want them to represent the best of ourselves.
We even say you're representing this family.
You are representing.
But the self that we haven't even become.
So we're calling on our children to represent a piece of us that hasn't even developed yet.
And we place on them the burden to fulfill our deepest longing.
And that longing really is our own longing to enter wholeness.
So that's what our children begin mirroring back to us.
Mommy, Daddy, become whole.
Mommy, Daddy, see me the way you were never seen, perhaps.
Mommy, Daddy, attune to me.
But how can we do that when we ourselves weren't attuned to, you know?
But we project onto our children that which we hope for ourselves, that which we want for ourselves.
But isn't that supposed to be?
Isn't that we've been trained in our culture and all the cultures?
Really, that that's what being a parent is.
People even say this with such nobleness, I want my child to have a better life than I did.
Yes, but we're coming from the state of scarcity.
And we don't realize it, that this state of inadequacy and scarcity that we put on our children contours them into meeting our vision but divorces them from who it is they are meant to be.
Yes.
I get that.
So they never get to enter their own becoming.
Well, I want, in this book you say, to throw a life preserver to parents who are just trying to survive.
And as a psychologist, you see parents all the time who are really hanging by.
They don't even have the life preserver.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's one of the most challenging tasks we can ever take on, because parenting is this complex.
It's the coming together of so many different worlds, of so many dualities.
It's the nexus of The doing and the being.
You've got to do.
You have to do.
You have to enroll them in school.
You have to go buy their diapers.
You have to change their nappies.
You have to feed them and take care of them.
Wake up at night.
So the doing preoccupies you.
But then you realize that in order to meet the spirit of the infant, in order to meet the raging tantrums of a toddler, you have to become into being.
So the doing and the being are constantly colliding in this world.
In order to meet that spirit throbbing with its own signature.
Yes.
Yes.
But you say, page four.
I'm not going to go through every page in the book, okay?
But you say it's no surprise that we actually fail to tune into our children's essence, which is what we talk about on Super Soul Sunday all the time about being present, being present, being fully in the present moment.
You say it's no surprise that we fail to tune into our children's essence.
How can we listen to them when so many of us barely listen to ourselves?
That's really what this book is about.
That is really what this book is about that we have all begun living lives betraying our inner self.
We've just divorced ourselves from this notion of wholeness.
We believe we are incomplete, and it is this legacy that we keep passing on to our children.
I'm going to read this next quote and you all can see why.
When I read this, that's when I said okay, I got to talk to this woman and then let's get this book, and then let's get 12 more books, and then let's share it with everybody.
I know.
Traditionally, you say on page six, parenthood has been exercised in a manner that's hierarchical.
The parent governs from the top down.
After all, isn't this the child, our lesser, to be transformed by us as the more knowledgeable party?
Now, I read that and I thought, well, I think that's what we all think parenting is.
There's a hierarchy.
You know, I remember hearing my father say, I brought you into this world and I'll take you out.
I mean, there is a hierarchy, is there not?
But this is where the ego and the essence come so intermingled in this journey.
Yes, colloquially, we are in charge of our children and we are in control of them.
We can hold that role to carry out the duties, to keep them safe, to provide for our children.
But in terms of meeting the spiritual essence of our children, we have to drop the role.
We have to drop the hierarchy.
Well, you say, if you want to enter into a state of pure connection with your child, you can achieve this by setting aside any sense of superiority.
By not hiding behind an egoic image, you will be able to engage your child as a real person like yourself.
Now I read that and even as I speak those words, I know that there are those of you who are like, don't turn the channel, yet who are like this is the craziest thing I've ever heard.
This sounds as absurd to people who not only discipline their children and maybe some of them physically discipline their children but the fact that you're saying that we should not be raising our children from a hierarchical point of view.
Well then, who's in charge?
Right.
So we're entering with this premise that we need to be in charge, because if we aren't in charge then our children will become feral and run amok and burn the house on fire.
Well, what kind of children are you going to have if you're not in charge?
Wild and chaotic for sure.
So that is the old paradigm.
And as long as we stay stuck in that old paradigm, that belief system, the false belief that, unless tethered to authority, our children will not develop into the beings they're meant to be, then we will continue to see the dysfunction that we see in our world today.
Okay.
So do you think most parents are parenting unconsciously?
Yes, but I say this without judgment, because I believe all of us are striving to reach a state of consciousness.
And the state of consciousness is not a destination that has an endpoint.
Right.
It's this constant uncovering.
Unfolding.
