I agree with Parmajit bout certain benefits of meditation. Meditation can be a kind of mental discipline to manipulate our mind in beneficial directions. In reciting a mantra in a repetitive way it's entirely plausible to have some sort of trance-inducing effects which could be beneficial.

I have practiced meditation. But it certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with a belief in anything supernatural.

Labeling a child as a Sikh child , Muslim Child or a Catholic child is wrong in my opinion. Take for example the mental abuse of a child raised in a Catholic family. There are many many cases of such mental abuse. This is not going to help the child.

Instilling ethical and moral values are good but rubbing religion into young minds is bad. Young children should be encouraged to be freethinkers. If some day a child of a religious/spiritual person grows up to become an atheist with moral and ethical values and humanist perspectives let that be -- I hope Paramjit Singh doesn't have any objection to such a possibility.

You know what...my three year old son shows the same kind of enthusiasm (as yours towards meditation) when I am painting, gardening or fishing.

When they are given ample attention they get involved in these activities and allow the adult to indulge alone for some more borrowed time.

"The important point is that we need to introduce our kids to healthy habits, values and social responsibilities, while they are young and impressionable. Setting a good role model at home helps them see the value and merits of those things."

The important thing to understand what constitutes practices or and rituals that maintains mental health and ethical integrity.

You claim that meditation is one way.

A Catholic says, religious rituals and morals preached in Bible and prayer is his way. A Hindu has his own idea. A Muslim has his own idea.

In most religious families the child is brought up the way you are appealing for.

One should also remember that a child raised free of shackles of religious rituals and practices can grow to be a equally or even more moral and ethical than a religious person.

Christians make upto 75% of the US population
Christians make upto 75% of the prison population
(Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1997)

Atheists make upto 8 - 15% of the US population
Atheists only make up 0.2% of the prison population
(Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1997)

Notice the disproportion among the atheists population and those who go to prison.

It is not unreasonable to conclude that Atheists have better morals and ethical integrity in US, than their religious counteparts.

That's spurious reasoning, I think... It's likely that aethism correlates with relative privilege and higher income levels. As probable side effects, those with more power and money would be statistically less likely to end up in prison, because their personal needs are being met; if they use drugs or alchohol immoderately, they can afford to screen themselves in privacy; and they can afford to hire more competent counsel, if they get in trouble.

It's a post about teaching meditation to a child which is a great idea. There was one sentence that mentioned religion, yet the first 3 responses have to point out how that might be negitive.

"It's a post about teaching meditation to a child which is a great idea. There was one sentence that mentioned religion, yet the first 3 responses have to point out how that might be negitive." ~bobby

You missed the point.

The conclusion of Paramjit Sing's post appeals to the reader:

"If you have small kids or grandkids, invite them to join you in your practice or any other rituals you undertake to maintain mental health and ethical integrity. It will be one of the best investments you will be making for their future."

There are billions of people across the world who are religious and bring up their child in rituals and meditation(Prayer is the most popular) from young age.

These children don't necessarily grown up to be ideal human beings with ethical and moral behavior.

This is a very valid point.

In case Paramjit sing was advising specific kind of meditation techniques(like Buddhist) and specific kind of rituals(like Sikh), no one would have objected about their efficacy to children brought up in those traditions. It certainly is his opinion of what best he deems best for his child. The issue here is broad and religion plays a key role in the upbringing of a child. Contrary to what the authors implies (with his concluding remark) ethics and morals need not necessarily cultivate from religious practices and beliefs which claim to inculcate morals and ethics in a child when it grows up.

Aloha Parmjit

When my youngest was in preschool they taught the children how to interact with each other when there was a conflict with another child. One day the teacher approached me and said that she noticed my son would hit the other child on the side with his elbow. The children who hit the other child on the side I learned were about 10 to 1. The 1 child was the aggressor was of course the aggressor for the whole classroom

What they would do was sit the two children down on the floor. They would be facing each other. Each child was told they were to say what they didn’t like and then they were to give the other child a hug. Then they could go back to playing. The child who was the aggressor would quickly say something, give the other child a hug and be off to play. The other child would just sit there for about 10 minutes. He/she would say something, and then he/she could go find the other child to give a hug and go back to play. It seemed the child who hit from the side held on to their feelings a lot longer and had the hardest time letting go.

One morning I went to pick up my son and there was quite a bit of excitement. That day the teacher let all the children who hit from the side confront the one child who was the aggressor. And I guess from that day there was a change in the classroom. I am not sure for how long:)

I noticed with my three children one was an aggressor. The other two were very clever. I have a feeling Parmjit you were a clever child:) I was more of an aggressor child and I found meditation helps to respond vs. react. I feel it has to be lived moment to moment. And I found as quick as I would get it my children were already ahead of me.

Hopefully that is still true today, there are many paths up the mountain. And the quickest way is to see the other already at the top. We are a world made up of perceptions.

love patty

Hello Parmjit! Hello Intentbloggers!

Being that it's Sunday, I would like to attempt a non-denominational prayer.

"Redemption" is the mantra.

