Will I lose my family on this path?

[Anatta]

It seems to me that as I go down this path toward enlightenment, there are considerable drawbacks.  If they only affected me, that would be one thing, if it was serving the greater good.  However, it seems that raising one's consciousness is tough on others, especially if one has a family that isn't spiritually inclined.  New behaviors or lack of old behaviors are often interpreted poorly, and there's no real way to explain, when there is no common language.  At least this is how it is in the short-term.  I'll spare the description, as I think more than a few of you know what I'm talking about, unless you need concrete examples.

I think we'll all be okay, and I'll keep working on equanimity.  We've always been a stable, happy, loving family.  And a lot of progress has been made in the last 48 hours or so toward me focusing on looking deeply at me, and not them.

But, I want to make sure I'm not doing more damage than I'm doing good, to the ones I love most dearly.  And to everyone, really.  But I have a responsibility to my family that I won't abandon.

Here's my big question.  Is enlightenment selfish?  Bliss and equanimity and all are lovely and all, but what good are they if they are only for me, and if they inadvertently cause others pain, due to them not understanding the transformation?  Remind me again what the gifts are that aren't self-serving? 

At one point, I was considering stopping the process within me, as a sacrifice to my family.  I've abandoned that idea for now, but I'm asking here, so I can come back to this thread in moments where "the greatest good for the greatest number" gets confused again.

I'm actually doing very well today, extremely well actually, but while all is quite equanimous, I thought I'd ask.

PS -- I don't know if it was purposeful, but on my darkest day a couple of days ago, I felt a lot of charisms that seemed signatures of others that seemed sent to me, as an aide.  The most obvious was a very clear auditory charism, most of the day, which I don't normally experience except in meditation.  I took that as a gift from you, Jhananda.  Thank you for being by my side, whether it was intended or not.  I was feeling very alone, and it helped to remind me that in fact I am the opposite of alone, in indescribable ways.

[Jhanananda]

Enlightenment will make you a better wife and mother, so keep going.

As for the gift of charisms. It is just what happens when you get close to a mystic.  The charisms rub off.  It can drive some people crazy, so I try to limit my exposure to contemplatives only.

[jay.validus]

Hello,

This probably sounds more grim than it really is, but it is the only way I can say it.  I know I have gone through many experiences.... the finding of this forum four months ago has helped me understand some of that experience in words.   Otherwise, I generally understand what is happening to me, where I am being guided, on an intuitive level.

Knowing where my mind has goes and how it happens is great.  A great nothingness and emptiness, which comes and destroys everything.  A powerful bliss and joy, which strangely in the past couple years is slowly dying away, but comes and goes at times now.  I am becoming a little disillusioned with the world.  Not that telepathy exists, but really listening and observing someone to get inside their head, although this is very exhausting and confusing to your own sense of self.  I generally have stopped doing this because there is too much happening in the world, there are limitations, but I leave it open when it is required.

I know I can go to the next level, but I have some great fears over doing this.  A few parts of my mind are in a great debate, to either
1) Allow this divine thing to go next level
2) Hold onto what conception of life I have and bring out pure peace, love, and joy, Live the ideal home life... although I feel this will leave me quite empty

What stops me primarily is my family.  I have some strong fears and some strong guilt.  I do not want to leave them.  I do not want to leave them stranded.  Yes, it is attachment, but family are the people who were there to support you, nurture you in the world.  They may not be perfect and neither am I.  But, when you get down to survival, they were the ones who had pure love and compassion to be there for me.   I could not have been living if it were not for them.  I feel their burden and it pains me.  How can I leave?  Family is the most important thing in the world.

There are practical considerations as well, many which have been discussed on this forum.  Things like work, money, shelter, food, and still living a contemplative life.   I am not blind to the realities of life.  Thankfully, I was born with intelligence and a strong body so I know this will be taken care of.

But, what about my family?  What about them?  How do I take care of them?  Why do I have this burden? Why does this stop me?