Yes.
So, with every conflict with your child, with every argument, with every eye roll that your child engages in, you have an opportunity to either step into your egoic control and power and dominance and hierarchy, or you have a chance to look within, ask what in me is being triggered?
Why am I reacting with this confused helplessness, this desire to seek control and turn the mirror inward?
Ask what about me?
Is my child triggering right now?
What about me?
What about my childhood?
What about my unmothered self?
Is my child reflecting back?
Because that's what your children will do.
They will bring up all your stuff.
Well, actually, all your intimate relationships do.
And there's nothing more intimate than your relationship with your child.
And you can't really walk away and divorce them too fast.
So in this relationship, we are bound by sacred duty to look at our issues.
And what better platform and to what greater service than to free our children from the burden of fixing us?
And you say that the child never needs fixing.
Well, that just sounds like radical, crazy talk.
Yeah, it does, because there are some children that we see that are you know, they appear to be out of control, they're unmanageable, they're disrespectful, they've lost their way.
Yeah, so how can you say that the child never needs fixing?
So let me qualify that, because many people who first hear of this approach they they take it to mean some laissez faire crunchy granola, let your child just go.
Crazy approach.
On the contrary, this approach is a hands-on, fully present approach.
Constant.
Constant.
But you're bringing your full-on attunement and presence.
Yeah.
So when I say you don't have to fix you... It means you're not tuning out as a parent.
Yeah.
So you're not entering the dynamic with this desire to fix, control and produce, because all those manifestations are of the ego.
You're entering to align, to attune, to create conditions for your children to thrive, for sure, but never with the model that I'm here to project my insecurities, my inadequacies and my desires for greatness onto the child.
So it's a separation of the egoic ideals to the essential ideals.
You said you don't fix your child, you create the condition for them to rise.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, that's so hard.
That's hard.
But when you come from your own connection to wholeness and when you come from your own striving for greater consciousness, you will understand that striving in your child.
So even a mistake or a gross, chaotic error that your child may make, you know, maybe they do.
God forbid smoke pot.
You understand it for what it's telling you.
Beneath the surface manifestation, You see their call for help.
You see their striving for wholeness because it's a mirror of your own striving.
You don't see it as evil.
You don't see it as anything that needs to be fixed.
Or as making you look bad.
Oh, yeah.
That's what a lot of parents do.
Now look what you've done.
Yeah.
Yes.
Because we are projecting always how other people view us and how we want to be looked at in the eyes of others.
So our children don't want to live those lives, though.
Our children want to be free of that.
Our children want to discover their essence without the burden of having to please us all the time.
You say, shouldn't put that much emphasis on grades.
Yes.
Because when we focus academics and learning and the wonder of curiosity and we pile it all into a letter grade And we teach our children that that's what the striving needs to be for.
About that grade.
About that outcome.
Then they've lost the magic of the entire process.
And we all tout and say that it's the process we care about and we care about our children being engaged learners.
But we have a whole society.
I mean, the whole school system is set up on who gets the grade.
Absolutely.
And it's just a disservice that we're doing to them.
We are disengaging them from the learning process.
They hate going to school.
School has become this cutthroat competition.
And we are part of this and we need to take responsibility for ourselves, because we always cop out and say, you know, but the schools put pressure and then my kid will not feel good at school.
The school does what the school needs to do.
It's our energy that we need to curtail and take care of.
And do we buy into this?
Do we buy into this cultural flow says we all need to achieve and be super successful in a prescribed way, or can we teach our children you can be super successful if and only when you are attuned to your inner being and give that message constantly?
My daughter never saw a report card till she was in fifth grade, till she demanded to see what other children were talking about because it was not part of the equation.
Wow,
When I speak to her teachers, they rarely pull out any tests because they know me by now.
And we just talk about her as a spirit.
And how is she with friends and does she help, and does she engage, and is she alive?
But are you using those grades as markers to see how she's doing?
You know, certainly.
You know, certainly as markers, but only as markers.
Yeah.
It's sometimes a marker for what you don't know.
Sometimes it could just be a marker for what your teacher wanted to hear and you didn't give her.
So it could be a moment in time.
It could be a relapse of your presence in that moment.
It could be bad test taking.
It could be a failure of just bringing all your energy to that moment in time.
It's a moment in time.
I always ask the question, did you do the best you could?
Yes.
Did you do the best you could?
Did you try your best?
Yeah.
And my daughter automatically says, you know, I tried my best.
So what more can you ask?
