Conscious Bible Stories; Giving kids and parents a new perspective on the infinite potential of children, with Special Guest Jay Aedo

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This 96-minute audio-video program is educational, simple, and easy to navigate. Go to NoProblemParenting.com to get started. All right, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to the No Problem Parenting podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the emotional and behavioral challenges within our home.

And remember, March is National Reading Month, and today I brought a special guest on. Mr. Jay Aido. What stories do you guys read to your kids? Have you ever thought about the subconscious messages that are being passed on through those stories? Well, Jay teaches modern lessons through empowering stories and believes one generation of conscious parents can change the world. Jay is an international entrepreneur, a teacher of practical philosophy and children's book author. Born and raised in Southern California, Jay often felt the weight of the different belief systems his parents, teachers, and religious leaders followed. As a writer and community leader, he encourages his young readers to look beyond the antiquated programs of the stories repeated for centuries. For the first time in the history of children's books, Conscious Bible Stories tells biblical stories from a super conscious perspective. Jay embarked on this journey following his realization that the narrative of victimhood, fear of responsibility,

and accusing others for our own mistakes has gone too far. From Adam blaming Eve for having eaten the forbidden fruit to the story of Cain lying to God about having killed his brother Abel, these tales subtly teach us to look outside ourselves for validation and blame. Jay's mission is to show others how the truth of God lies within all of us. He encourages his young readers to take responsibility for their actions and to never be fearful of speaking up for themselves.

Conscious effort is the key to empowering children all over the world to create their own story from the very beginning This is all just truly fascinating to me. I am so excited to meet you jay. Welcome to the show Thanks for having me jackie. I'm really excited to be here I know that bio was a bit long, but I really wanted to make sure to get it all in there because I'm, I'm just really curious about what you're doing in retelling the stories, especially the the stories from the bible So why don't you just tell our audience here today your mission for doing this and why you really felt driven to retell these stories?

Yeah, I feel like when I wrote these stories, I wrote them for myself in a sense, because these characters from the Bible are very ingrained into our system. Since, you know, even people who weren't raised in Christian religion know about these stories. They're very prevalent. These characters are very popular.

And so what's happened is that these stories are ingrained in the systems of so many people all around the world that we're acting out the characters. We're acting like Cain, who killed his brother out of anger and resentment and shame. and these stories are so prevalent in our system that I for myself I rewrote them in a way where where Abel is able to stand up and fight for himself and kind of put Cain in his place kind of teach him a lesson and show him a different way where you know he didn't even retaliate you know Cain tried to kill Abel but Abel doesn't try to kill Cain and so he he breaks a certain pattern of behavior that we've been swept away by in our human story. And so he shows us nobility,

has that sense within himself. He knows who he is. He knows what he's made of. He knows where he's coming from. And so he just has to clear up the misunderstanding. And so he has to stand up and fight. He has to be uncomfortable. He has to do something he doesn't want to do, but he has to do it because if he doesn't do it, there's nobody else to do it for him. And so these stories to me in a very subtle way, show me how to be whom I want to be to the best of my imagination.

And I think where these stories, I don't think they went wrong. I think they've been translated throughout history for so long that, you know, at some point they're just doing their very best to tell us how to live a life that's fulfilling for ourselves. And so these stories in the Bible are essentially, they're telling us how not to act. I was just going to say that. I love that you had mentioned that we spoke a little bit before recording the episode, but the stories are telling us how not to act and you're writing them in with the lens of how to act or how to behave instead. That's right. And then, so when, when even how to act when you're Cain.

And so when Abel is able to put Cain in his place and kind of subdue him and show him who he is and where this misunderstanding is, Cain is able to understand and kind of take full ownership of his mistakes and beg for forgiveness. and when he's able to do that well then they're able to build now now they they have brotherly love they have an understanding a bond a strong bond that they didn't have before so they're even stronger because of this with than they were before and so you know it teaches us very many subtle lessons in life as to how to act and how to be and then they go on and build cities together and then we become the descendants of two brothers who worked out each other's misunderstandings And so it's just a different story in my imagination. And so this story was so impactful for me and my friends and my family. And you asked me earlier, how has this been received? And I'll tell you, it's been very well received because the truth is that if somebody gives me the opportunity where they can see where I'm coming from with this, they can see that I don't mean harm.

I'm doing my very best to share a story. And that's what all of us are doing. Every book, every movie, everything that we do from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep is just one story. And so how many chapters to the story are we telling?