[Zack]

I know the 'world' doesn't hold anything to satisfy me at a core level, but it is still the jungle I find myself in every day that I throw myself out there, and I'm deep in the murk of wordly futility and depression, trying to shirk responsibilities but having them continually grab me by the ankles: so that's the place I'm currently speaking from.

My family has always been a strong base for me in whatever desperately atmospheric head zone I've found myself in years past, long before I knew what was going on inside myself, and at this moment how I would describe them is that I know them as a group of souls I have a deep and loving (and argumentative) connection with, and I am enmeshed with them to a degree that they feel like a root part of myself. Luckily there is little judgment about living my life the way I need to, so as my slowly churning inner process transforms my life they have always been there, even if they don't exactly understand.

I was raised in poverty situations not too different from the kinds of lifestyles compatible with a contemplative life (besides the thick slab of WORK usually served up alongside); for others surrounded by people uncomfortable with a creative approach to life on Eeearth it seems like a much more profoundly delicate path to maneuver, but I'm guessing if this is the case and you let go into it some sort of amenable situation will present itself. This may be a somewhat empty observation because I'm still getting over the same internal resistance; I often feel like I'm on the edge of a clearing, receding into the dark and waving at the only group of people I truly am comfortable being with.

I can't begin to describe the depths of pain and anguish I've felt when thinking of 'letting go' of my family, but I feel a knowing within that pain that there is a more expansive wisdom on the other side. I can cry easily just thinking about any of my sisters going out to face their day in the world, but there's some kind of vague comfort mixed in there with it, maybe the comfort of a deeper trust in the process I have not totally unearthed and claimed yet. My solution is usually to inject a bit of humor into whatever I'm feeling. Things lighten up, I can let go a little more in that moment, and the flow of life unfurls itself yet again.

I have no idea what my life will end up looking like. Every tomorrow is always a jarring surprise or utter boredom. My family is there and I expect most of them to be there until I die or they die. Each time I lapse into a state of feeling my identity washed away and then drift back to my battered cell phone being blown up by a sister about something stupid I am reminded of this. My feeling is to keep hacking at the grip that is squeezing me because that's the only thing there seems to be to do.

[Jhanananda]

I hope you all do not mind that I moved this thread to the Spiritual Crisis section, because the angst that accompanies the realization that one's own family can be a hindrance certainly brings on a Spiritual Crisis.  I found it interesting that Anatta expressed the same issue under Why Enlightenment, so I moved the current thread and merged the two topics.

For me my family was so clearly dysfunctional and abusive to me that I had little holding me to them; so when I realized that they were a major obstacle on my path to wholeness, then I could leave them behind without looking back.  However, I can see that if a family functions reasonably well, and avoids abusiveness, then there is something to be gained, and even learned, from maintaining a relationship with them.  So, in either case there is certainly a challenge to be met while one hone's one's lifestyle toward liberation and enlightenment.

[jay.validus]

Actually this is quite okay. After reading Zach's and then Anatta's post again, I realized that this issue is universal. It made me realize that it is possible not to feel the heaviness or burden of family.  I hope both of you guys work out your family issues. 

Anatta, your willingness to sacrifice your enlightenment goals reminds me of my grandmother.  She was so loving, but lived quite an empty life on the inside.  I think she regretted not making certain decisions like I am making, ie, reach for the goal of enlightenment.  Of course, there was less information back then, so I am sure her struggle was more knowing-based than thinking-based.  She felt it but had no idea how to express it.  Don't make her mistake.

Zach, I cannot say I was raised in poverty situations, but I find spending hours listening my family, like you seem to do with yours, is time worth spending indeed.  I have learned it is fruitful to share one's existence with others; we are all in the same boat.  Your right, adding humour to a grim situation does lighten the mood.  I need to start doing this more!

[Sam Lim]

I think no can give advise as all may be similar but at the same time they are unique to themselves.

General rule for me is not to look to the future. Live in the moment as it's the most precious.

