[A beautiful story Theresa shared in last night's virtual Awakin Santa Clara circle, on the passage by Anthony de Mello: Substituting One Cruelty For Another.]

You know, with the passage. I think I was initially struck by the part about the window, and missing the beauty of the scenery the first time around, because you're in an off mood. And so the first thing for me was just being curious: what am I missing, because I'm so caught up in what's going on within me that I'm not able to actually learn or see beyond my own world?

Then on the question about habits and things, I was actually thinking about my older son, who is three and a half. Anupam, my husband, and I had decided that we were not going to punish our kids. We read in some parenting books somewhere that that's just not effective. (But it's also a great trick and tool as a parent, to be able to be like, "All right, that's the punishment. I don't have to think about it -- done." And so it's really challenged us to come up with something else.

Most recently, my older son did something very naughty. I won't say what he did. I was so mad. I just picked him up and I said, "You're on a timeout." And I put him in the room, and I said, "Uh-oh, wait, I can't just punish him. What are we going to do?" And so I've been trying to teach him about how he can deal with his own anger. So I was like, well, I can just model this right now. And I said, "Okay, I'm blowing out three candles right now -- three deep breaths. One. Two. Three!"

And I closed my eyes because I really needed to center myself, because I was still upset. And, my son actually became really curious about this. So he got out of his own naughtiness and got curious about what I was doing.

He asked me, "Why are your eyes closed?"

I said, "I'm trying to calm my feelings."

And he said, "Are you angry?"

"Yes, I am. I'm very angry. And I'm feeling that right now."

He let me be. Then, he looked at me, and came over and gave me this most amazing hug.

Then, I was able to kind of come out of my anger, and see him, really. And I realized he was just having fun. He was being naughty, but he was having so much fun. It was like, we were both in our own little worlds, but in that moment, his curiosity and my practice led to this moment of clarity. It ended up being really sweet. My mother-in-law and I had a good laugh about it afterwards, mostly at myself, because these are practices for 3 year-olds, but they're also really good for all of us.

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Thank you, Theresa, for that story. You opened our hearts to 'see' how a child's play mysteriously touches upon our play to enable us towards 'being' !