Are we skipping? Are we lying? What kind of stories are we telling? And so these stories are very impactful.

It's all we have. It's the foundation of our structure. And if you look out into society, it looks unstable out there. And it's no wonder because these stories are quite questionable.

You know, there's a lot going on. Yeah, exactly. And you say there's a lot of unintended effect of Bible stories. What do you mean by that?

Well, I feel like these stories were meant to guide us in a positive direction. And I think they really have. It's just that we seem to have been, we've lost our way for a little while. but I feel like these stories are really meant to guide us to show us what we're made of you know where we're coming from so that we can see where we're going as a human race and if you and if we're sharing stories we might as well share great stories right this this world we've been told stories about planet earth and where it's headed you know and and we only have a few billion years before the sun runs out, right?

And we know these stories are coming. And so, but all of our stories for humanity seem to be leading in that doom gloom sort of way. Well, what if we start telling stories where we're leading planet into a new solar system where we're gonna live abundantly, infinitely, growing through ourselves and growing stronger and stronger, evolving infinitely, right? Like the way we tell, I mean, if we're gonna tell stories, Like, what's the difference of telling us of something that's going to happen in a few billion years anyway?

We might as well tell the great stories if we're telling stories. So it's like we get caught up in these stories and everything's Terminator and Matrix and A.I. is taking over and humans are doomed.

And these stories, like, what are we supposed to take it lightly? No, this thing is heavily ingrained into our system. We're really buying these stories and we're acting them out. Right.

Well, and I think one of the things that happens with Christianity is some people have experienced and some some have experienced this and they're upset by it and some have experienced it and they're almost forgiving of it. But there is this underlining tone of guilt and shame and struggle, you know, and these are beliefs that really affect us. And sometimes as adults, we have to go back and like undo the damage of the guilt or the shame that maybe some of the messages have have created in us.

So what's kind of your thoughts on that? Yes. So once we realize this within ourselves, that we have this ability to really change the direction. But we're so far gone in our story as adults.

You know, we have so much trauma to filter out in order to get, you know, to get our shit together or to get our thoughts together. You know, but our kids don't have that trauma yet. So that's why I'm so excited to write stories, you know, for conscious parents to teach their kids and build a new bond with and to empower the entire family unit together. You know, we're playing a very transparent role for our kids and our parents.

You know, we have these stories in our life. We had to lie because that's the story. Like, you have to live like you have to lie to your parents. You lie to your teachers.

You lie to your religious leaders, right? You're just lying because, like, if you told them the truth, you'd feel guilt and shame. Like, so you hold on to that instead of letting it out. And then so that builds.

And so this is a new, stronger, foundational, you know, but it starts from there, from telling your kids what you've been up to, what your story has been like, and what you're doing on purpose and why things are difficult for you and tell them about your traumas too. and show them that it's difficult for you because you have to filter out all that first, right? And this takes momentum to build. And that's why that momentum builds a lot stronger and faster, generationally speaking, you know?

And so it gives us more of a long-term sight. And when we have long-term sight, then that gives us the ability to be a little bit easier on ourselves. We tend to be really hard on ourselves. We don't give ourselves enough credit.

We sell ourselves short and we definitely do it to those around us, you know, because the way we treat ourselves is the way we treat those around us. And then so if we have this ability to really change that within ourselves where we are able to be easier on ourselves because we do understand what we've been through, be more compassionate with ourselves, have that longer vision where we're not so stressed out, like we're running out of time.

No, we have plenty of time. Generationally speaking, we have all the time in the world. If we have these abilities to change our perspective and live an easier life for ourselves and give ourselves more love and more abundant thinking, more creative ways of being, why wouldn't we do that to ourselves? But it does take conscious effort.

You know, it's not just going to happen. Things don't happen by accident. You have to do them on purpose. It's the only way anything ever gets done that you want.

If you're willing to do what it takes to get the things that you want, then that's what makes you earn them. And then that's how you know that you deserve them. We live in a world where there's a lot of entitlement. A lot of people think they deserve things.

Well, how do you know you deserve it? Because you have it. If you don't have it, you don't deserve it yet. Go earn it.

It's just a different mentality where we're no longer victimized. Yeah, you have a sad story. Great. Use it to be better.

Yeah, right. We all have it. We all have sad stories. It's a sad life. Things are tough. It really is. And for some, it's worse than others. And for some, it's better. But ultimately, everybody has their own demons to go through, their own stuff. And it's just as hard for me as it is for you within ourselves. And we have this ability to break ourselves out of those patterns of behavior.