Did they show up to the best of their consciousness?
Did they show up?
And I don't even need an answer to that.
For sure, every child shows up to the best of their consciousness.
Yes.
So if you have a child who isn't showing up to the best of their consciousness, it isn't a lot of parents, I think, try to fix all of the problems, all of the disconnection, all of the lack of engagement on their part and their children's part with that grade.
If I can just get the grade right.
Yes.
Yeah.
We have driven our children into the state of madness, into the state of disconnect.
We've beaten them down with this ideal of perfection that only the A grade makes them valid as students, valid as learners and valid as human beings.
Without the A grade, they are invalid.
And then we wonder why our children don't get up and bounce off to school, because we've made them hate the process of learning now.
And isn't the whole point of the parent-child journey to remain as connected as possible?
Isn't the whole point of that?
We say that, right?
So if you ask any parent, what is your goal for your child?
What do most parents say?
Oh, I just want them to be happy.
I've heard that about as many times as you've heard it.
I just want my child to be happy.
That's what people say.
What does that mean?
If we've affixed our sense of happiness to wealth and status and achievement and where you go to college and how you look, the minute one of those pillars topple, You're not happy anymore.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
So that's what most people are most afraid of.
Underneath the external.
Yeah.
So what most parents really want is I want you to be happy honey.
As long as it fits within the form,
All the sanctioned ideals.
That I have.
Yes.
I've bought into.
That I've bought into.
And sold my soul to.
Yeah.
And if you don't, we're all going to be in deep waters because it is terrifying.
That's the message we give our children.
It is terrifying to be without these external barometers of success.
And so I have adults in therapy in their 40s and 50s terrified when they're facing Bankruptcy or a divorce or life throws a curve at them because they believe they will be nothing and they're so afraid to confront that emptiness.
But little realizing that just beneath emptiness is the vast expanse of their spirit.
So let's talk about some of the most common unconscious mistakes that parents make.
They pay more attention to electronic devices than their children.
It's so interesting.
We were just sitting with some friends before this conversation and someone who had just read this book who had just read it, like this past weekend was talking about taking on some of the ideas that you shared And, driving her daughter home from school, decided not to engage on the phone that normally she would be saying shh, this is office calling and put her phone down for the entire drive home.
And her daughter said, mom, you didn't use your phone the whole time.
Isn't that amazing?
Such a simple yet profound shift in her energy changed the way her daughter met her and how her daughter felt valued by her.
You know, how do we communicate worthiness to our children?
Only through our presence, our full-on, engaged, attuned presence.
It's so hard to be of empty mind and just meet where our children are.
Meet them exactly where they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To enter their space.
And so many parents, I can see, but I can see why.
Because parents are exhausted.
It's the most exhausting job there is.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
But it's not only because we're physically exhausted and financially drained.
It's because we have been conditioned to be so attached to egoic agendas.
So even if we are like, oh, I'm so sorry.
I see that you're crying.
We're thinking, why are you crying?
You shouldn't be crying.
Let's stop crying.
Let's fix it.
What can I do to fix it?
We have this tape constantly in our the worrying tape in our mind that keeps us from entering the moment.
So our children more than any show us that unless we enter.
We will betray them and they will manifest that betrayal.
They will manifest that betrayal.
They will either, you know, slip away from themselves.
They will engage in other things to fill their inner void.
They will show us their disconnect.
They will show us.
Okay.
So how...
As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking parents are listening and saying so.
You're blaming us for the child's behavior.
So the child slips away and they end up on drugs or they end up losing themselves or whatever.
And that is the parent's fault.
Is it always the parent's fault?
Well, it's no one's fault.
Everyone is striving towards consciousness.
So is that child who's on drugs.
So we do not reprimand that child who's on drugs.
We enter the as is.
My child is now on drugs.
But see it as a call and a striving to enter their deepest self.
And perhaps wake up to where we may have missed the signposts along the way.
What within us didn't connect to our child's call for help, to their plea for help.
All right.
So one of the things you say, too, is that we expect our children to live out our dreams.
And we were listening to my friend Urania talking about my goddaughter Kylie, who has been taking tennis lessons since she was four.
And just this past week, her mom was saying, you're always late for tennis.
Let's get your racket.
And she just turned to her mom and said, I hate tennis.
I really hate tennis.
And she says...
But you never said that before.
She goes, I've been trying to tell you.
I hate tennis.
And you know how they tell us?
They tell us because they don't practice.
They tell us because they're not ready on time.
