Dear sister Tonya...
As u had contemplated to resolve with that path of raising the I's family, here below is an alternative for the I to have a glance and choose what the I's capable of.
Just for your consideration
^^^
It is your trust that creates miracles.
Nobody else can create a miracle for you, but your trust is the source of all miracles.
You were brought up as a Christian; that is a misfortune, but nobody can avoid it.
If you had not been brought up as a Christian, you would have been brought up as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Jew -- and all these diseases have the same quality of destroying you and your trust.
In fact, to destroy your trust is to destroy you.
Because you were brought up as a Christian, you were told that Jesus loves you, Jesus is in you. But these were words told to you, not your experiences. They were false; they never tallied with your own understanding, intelligence, intuition. Still, you had to believe in them because everybody else was believing in them. Not to believe in them would have created many kinds of troubles.
It is easier to go with the crowd; otherwise, the crowd can be very crude, very primitive. It respects people, gives them honor if they are obedient to its superstitions -- and naturally, everybody wants to be respected, honored. A natural instinct to be respected is exploited.
A natural desire to live a comfortable, easy life is exploited, because if you start raising questions about beliefs, you will be continuously struggling with your neighbors, with your family, with your teachers, with your priest, with your husband, with your wife, even with your children. Your life will become a chaos. Nobody wants to make his life a chaos.
These are natural longings of every man, and these can be exploited very easily. And the best way to exploit is to give you beliefs -- beautiful beliefs, but they remain superficial. They never ring any bell in your heart.
"Jesus loves you" -- you hear the words, but nothing happens in your heart.
He will come to you, he will come to your rescue, he is your savior" -- but these are just empty words to you, and you go on carrying these empty words your whole life. They become more or less just part of the formalities; your religion becomes a formality, something of the same category as etiquette.
You have to live with so many people -- naturally, you have to adjust, to adapt, and not to create an unnecessary nuisance, not to become a target of their enmity. But this is not going to help your growth.
On the contrary, because these words, these beliefs remain empty for your whole life, deep down a suspicion settles that all religion is bogus. It is very difficult for an intelligent man not to come to this conclusion... a whole life of belief, and your hands are empty and your heart is empty. There have been no golden moments, no experiences that go beyond this world.
So you perform the ritual: you go the church just as you go to the Rotary Club, there is no difference at all. Perhaps going to the Rotary Club or Lions' Club or some other club, you feel more excited than going to church. Going to church seems to be a burden, a duty that has to be done.
Remember, `duty' is a four-letter ugly word.
Love knows no duty. It does many things, but it loves to do them -- it is not duty.
The moment you utter the word "duty" it means there is no love.
You have to do it because you have to do it; the pressure of the crowd is so much. But it is deep down a humiliation, an insult, a destruction of your self-respect.
Naturally, you live a so-called religious life -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but absolutely superficial, it has no authenticity.
And the trick is very simple: they have substituted belief in place of trust.
Trust is something that grows in you. It is not imposed on you; it is not a plastic flower but a rose that grows, blossoms, releases its fragrance. Trust is the most poetic experience of life. But the basic necessity for trust to happen is that you should not be burdened with beliefs.
Beliefs are false coins; they look like trust, and they can deceive small children very easily. And once you have accepted those beliefs as trust, you will never try to find the distinction -- and the distinction is abysmal, unbridgeable.
If you love your children, don't give them any belief. Help them so that they can grow trust. If you don't know something, never lie to the children because sooner or later they are going to find that you lied -- and when a child finds that the father lied to him, the teacher lied, the priest lied, all possibilities of trust are destroyed. He could not have conceived that the people he has loved -- and has loved totally, because a child loves totally.
...
An innocent child, absolutely dependent on you, and you have the nerve to deceive him, to say things which he is going to find one day that you never knew. If he asks about God, if you are an authentic father, sincere, honest, you should say "I am seeking, I have not found yet." Give your child a desire to seek, a desire to search. Help him to go on a pilgrimage, and tell him, "It may be that you find it before I find it. Then don't forget me; then help me to find it. Right now, I don't know."
Your child will never disrespect you; your child will never come to a point when he will say that you were dishonest towards him, that you lied. And your child will have tremendous honor for you because you made him, his innocence, his questioning, into a search. You created a seeker, not a believer.
Real parents will not create Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. Real teachers will not create believers, only authentic seekers.
^^^ O S H O
JAH Bless