And we have a duty to ourselves and our fellow human beings to better ourselves and to better our children. We have a duty. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, one of the things I like about your stories and your work, Jay, is that it really has this undertone of, you know, no excuses, owning your problem, not blaming others, not shaming others or yourself. And I like that you're saying with the conscious parenting piece, parents being conscious of this. Now, of course, we need to be age appropriate with some of the ways that we disclose our history, our mistakes, our, you know, weaknesses or things as parents. And I totally agree with you that we need to be transparent with our kids, not just teaching the lesson of don't do this because I already did.

And it didn't work out well for me, not just do as I say, not as I do kind of, kind of mentality. But I do really like that. You're really kind of reframing or rewriting the narrative around personal responsibility and how those mistakes don't define them. Absolutely. How is history shaped by stories? Well, just look at the word history. It's his story. You know, we break words apart this way. If you look at the root of where we come from, root words, right? We have this ability. A lot of words come from Latin descent, right? So we're telling stories and they're caught up by where they're coming from. They're the roots. And so this like his story, well, whose story is it?

And so when we're looking at history, it's like we're repeating somebody else's story. Well, that's why I've now I've reframed it. I'm trying to create a new word. Maybe you can help me, Jackie. It's our story. One word, our story. You know, so I want to because we have the ability. We can't do anything about his story. That's for him to worry about whoever he is. Right. Let's focus on our story because that one we have full control over.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. And why do we need to rewrite those old stories? Well, you want to rewrite them because they've been written for you.

So why would you want to just keep just pick up and run off with his story? Like, why wouldn't you if you can, if you're conscious enough and want to create your own story? There's a one of my favorite techniques that I like to teach parents to teach their kids, but also to teach themselves is the make it right technique. You know, there's that when kids get in a fight with each other or they harm somebody or they misbehave in some way, our go to response as parents is you say you're sorry.

Go say you're sorry. And the make it right technique is, I think, I mean, when a kid naturally says I'm sorry and they're apologetic for something they've done, that's awesome. But a lot of times when we're injecting that, you say you're sorry. the kid in the moment is probably not sorry they're probably pretty ticked off and they're still fuming about whatever it is or whatever the reason is that they wanted to harm this other kid or this person right so the make it right technique um replaces the i'm sorry or is better than the i'm sorry because it helps the kid feel the result of their action from the inside out and that and helps build empathy for the other person so it's teaching that we can make up for the wrongs that we've caused or the hurt that we've caused another person. A random act of kindness to the other person to make up for what they did after the kiddo's done it is to say, good job making it right. So we're teaching our kids that you can make mistakes, you can mess up, you can do wrong things and you can make up for them and then keep her moving. Life moves on.

It just made me think of that as you're talking about these stories, we can rewrite. I love that. That's very cool. It's a cool technique. Let's talk a little bit more about building relationships with kids. You talk about conscious parenting and just go into a little bit more about what conscious parenting means as it relates to your books.

Absolutely. Well, firstly, I call my book series Conscious Bible Stories just because, you know, when I talk when I speak about consciousness, I'm simply speaking about being aware of something that you weren't aware of before. And so you are now conscious of something that you weren't conscious of before. And these stories repeat.

From the moment we wake up in the morning, we're waking up to consciousness. We're becoming conscious. And as the day goes on, we become more conscious. And as we get tired, we become less conscious.

And the more conscious we are, the more productive we are. And so if we eat a big meal, then we're going to be less conscious. We're going to be a little drowsy perhaps. And so these levels of consciousness, even when we're watching a movie, maybe we watch a movie two, three times and we notice something we didn't notice before. And so we're always becoming more and more conscious. And so when we're bonding with our kids, bonding with our parents, we want to be able to express conscious behavior.

Like we're really aware of them. You know, like when we're trying to make friends, making friends with kids is no different than making friends with adults. Like you want them to know that you're actually interested in what they're interested in. This isn't like some sort of crazy secret. Like we're talking about making friends with your kids. And so that, you know, when you're friends with somebody, well, then you easily share things about yourself. And that's ultimately what we want. We want to be able to openly share things in our family.

and we have that ability, we can build that structure and foundation for in our family. And it'll affect our friends. It'll affect our world. And when we have that world for ourselves, it's a better world. It's a stronger world when we're not trying to keep up with our lies or whatever it is we have going on. When you just say the things that are, things are just simpler.

Yeah, I totally agree. Sometimes as parents, we feel like we can't just say it like it is. we have to sugarcoat stuff. We have to come in through the back door. You know, one of the things I say when parents come to me is the, they have one of three problems.