They tell us because they forget their racket at home.
And we just keep thinking, oh, they forgot their racket.
Or, oh, I just need to get on them harder to practice.
But our children are screaming, no, I have a resistance to this thing that you're imposing on me.
Can you please hear me?
Step back and tune in.
Hey, you didn't listen to my whisper and now I'm going to roar.
Yeah.
So they will roar, you know, unless they're inordinately compliant, you know.
Which is also not good.
Which is the death of the self, of the authentic self.
Okay.
I'll ask a question that Phil's made famous.
So how is this working for you with your daughter?
Oh.
Well, you know, we always teach and speak about what we most need to know.
So I have seen the rage of my ego and the force of my ego only since having my daughter.
And because she not only has rubber on her skin.
You know, some kids have tissue and they're more gentle.
She not only has rubber, she has torpedoes.
She has clearly stated since the age of two or three that you will not mess with my spirit.
You will simply not enter my territory.
And I will fight you if you do.
Such has been the roar of her spirit.
And so it's tamed my ego.
How does that show itself?
Well, just by a surrender.
I fully honor your knowing.
I get it.
You know yourself more than me.
All I have to do now is create the conditions for you to continue being aligned to you.
That's my job.
Because that's every parent's job.
Yes.
Is to help them rise.
Yes.
Yeah.
So another unconscious mistake parents make.
They make purchases rather than create experiences, you say.
Because we have learned we've been conditioned to fill our void with things.
With all things beautiful so we can feel whole and complete.
And that's what we just automatically do with our children because we love sugar.
We just think they're going to love sugar.
And we love gadgets.
We're just going to think and presume they're going to love it too.
So we just project whatever fills us is going to fill them.
But that's not the case.
Children don't come into this world longing for things.
So we kind of create this world where now they're greedy and now they want diamonds instead of sticks and stones.
But don't we have children all the time who say, I want this because my friends have it.
I mean, I see I just did a show with single moms living paycheck to paycheck and one of the guilty burdens they carry is And it's so sad to see that they're like I can't give my kids what other kids have.
I can't give my kids.
And, you know, easy for me to say what your kids really want is you.
Your kid really wants your time.
They may want the sneaker, and they may want the gadget and whatever, but what they really want is you.
And you empathize with your child for wanting what the egoic world says we should hold value on.
You know and have
And empathize with them.
But if you are unable to give that, Instead of entering a place of guilt, if we could just enter a state of full-on presence and say I will compensate through my presence, then that could be the most valuable gift you could give your child.
Your child may not realize it then, but you are building his inner sturdy foundation.
You were saying also that they discourage their children from listening to their inner voice.
Well, oh my goodness.
I don't know any parent.
Well, go ahead.
We do this all the time.
Don't be scared.
Why are you crying?
That's nothing to be scared.
You're not fat.
You're not ugly.
You're beautiful.
Smile.
Go and say hello.
Go and kiss your aunt.
She loves you.
Don't you love me?
Oh, we are just nonstop.
We don't even wait for that inner voice to emerge.
I have parents. with children as young as three and four already handing them instruments.
So I often ask them, you know, did your child say she wanted to play the cello or the trombone?
And the mother will say, no, you know, I decided that that would be a good fit.
So you know, we're not waiting for this voice to emerge because we don't place stock on it in our own lives.
You know, that voice was stolen from us.
So we just don't place value on it.
We're not doing anything wrong.
We're not mean or ill-intentioned.
We just don't place stock on it.
Every problem that you see in the external world bullying, school violence, the drug problem, youngsters binging cutting themselves all of them are an indication of a betrayal of the self, of the inner voice that was never attuned to.
So, not to place all this burden on parents, but to show them that they have this sacred responsibility, this great power, and all that needs to be done is a shift in consciousness.
All that needs to be done is putting everything on the side and entering into being.
I mean, that's all.
It's the most profound and complex thing to do.
I know.
I think that comes when you read this book.
And then you read this book and you say, ah, gee, I get that.
That makes so much sense.
But it feels esoteric.
It feels like, all right, now how do I actually put that into practice?
Right, because we so want to do something.
Yeah.
We want to go buy a medicine and buy the book of strategies and fix it.
Yes, because almost every children's book is about how to discipline your child, how to do this.
It's about managing and gaining control.
Yes.
This is the only book, this is the only book I've read about parenting or encountered about parenting in all of my years of doing The Oprah Show that talked about being capital B, with your child entering that space, of being able to align with your child's essence.