Let us begin with moment of silence for those who mourn a loss...

.

.

.

To Whoever is up there and to the One that dwells in our hearts:

Namaste! We honor the good in all connections and
in all of our relationships, be they near or far.

We wish to give thanks for another day to live.
We are grateful for this opportunity to come together
in peace, harmony and fellowship with our friends and loved ones.
We appreciate your generosity and we acknowledge
a truth that is secure in the present tense.

We love Thee for This.
We thank Thee for That.
Help us to forgive The Other.

Please continue to teach us to forgive ourselves.
Let us see your ways that lead to total acceptance.
Always increase our ability to love with the potential to give.
Deliver unto us the necessary hope and strength
needed to carry on in the face of adversity.

Lead us up and down and up and down
the path of righteousness and provide the
reins with which to hold on loosely.

Reassure us throughout the day with your presence.

Remind us constantly of our lofty goal to bring peace and goodwill to all.

May we reflect your almighty compassion and mercy
with a brightness that shines as the sun in all it's glory.

We shall cherish the moments when grace surrounds us.

We wish to be in love with the One
to whom every That belongs. (Rumi)

These things we pray as the children of the Earth
which resides in the heavens. We come before you
as the humble creatures of The Cosmos to whom you
have bestowed Life which continues unto this day.

Bless us and keep us safe in your hands.
In the sweet bye and bye, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.

Until then, Amen!

I'd like to offer this meditation:

Our father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever.

I'd like to see a short time set aside during the school day so children could practice a meditation of thier choosing. I think that would be benificial.

Good thoughts, Dr. Singh. I like "magichation"!
A little like imagination, a little like magic, a little like meditation.

Aloha Patty, I found your post about side hitting to be revisited. I do think the astrophysicist and healer, K. Brennan in "Light Emerging" would have a different picture of the aggressor and the side hitters. Hers would be an energetic exchange explanation with pictures.

I think the #1 aggressor who appears to do well quickly reminds me of a program I watched last night about a fellow who treated his first wife badly and left her around to tell about it as the investigation into possible murder of his second wife develops.

Energetically, aggressors offload their pain onto processors and they do it with instinctive skill. Imagine! Being unwary is contributory negligence.

I think the 10-minute kids are gaining skills. Aggressors experience a law of diminishing returns. I'm baffled by the example, too. As a hitter is an aggressor, side, front, or back but I'm weaning myself off the quagmire of psychology, preferring energetics.

The world has changed. At one time an aggressor could just keep making new friends. Now the psychic knowledge is retained and passed along so that eventually there is 1:1 and the object of action knows all there is to know about the aggressor.

Using Brennan's illustrations, one can see that others actually experience subtle swaying in the presence of energy needs. If the aggressor's companions do not like being swayed ... the aggressor runs out of luck which might be fine cosmologically, as they, like some serial killers, seek to be outsmarted and healed or stopped.

Teaching children meditation and to have a respect for silent times is really a very good thing to do. It will pay off later in life.

Little kids are mostly "there" already - alive, present, not as encumbered by their pasts - so teaching them meditation for them is a thing where they learn the physical motions.

However, care has to be taken as they get older that the sitting does not just become an empty ritualized behavior pattern.

Meditation practice has to be kept fresh and alive. Changing up techniques and even gaps where you don't meditate everyday can be helpful.

You don't want the meditation practice session to become stagnant and start itself to be a karmic junk attractor.

Later, you can teach your child that dancing, singing, playing an instrument, or even sports activities can be treated as forms of meditation.

This way meditation will be seen as dynamic, focused, fun, and important. Not just something your parents think you "should" do everyday.

Like music - any parents out there having success with forcing your resistant child to practice everyday and yelling at them when they don't?

My Mom was like this with me - "Hey kid, the piano is in the basement. You don't have to play it, but I'm not paying your lessons if you don't practice. It's your thing, not mine. I'm not going to ruin my day by yelling at you about it. I have better ways to spend my time."

Result: I never stopped playing after forty years. I taught myself to improvise when there were no teachers available. After all, the piano was just there - it was up to me.

There are times when a little non-attachment is exactly the right medicine.

Dear Janet

You wrote:
“Instilling ethical and moral values are good but rubbing religion into young minds is bad. Young children should be encouraged to be freethinkers. If some day a child of a religious/spiritual person grows up to become an atheist with moral and ethical values and humanist perspectives let that be -- I hope Paramjit Singh doesn't have any objection to such a possibility.”

Even though I am for grooming kids to be free thinker yet it is not possible for kids to be freethinker at an early age. One can be truly free thinker only when they have developed a sense of discrimination and correct understanding.

A three year old does not have yet that kind of discriminatory sense of understanding and has to be given some sense of direction. Being disciplined does not mean stifling free-thinking.

I want to show my daughter all the possible doors; it is up to her whether she wants to walk through them or not when she grows up.