They're either being too nice, too mean, or they're trying to solve a problem that they don't have any experience in. And they're trying to do that alone. And, and so it's like, you know, we don't need to sugarcoat. We don't need to teach the lesson verbally, you know, with what to do or what not to do. We can, we can teach it through just telling our own personal stories and experiences. And, and I absolutely love that. I do believe that stories help build relationships.

And after all you're sugarcoating it for yourself because you know, the, the child doesn't have the trauma of why you're sugarcoating it. It doesn't know any better. So you're just saying it the way it is would be best for him to be able to filter it out for what it is and just, just see it for what it is. Yeah. Because that in and of itself is owning the situation, right. Or the experience or the behavior, not being ashamed of it or shying away from it because you don't want, you don't want to talk about it. You don't, you're embarrassed by it. You're, you know, whatever. You talk a little bit about that with Cain. You talked about Abel being able to stand up for himself, but tell us a little bit about your take on Cain and what that did for him.

Sure. I mean, what, what that does for the character Cain is it shows him that, that how merciful his brother was for once. So he becomes grateful for his brother showing him the remorse that he didn't show. So it shows him, you know, compassion. And it also gives him the opportunity to really own what he had done. He really made a terrible mistake and there was nothing he can do about it, but he felt really sorry about it now. You know, he didn't before, but now he really does because now he really sees it for what it is now. He, because they cleared up the misunderstanding, ending. They cleared it up. And now he sees, shit, I really messed up on this one. And then so he just begs for his, he can't do anything else, but just fall to his knees and beg for his brother's forgiveness. But you see, his brother had already forgiven him. That's why he chose to do what he did. Instead of choking him to death, he choked him unconscious, right? Remember we were speaking about being conscious and unconscious, right? And when Cain regains consciousness,

he's able to see things for what they are. They're able to have a dialogue now. Things are, you know, he's a little bit confused, right? He doesn't know what's going on, but he's, maybe he's feeling a little scared, but he realizes his brother's there. So, and then his brother's talking to him and then he remembers what he did, right? These are real life scenarios.

We're mean to our brothers. We're mean to our sisters. We're like, you know, we're in this world of mirrors. We're each other's mirror. So if you're mean to me, I'm going to be mean to you, Right. So it's like it breaks patterns of behavior, in my opinion. It broke them for within myself. These stories have been able to help me. It's impacted just close friends and family. It's so I encourage you to buy the books. We're on Amazon conscious Bible stories dot com.

You know, our Bible stories with a conscious twist. And I read it. They're really cool. It's very well written.

Thank you. And I'm very excited to share these stories just because I'm passionate about it. If I can create value from nowhere, right? Like from these old stories, I create value and I re-spin them and I create more value. And you can do it too. We're all just buying and selling words all day long. And we can choose what stories we invest in. We can choose consciously what stories we put our attention to.

You know, so we're understanding the value that we have for one another. We value ourselves more. We value those in our world more. And so our world becomes more valuable. And so that's another thing that I like to teach is this very practical philosophy when it comes to enriching your life. It's not about dollars and euros.

that the value comes from within the value is from those around you, your family, your loved ones, how much you value them, what they mean to you, you know, and if we have this ability to share what we mean to each other, well, then our world becomes more and more great. And so we change the direction, the patterns of behavior of where we've been coming from. Why do we change them? Because we don't like them anymore. If we like them, you can hold on to them if you want. These are disciplines. You can become disciplined. You already are. You're just disciplined in the things that don't make you happy. And so if you just change the discipline, you know, change what you're disciplined in, you can change these patterns of behavior and you can change them long-term generation after generation, you can become stronger. You know, we can become the greatest, the greatest character in the story if we want to. Right. Changing the narrative and building relationships at the same time. This is a brilliant, brilliant idea. Great story writing,

conscious Bible stories. The first one is Cain and Abel, but that's the first of a series that's coming out, right? That's right. And I'm going backwards. I'm going to do, I started with Cain and Abel. I'm going to do Adam and Eve, and then I'm going to wrap things up with God and Lucifer.

Ooh, stay tuned for that. That's exciting. You have to make sure to, to update me when they'll, when they're published, Jake, I'd love, I'd love to read them. So, all right. So people can go to consciousbiblestories.com to learn more about you. They can follow you on Instagram at conscious Bible Stories. Thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your stories with us.

Thanks for having me, Jackie. I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be.

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