A grade-school age Mallika performs a traditional Indian dance
June 2008 | Feature Story
Growing Up With God
Sons and daughters of spiritual teachers share childhood stories and enlightened advice for raising the meaning-makers of tomorrow
By Jessica Kraft
it’s an ancient hindu saying that “the mother and father are the child’s first guru.” Children learn the most basic human skills from their parents: along with eating, walking and talking, children readily absorb spiritual lessons from Mom and Dad, including how to commune with nature, how to seek calm in the midst of chaos and how to reach out to a higher power. Likewise, spiritual leaders guide adults on this path, helping to tune our spiritual instruments so that we can play in harmony with the universe. In a sense, spiritual leaders are parents to our souls.
So are children born to spiritual leaders given a boost in their spiritual development? How did their early exposure to the enlightened practices of their parents influence them? We asked several kids of leaders from different traditions about their childhoods to see what, if anything, they might recommend to parents looking to cultivate a child’s inner life.
Mallika Chopra, 35
Daughter of Deepak & Rita Chopra
Mallika Chopra, daughter of Deepak Chopra, mother of two, doesn’t like to think of her background as particularly spiritual. “Everyone assumes I grew up in a very spiritual environment. But while my parents were on their journey, I really had a regular childhood,” Chopra recounts. She did, however, start meditating from the age of 9, and was given mantras to focus on while playing. “It was nothing structured, or dogmatic, though,” she says. “Meditation gave me a real sense of security and self identity… we would meditate as a family sometimes, and as I grew older it became something I could do for myself — but they never made us meditate.”
As an adult, Chopra prefers not to label her practice, but rather focuses on integrating service to others, sharing knowledge and stories and fostering her children’s growth as global citizens. “I don’t try to shield my kids from reality. They’ve been exposed to extreme poverty in Indian slums, and I talk to them about how all children are similar — they laugh, they play, they cry. And even though we all have different circumstances, we should all be cherished.” Mallika has written books inspired by the process of parenting and now runs a website with her
father covering health and wellness at intentblog.com.
Max Simon, 26 in July
Son of Julia & David Simon, M.D.
Adolescents can be exasperating even to those parents who cultivate detachment, practice meditation and don’t take their kids’ actions personally. Max Simon is glad he could call on his father when he finally woke up from his teenage oblivion. The son of David Simon, M.D., bestselling author and co-founder of the Chopra Center for Well
being, and Julia Simon, a transcendental meditation teacher, “From about 14-20, I partied hard, made lots of stupid mistakes and got into plenty of trouble,” Max confides. “When I was in college, I woke up one morning after a long night and said to myself: ‘I’m wasting away my potential and it’s time to make a shift.’ So I called up my dad and asked what to do. His simple response was: ‘meditate.’ ”
It was a suggestion his father had been giving him since he was four years old, and it was the right way to draw Max back to himself. Just two years later, Max was teaching yoga and meditation as the Chopra Center’s youngest instructor, and these days he’s leading a national movement to turn one million people onto meditation as the “Chief Enlightenment Officer” of GetSelfCentered.com. He credits his parents’ acceptance of his different phases of life as the key to his understanding of himself. “From the very beginning, neither of my parents ever enforced their spirituality on me and never told me I had to do or be anything,” he says.
Jose Luis Ruiz, 29
Son of don Miguel Ruiz & Maria ruiz perez
“Growing up with my father has been a very magical experience,” says Jose Luis Ruiz, son of Toltec master don Miguel Ruiz. Jose credits don Miguel with awakening his sense of connection to nature, and allowing him to assume responsibility for his own choices at a young age.
“My brother and I wanted to go to Disneyland. I wanted a Nintendo. So one year, our father took us to what he called ‘the real Disneyland’ — the Madre Grande mountains, where he said everything we saw was the inspiration to make the magical effects of Disney. We hiked up huge mountains while he told us stories about magic using the Disney characters as symbols to hook our awareness.”
Having an understanding of both his connection to the natural world and to his native cultural tradition allowed Jose Luis to center himself in modern life. He believes that removing a child, even briefly, from the world of games, programs, messages and screens allows that child the mental space to find himself. “Every parent and child that are together in nature will have a full communion with God, no matter what their belief is,” he says.
The deeply connected bond he has with his father these days was re-built after the cyclone of his adolescence tore through their family. “I had my resistance to my father,” he remembers. But no longer. Inspired by his childhood spiritual experiences, Jose became his father’s apprentice, and today he teaches and writes with him about their Toltec shamanic tradition.
Anya Kamenetz, 31
Daughter of Rodger Kamenetz & Moira Crone
A hands-off parenting approach lead Anya Kamenetz to become more pious during her teenage years. Her father, the poet and English professor Rodger Kamenetz, had a personal meeting with the Dalai Lama as part of a delegation of rabbis that he chronicled in the best-selling book, The Jew in the Lotus (1996). Her father’s spiritual journey, which wove together threads from Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism, brought multiple influences into the family. “We had Tibetans staying with us, Tibetan mandalas and tankas in the house, I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead… but we were Jews,” she says.
On a family vacation to Mexico during Passover when Jews are traditionally forbidden from eating any leavened bread and grains, Anya, at age 11, followed Jewish law to the letter. “Unlike my parents, on Passover I wouldn’t eat rice, beans or corn, so here we were in Mexico and I couldn’t eat anything,” she says. Her parents tolerated her observances, and followed her urging to light Sabbath candles regularly, but were very clear that she wasn’t going to be able to force them to change their spiritual practice. Today, as a prominent financial writer and advocate against student debt, Anya has reached equilibrium with her childhood spiritual influences. “I’ll meditate and go to some chanting ceremonies,” she says, “but I also have a fulfilling Jewish observance.”
Wahe Guru Khar Khalsa, 24
Daughter of Gurmukh & Gurushabd Khalsa
When she was little and acting up, Wahe Guru Khar Khalsa was put in a meditation room for time out, or rather, time “in.” If she had a temper tantrum, her parents were instructed by their Sikh spiritual leader to douse her in a cold shower to shock her into awareness. Her first ten years were fueled by a macrobiotic diet of brown rice, fruit and veggies, foods that still make up most of her diet now, at age 24. Her parents, Gurmukh and Gurushabd Khalsa are renowned teachers of Kundalini yoga at the Golden Bridge center in Los Angeles, which they founded together. Wahe has been practicing yoga since before she could walk.
“It’s really different when your parents have a spiritual teacher,” she says. “I was raised by them, but we had this person who was guiding them along their way to raise me. So it wasn’t your typical family unit.”
Like many spiritually minded parents, Wahe’s folks weren’t about forcing her bliss. They wanted her to learn her own lessons, and become independent, so they didn’t impose a long list of rules on her. Nor were they overly involved — Wahe attended boarding school in India for most of her childhood. “My mom was no soccer mom,” she says.
These days Wahe works at Golden Bridge, teaching yoga to kids. So what advice does she have for parents who would like to see their kids grow to become flexible, intuitive meaning-makers? “It all starts with the pregnancy. You see moms who are stressed out and worried, they don’t take care of themselves and they never slow down. Their kids are going to come into the world with that frazzled energy. But if you are relaxed and meditate during your pregnancy, then the kids come out like little Buddha babies!”
Jessica Carew Kraft’s spiritual quest began when she became a bat mitzvah at age 25, but her mother is still trying to decipher the mantras Jessica made up as a toddler.
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