[munirah]

Dear Anatta...your  position as a woman on the spiritual path , a wife and mother is unique....and it creates a big dilemma for all seekers but especially mothers or 'would be' mothers..
Traditionally this issue has been addressed by making mystics join orders of nuns and become 'brides of christ' or taking some other sort of celibacy vow or just walking away from their babies. In recent times gurus like Rajneesh  and his female executive committee encouraged sterilisation or abortion and in the classical Hindu model would be aspirants wait until their 'householder' time is finished because their families are mature and provided for before walking away. This model also works in Sufism where many older women went on to become teachers and sufis independently of the males in their lives and lineages...go on pilgramages and so on( often funded/ supported by their children)
In my own life the biological drive to reproduce that hit me in my mid twenties was extrordinary because I literally had very little interest in children and babies and avoided them....seeing them rightly as an impediment to any serious meditation practice. That changed when I joined the Sufi path because part of it involved getting married and my Sheikh gleefully encouraged me to go ahead and have ten babies quote:'one for every year...like a rabbit'( May Allah support him). Although I disappointed him and stopped at 3.
Other women I know who had a 'spiritual calling' either left their children or 'raised' them in very precarious and dodgy circumstances. In these cases the children now either don't talk to them at all or harbour nasty dysfunctions like drug addictions and the like.
Personally raising children carefully and whole heartedly involved a lot of drudgery, sacrifice and or resentment towards those who did not have to make similar sacrifices at the time....but not towards my children who I have always adored and would die for. I felt that I had 'abandoned' my vocation and found it very hard to make spiritually meaningful stuff out of homework, girl guides and nutritionally balenced dinners. I also knew other mothers in the same position, especially in Sufi circles, and some of them managed and some of them didn't and just gave way to depression and alienation. All of my major life decisions (guided by heart and spirit) have involved my children in some way and looking back now in my mid fifties I see that working with children was and is a very important part of my personal journey. My spouse was also essential for me to flourish and grow in ways I would not have been able to as a lonely spiritual aspirant.

So the long answer is your life is a mosaic made up of different people and circumstances and your practice is what sustains and nourishes it.  If you do not have anyone to nourish beside yourself you will have to find a substitute in order to transcend your 'small self'. You can go adore a guru and wash his feet or you can build an orpahnage but at some point you are going to have to give some sort of service back in exchange for the spiritual goodies that are being abundently bestowed on you...including your kids 

[Jhanananda]

Thank-you Munirah, Zack, and Jay for contributing to this thread.  You all have inspired me to write a little more on this issue.  Originally I was inspired to lead a monastic life after having acquired the art of deep meditation, and the fruit there of; however, I found little support for that life.  So, I had tried this ashram, then that ashram, but kept finding myself being used as an indentured servant in service of the guru's over-blown ego.  So, I settled upon the mendicant life, which includes foraging.  I found it rather difficult to survive, but looking back now I realize that I could have spent more time with it, and would have likely found an ecological niche, like beach coming, that would have sustained me.  Such a lifestyle precludes teaching, other than one-on-one, like Shams of Tabriz.

However, I found employment that sustained me without exhausting me.  I found a relationship with a woman whom I had met at a meditation retreat.  We gave birth to children, whom I raised as contemplatives as they sat on my knee most mornings as I meditated.  Both children developed the art of deep meditation.  My son developed the OOBE at an early age.  Both children are now grown adults, and married, but are still contemplatives.  Yes, they experimented with drugs when they were teenagers, but when they were done with their adolescent rebellions they returned to the disciplined contemplative life that I modeled for them.

[Alexander]

I was reading this thread today and thought of this chapter from Theresa of Avila's book The Way of Perfection. I am also reminded of Christ's quote from the Gospels, "If you want to follow me you must hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and, yes, even your own life."

THE WAY OF PERFECTION Chapter 9
Treats of the great blessing that shunning their relatives
brings to those who have left the world and shows how
by doing so they will find truer friends.