Thank you for your observation. Love, Parmjit

Hello Michael

Your wrote:
“Notice the disproportion among the atheists population and those who go to prison.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that Atheists have better morals and ethical integrity in US, than their religious counteparts”

Do not you think there is some problem of interpretation in the example you are quoting? I think you are simply interpreting similarity of the percentage without taking into account that it will make a different sense if you start exploring these statistical numbers a little more. Both these numbers are not same, though they look similar.

Take care and love, Parmjit

Thank you Keith and Booby for beautiful prayer.

With love,

SORRY Bobby for typo in your name. My apologies.

Parmjit

Aloha Tapestry

I agree polar opposites are complementary. If you would look at Bush you would see an aggressor, but if you looked at Blair, Chaney, etc. you would probably see the child who hits from the side.

What I feel with meditation you learn to love the part of your brain that is reptilian as the mammalian brain becomes more and more. That is what I feel you witness with John Chang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAAB0dbc3Es&mode=related&search=

And Aloha Michael

Most of the prisoners in the US are minority. And they are usually alcohol or drug addicted. A belief in a power greater than a human power restores them to sanity. There are a lot of wonderful programs for prisoners today. Are familiar with Byron Katie. She teaches loving reality as it is. Love patty

Well, I commented on this post of Parmjit, but I think I said one of those 'key' no-no words and it is being held for owner's review.

Love, Char

Well....I'm now reading all the replies to Parmjit post, so I have another thought, even though none of them are showing up :-)

It is hard to imagine a 3 year old understanding all this, as I try to relate and put myself back at that age. I don't remember my life beginning until I was about 5 years old and before that I did not exist, so it seems.

I remember my mother said that at 3 years old, I had changed my little sisters diaper and when my mother caught me, I had powdered my baby sister from head to toe and managed to put a diaper on her without sticking a pin in her. When I think about this, it sounds scary at what a 3 year can do and not understand what they are doing and the harm that they could cause.

As for teaching a child meditation at 3 years old, I think that's great, as it will be like teaching them to eat, etc. It will become a habit, one would assume or the child will not be interested.

Which reminds me of my sisters and my first experience of meditation. Our dad limited TV and just about everything else like that, but we could always play together. Anyway, my dad started giving us lectures when I was about 7 years old that would last for hours and the minimum was usually 2 hours, so it seemed. Well, what's a kid to do but what is forced upon them. We were bored to death and learned how to go into meditation to play and escape the lectures. We appointed one sister to pay attention and the other two would disappear in the mind. And when dad was done, we would get together alone and talk about our meditation experiences. We called them our dreams and/or imaginations. However, what was interesting is that the two sisters that would play, learned how to join together in each others imaginations and play together. My middle sister could and I could do this better than the baby sister and when one of us was on watch duty and dad said, 'What was the last thing that I just said?" we could repeat it and then go play again. But when it was the baby sister's turn, she would go and play in her head and then could not come out of it to answer dad. So we would all get into trouble. After awhile, dad gave up on the lectures, as I guess he could see that we were not going to listen and when we did, we did not understand him or did not want to attend these long lectures. And you know, this is the type of dad that most kids would fear, (i.e., very strict), but kids always figure their parents out, even when the parents think they have one up on them, i.e., we all have a mind and it connects us all to the One mind. Well, so I guess that means dad knew, but decided to give us a break, as he probably felt it was a waste of time.

Humm.... I wonder if this one gets posted???
Love, Char

#16
Yeah, i get that alot

Dear Parmjit,

Since one of my replies are missing from yesterday on this post of yours, I want to post again a very brief message, because it was to basically say thank you, as well as everyone else who prayed/meditated for me. On Monday, I experienced the beginning of some very good changes in my work environment. I am not going to revisit the long post on what happened, but the power of prayer and meditation is amazing! That's all.

Love,
Char

Dear Char
Thank you for your kind words and I am glad that things are looking up for you. Keep up the positive mind and meditate.

With love, Parmjit

Dear Paramjit

Post #13 is reassuring

"I want to show my daughter all the possible doors; it is up to her whether she wants to walk through them or not when she grows up."

She might grow up to become a great scientist in the fields of Evolution, AI and Consciousness. She might become 21st century Carl Sagan.

That's reassuring for me.

Thankyou

Janet

Thank you Janet for your kind words and wishes. That is appreciated.

Let us see how she grows up to engage with this world. I am looking forward to that answer too. But more than anything else I pray that she becomes a great human being infused values of respect, understanding, even-keeled thinking, acceptance and a sense of environment and humanity.

Rest all will build upon that.

I hope you have been doing well. With love and best wishes from this part of our planet, Parmjit

Dear Parmjit,
The wishes for your daughter are wonderful!

There is an amazing world for her to discover. The love of her family will be a blessing when she faces challenges and hurts.

She can meet those challenges with the qualities you mention - with understanding, acceptance, even-keeling thinking and compassion for humanity.

love,
~ Kate

Thank you Kate and InnocentVictim for your beautiful words.

With love, Parmjit

Dear Parmjit,
You are in for the most amazing journey - to experience the laughter, fun, warmth, tears - and love that knows no bounds,
in the joy of your daughter!
~ Kate