I mean, first of all, that's a whole new vocabulary.
Yes.
Yes.
And it feels like nothingness to parents.
Yes.
And therefore they resist it only because we're so habituated to fix and produce and create and do and do and stay away from our center.
You know, all this is is a call to enter our deepest selves.
That's all I'm saying, you know.
But people get threatened by it because they don't want to look within, because it's too scary a territory.
It's a landscape they've never encountered.
But how do we then meet our children's inner landscape if we don't know the signposts of our own?
I shall never forget doing a show years ago, and I think we call it the black sheep of the family.
And the expert was saying that in a majority of the cases, the person who's been labeled the black sheep or the troublemaker, whatever the family, is the child, who was the most sensitive in the family and absorbed all the energy.
Yes.
Of the shadow.
Of the shadow in the family.
Yes.
Everybody else's stuff, they absorbed and then acted out.
And acted out for the sake of the family.
For the sake of the family.
To wake up.
To be the one who clangs the bells and says, hey, something is wrong.
I'm willing to be the card bearer for that.
I love the black sheep.
I love the defiant child.
I love the oppositional child.
Because they are not willing to bow down and let be walked all over.
They're not.
They're not.
They're going to say to the world hey, Until you fix what's wrong in our system, in our environment, I will keep falling apart.
I will call you to that.
You were saying also that a lot of parents would rather see their children be wrong, or rather believe that there's something wrong with my child.
Like I got a bad one.
You know, it's like getting a car.
Oh gee, I got a bad one.
I just got a bad one.
They would rather believe that than accept that it is an inner problem for themselves.
Yes.
Our unacceptance of our children's essence, whatever that is, even if they're difficult, God forbid or even if they're challenging or what we like to call as bad.
Yes.
Every manifestation of that is an indication of where we yet have to grow.
But the tragedy is that we would rather say there was something wrong in our child than say I'm just too scared to step out of my ego.
Yeah, we'd rather say that than to leave our egos behind then drop the ego.
One of the things you say too, is that we cannot expect our children to live a more enlightened uh spiritual, life if we're not willing to go there ourselves.
That's really the the issue.
You know, our children may grow up to be spiritual and find their way, but In the moment with them, we cannot expect them to be something that we are not willing to embody fully ourselves.
So I had a father come in one day and he said, you know, I wish my son was great at something.
So I said to the father, and I take it you are great at something.
Are you great at something?
So the father said, not yet.
So I said, why don't you work on that?
You know, your child has another 40 years to catch up with you.
So why don't you work on your greatness?
So that's a classic case of projecting.
Classic case.
You say it's important to celebrate the ordinariness of our children.
Let's talk about that.
The ego says because the ego roars with inadequacy and insecurity.
The ego wants everything around it to be grand and idealized.
So even with our children, we don't want them to simply be ordinary beings, fallible human beings.
That's what we are.
We want them to be the greatest manifestation of ourselves.
So in doing that, unless they're winning the trophies and standing on the pedestals of glory, we will just seem, we will just completely not recognize them.
You know little realizing that it's in the ordinary moments of when they get up in the morning and when we help them brush their teeth, and when they bend down to tie their laces, and when they stand up straight and look at themselves in the mirror.
It's all these moment to moment instances that call for connection.
Yeah.
But we are not trained.
No.
You know, now we've just glossed over the ordinary moments.
You go through life, you go to school, you drive them to school, you pick them up and you don't notice anything.
Yeah.
Right.
So then we're just missing our children's innate wonder in their ordinariness.
But we're not trained to be attuned to that.
So we keep waiting for them to do a grand gesture, and then we see them.
And that's what every human being is looking for to be seen, to be heard and to know that they matter.
Yes, I always say the essential questions of life that we go out seeking our whole life, Am I whole?
Am I worthy?
Do I matter?
I have clients in their 50s and their 70s still asking for those questions to be answered.
They're still looking.
They're still looking.
On page 250, you say the parenting journey holds the potential to be a spiritually regenerative experience for both parent and child, where every moment is a meeting of spirits.
I mean, I got chills when I read that.
Imagine, imagine if everybody who can hear us right now, if you looked at your child's essence, their life as every moment, as a meeting of spirits.
And both parent and child appreciate that each dances on a spiritual path.
That's unique, holding hands and yet alone.
Yes.
Yes.
It's so beautiful.
Thank you for the conscious parent.
Thank you.
It's really a new way to think about parenting.
Thank you so much.
Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.
Thank you for listening.