Oh, if we religious understood what harm we get from having so much to do with our
relatives, how we should shun them! do not see what pleasure they can give us, or how, quite
apart from the harm they do us as touching our obligations to God, they can bring us any
peace or tranquillity. For we cannot take part in their recreations, as it is not lawful for us
to do so; and, though we can certainly share their troubles, we can never help weeping for
them, sometimes more than they do themselves. If they bring us any bodily comforts, there
is no doubt that our spiritual life and our poor souls will pay for it. From this you are [quite]
free here; for, as you have everything in common and none of you may accept any private
gift, all the alms given us being held by the community, you are under no obligation to entertain
your relatives in return for what they give you, since, as you know, the Lord will
provide for us all in common.

I am astounded at the harm which intercourse with our relatives does us: I do not think
anyone who had not experience of it would believe it. And how our religious Orders
nowadays, or most of them, at any rate, seem to be forgetting about perfection, though all,
or most, of the saints wrote about it! I do not know how much of the world we really leave
when we say that we are leaving everything for God’s sake, if we do not withdraw ourselves
from the chief thing of all—namely, our kinsfolk. The matter has reached such a pitch that
some people think, when religious are not fond of their relatives and do not see much of
them, it shows a want of virtue in them. And they not only assert this but allege reasons for
it.

In this house, daughters, we must be most careful to commend our relatives to God, for
that is only right. For the rest, we must keep them out of our minds as much as we can, as
it is natural that our desires should be attached to them more than to other people. My own
relatives were very fond of me, or so they used to say, and I was so fond of them that I would
not let them forget me. But I have learned, by my own experience and by that of others, that
it is God’s servants who have helped me in trouble; my relatives, apart from my parents,
have helped me very little. Parents are different, for they very rarely fail to help their children,
and it is right that when they need our comfort we should not refuse it them: if we find our
main purpose is not harmed by our so doing we can give it them and yet be completely detached;
and this also applies to brothers and sisters.

Believe me, sisters, if you serve God as you should, you will find no better relatives than
those [of His servants] whom His Majesty sends you. I know this is so, and, if you keep on
as you are doing here, and realize that by doing otherwise you will be failing your true Friend
and Spouse, you may be sure that you will very soon gain this freedom. Then you will be
able to trust those who love you for His sake alone more than all your relatives, and they
will not fail you, so that you will find parents and brothers and sisters where you had never
expected to find them. For these help us and look for their reward only from God; those
who look for rewards from us soon grow tired of helping us when they see that we are poor
and can do nothing for them. This cannot be taken as a generalization, but it is the most
usual thing to happen in the world, for it is the world all over! If anyone tells you otherwise,
and says it is a virtue to do such things, do not believe him. I should have to write at great
length, in view of my lack of skill and my imperfection, if I were to tell you of all the harm
that comes from it; as others have written about it who know what they are talking about
better than I, what I have said will suffice. If, imperfect as I am, I have been able to grasp as
much as this, how much better will those who are perfect do so!

All the advice which the saints give us about fleeing from the world is, of course, good.
Believe me, then, attachment to our relatives is, as I have said, the thing which sticks to us
most closely and is hardest to get rid of. People are right, therefore, when they flee from
their own part of the country 1—if it helps them, I mean, for I do not think we are helped
so much by fleeing from any place in a physical sense as by resolutely embracing the good
Jesus, Our Lord, with the soul. Just as we find everything in Him, so for His sake we forget
everything. Still, it is a great help, until we have learned this truth, to keep apart from our
kinsfolk; later on, it may be that the Lord will wish us to see them again, so that what used
to give us pleasure may be a cross to us.

[Jhanananda]

Hello, Alexander, THE WAY OF PERFECTION Chapter 9 is so true.  I do recall reading the Way of the Pilgrim, back when I took up the contemplative life, and parted ways with my family.  I just should never have allow communication again with them, not even once, because each time it turned out bad for me.