If given a choice, I would always desire a conflict-free life where everything flows in a state of harmony effortlessly but my life brought me many, many conflicts(inner and outer). Inspite of so many conflicts, I have not yet developed that strength to handle them with grace. When conflicts come, my general tendency is to get depressed.

Shri Suktam(it’s a book on Shri Suktam given by my friend) taught me that any progress we make in life is the outcome of conflicts. If no conflicts, there cannot be much progress. The author beautifully explains that this is the reason why there are multiple chapters on wars in puranas. Earlier, I used to find these wars and conflicts in puranas so boring. Now it made sense to me. 

When I look back, my journey of education on parenting started with a conflict. 

When our baby was born, my husband and I were quite naive and we expected her to be an angel where she will not cry much and we both will be in a state of bliss looking at her cute face. But reality is something else. From 3rd week, she was crying from 5 pm to 10 pm and she was not sleeping well. We had to carry her around, rock her etc . Still she would not sleep. People around me said this is common.

But these things took a toll on me and my husband. We were sleep deprived and extremely tired. I was quite depressed and wondered – Is this what parenting is all about? Is parenting supposed to be so painful?

I did my meditations and self healing(psychotherapy) quite passionately as I know I need them more now in this difficult time, than any other time. My depression was gone in a single session of psychotherapy(I would recommend psychotherapy to every new parent out there). With the help of these spiritual practices, I realized problem is not with the baby. And the higher side of me guided – hey, may be you are ignorant about parenting. Any suffering is only due to ignorance. Why don’t you study about parenting and solve these problems instead of getting depressed? 

So I frantically searched for books online and started reading 2 books in whatever little time I got. Those 2 books are – happiest baby on block and sleep, baby, sleep. These 2 books fixed the problems I was facing earlier in just 2 days and I was stunned how right knowledge can make parenting a joyful experience .

Today, our baby sleeps effortlessly and at right time. We don’t have to do much (except for creating right environment and being disciplined with her schedule) for her to sleep. And yesterday, someone was saying that we are so lucky to have such baby who sleeps from 8 pm to 6/7 am. Well, it’s not luck. It’s book 🙂

This conflict started my journey of education in parenting . If not for this conflict, I would be living in a false delusion that I know everything about parenting.

My Deep gratitude to the author for teaching me the importance of conflicts in life. I am still not courageous enough to say – try me(instead of why me). But I can say this much that next time when conflict comes, I will remember this teaching and take conflict as a seed of something wonderful in future.

Thank you Sapna ji for giving me this beautiful book.

– Contributed by Geetanjali Balachander