If You Think You're Enlightened, Go Spend a Week with Your Family

by Jessica Girija Jewell

Spiritual life is never effortless.

 It may seem easier in curated environments — at the yoga studio, church, or other shared spaces, among fellow practitioners or friends who share similar values — but the truth is, wherever we go, there we are. The same mental patterns, or samskaras, travel with us.

Family turns up the volume on these patterns. The background murmur of our samskaras swells, and the emotional charge amplifies. Recently, when I went home to visit my mother and stepfather, I found myself once again hearing the old song of my samskaras.

The history between my mother and me is something I don’t fully understand, yet my body knows it well. When I’m with her, my jaw tightens, my heart aches, and my stomach clenches. Sometimes I don’t notice my reactions right away — only that something feels off. With much practice, I’ve learned to pause and listen: first to ask what I’m feeling — Am I afraid? Am I angry? — and then to get curious about the thought beneath the feeling. I breathe a slow, steady ujjayi breath and sit with awareness, watching what arises.

But awareness doesn’t make relating easy. During this last visit, fatigue and emotion met in a perfect storm. One evening, my mother’s anger rose like sudden thunder, and my body flooded with fear. Every cell wanted to flee, defend, or disappear. For a moment, it was like being ten years old again.

That’s the strange mercy of family — they have the peculiar power to show us where our work still lies. They summon our younger selves in an instant. The old stories return: I’m not safe. I’m not seen. I’ve done something wrong. Those thoughts are the samskaras that play in the subconscious mind, shaping how we move, speak, even breathe.

Ram Dass once said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” I laughed to myself later because the line was just too perfect. This was the master class I needed. My spiritual “progress” wasn’t measured in serenity but in restraint.

Although I wanted to defend myself, to explain, to fix what had gone wrong, I knew from experience that talking through it would only deepen the hurt. So I chose what a twelve-step friend calls being polite and principled. I washed the dishes, said thank you, left a gift card, filled the gas tank — small gestures guided by the yamas: non-harming, truthfulness, and moderation. They gave my heart a structure to lean on when it wanted to collapse.

The visit ended with awkwardness that neither of us could smooth away. Still, I hadn’t retaliated or shut down completely. I had stayed aware, breathing through the waves of emotion, choosing dignity over reaction. That felt like something — not victory, but integrity.

When I returned to my own home, I replayed the week in my mind, noticing where I could have cared for myself better. I saw that I’d pushed through exhaustion instead of resting, spoken when silence would have been kinder. Yet I also saw that I’d practiced — truly practiced my spiritual discipline. I’d remembered that love doesn’t always look like closeness, and that boundaries are sometimes the highest form of respect.

Over the past few days, I’ve thought about how these same patterns appear with my own children. They, too, can touch the tender places in my psyche. When I catch myself wanting to control, to protect, to steer their lives toward safety, I can hear the echo of my mother’s voice in mine. That awareness is uncomfortable, but it’s also the doorway to freedom — the chance to choose a more life-nourishing pattern.

My mother once told me that we’re all running a relay race. Each generation carries the baton as far as we can before passing it forward. Perhaps this is what I’m doing now — running my portion of the track and moving a little closer to freedom before handing it on.

Swami Vivekananda wrote,

“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”

Intellectually, I believe this is true — for me, for my parents, for my children, for all of us. Each soul unfolds according to its own rhythm, guided by its dharma and the unseen current of grace. Yet fully trusting this is harder than it sounds. Softening judgment — of myself, of others — asks for a kind of faith I don’t always have: trust that life is generous and kind, that even our pain is a teacher, shaping us in ways we cannot yet understand. At times, especially with my children, I can barely hold this knowing in my heart. Part of me fears that trusting their path means abandoning them. But this, too, is the practice — to surrender, again and again, to the mysterious force that holds us all as we awaken in our own time.

And so the practice continues — daily, embodied, imperfect. Each misunderstanding, each tender repair, is an invitation to compassion. Every encounter, mine or yours, is simply another chance to bow to life and begin again.