Parents as Spiritual Practice with Johnson Hsieh

"My current best pitch for parent relationship work is: come for the suck reduction, stay for the most powerful spiritual practice and contact with the divinity I've come across thus far. My work with my mom has simply been by far the clearest and most powerful path to connecting with sacredness, divinity, and grace. It's filled a hole in my heart.Easiest thing to point at is a 95% reduction in harsh inner critic and just completely believing that I am not. My parents have been the most obvious vessel of divine love and grace in my life. And I doubt I'm unique in this experience.What feels powerful about this is that at no point have I needed to put faith in anything. I trusted my trust and distrust. What do I trust about my mom's dad? How much do I actually believe she loves me? How much did her parents love her?"These powerful tweets from Johnson captured my attention over the past few years, along with his heartwarming shares about conversations with his mother. He touches upon something deeply powerful here - the relationship with parents as both a source of potential pain and an opportunity for profound spiritual growth.Even for those with decent relationships, vulnerability with parents isn't easy. And as Ram Das famously said, "If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family." Parent relationship deepening remains vastly underrated and under-discussed as a spiritual practice.Some people admirably dedicate their entire lives to certain spiritual practices, bringing immense rigor and determination to their development. What if we could bring that same rigor, drive, and sense of the sacred to deepening our relationships with our parents? Johnson's journey exemplifies this possibility, which inspired this conversation.