Last week was for the business-minded, next week is for those with a practical view. This week is for those with a spiritual bent.
This isn’t a religion thing – although if you need it, you can read this as me saying, God has a plan – so to speak. We are not forgotten once our children are born but rather they are part of OUR plan, dammit!
So here’s one for all the spiritual folks out there:
Some people believe that we are spiritual beings on a human path. In essence this means we are souls first and humans second.
So what’s important in life is how our soul manages the things we face in our lives – as our human selves.
From this ‘soul first’ approach, you come to earth as a human to learn and grow, much as you would attend a university to learn a certain something. Your soul – with guidance from higher beings who have your best interests at heart – chooses where you want to go for your training and how you want to do it.
For example if you want to understand the concept of difference more deeply you may choose to come to earth as a sensitive homosexual, in a different colour skin to the majority, in a homophobic society. Now that’s a tough curriculum. Then it’s up to you how you live it out.
This can get really complex and each statement I make might raise a hundred questions for you but I’m watching my word count, so I’m going to stick to my little path through this in a blog post. You can write in to ask for more.
When soul-you decides what you want to learn, or which skills you want to hone, you obviously carefully consider under which teachers you want to study, right? So you choose the teachers who are best skilled to provide what you need. Those would be your parents.
For example, parents who repress emotion and shame you for your strong feelings are an excellent training for allowing your feelings – no matter what anyone says. Parents who are abusive are an invigorating way to learn about power, respect and self-worth amongst other things. Are you getting the picture?
We do sometimes choose the gentler option, for example a mother who affirms you are wonderful and can do anything you put your mind to, a father who loves you no matter what… but that is also going to depend on how your parents are coping with their own life lessons.
So, in this line of thinking, we chose our parents and our children chose us and we all chose each other. For the lessons we offer one another.
Our parents give us our first experiences of love, intimacy and relationships – as well as our initial attitudes and beliefs about ourselves and the world. We come out of the carwash of childhood sparkling clean, totally banged up or something in between. Then ding ding, round two begins when your own children are born.
Back we go into deep, unavoidable lessons in love, intimacy and relationships – and attitudes and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
Our little teachers walk around us, into us, through us and shine loving light – ok I admit, it sometimes feels like searing lasers – onto the areas that got banged up. We get to see the parts of ourselves that are gorgeous and also the parts of which we are ashamed, angry about, unaccepting of, judgmental about. You can know those parts because you judge, shame, get angry about those things in other people. And of course, sadly, we judge, shame and get angry about those things in our children.
That’s how we can know we are wounded there.
It is our children that can light up our path to healing and greatness like no-one else can do. They bring us consciousness and they bring the healing energy of unconditional love – if only we let ourselves receive it.
Their scrutiny and their version of healing can be horrible and uncomfortable at times – exciting, relieving and delicious at others. It depends a lot on how you feel about learning and about being at this soul learning site called Earth.
According to those who deal with this stuff, Earth is a really tough school. But we already knew that, didn’t we?
So your soul’s agreement with your children’s and your parent’s souls is that you will help each other grow.
Sometimes we grow through getting what we want and sometimes through being deprived of it. Both ways can be hard.
And both ways can be joyous.
Questions? Comments? Loud open-mouthed, snot-flowing wailing?
Would it be possible for you to demostrate to us how you engage with the process when it happens to you?
It’s a tough question because it’s both so complex and so simple. In a way next week’s post for the practical-minded explains more about the ‘how to’ because at the end of the day, while this all sounds very up in the air, it comes down to the same thing – FOLLOW YOUR BIG REACTIONS. They are showing you what the current lesson is for you.
Is that enough of an answer or is it still too vague?
Some previous posts to check out on this topic:
http://eilataviram.com/children-show-you-to-yourself/
http://eilataviram.com/if-i-cant-also-look-at-my-dark-stuff-then-im-just-faking-it/
and all the July posts.
And the post about Mary gives you step by step questions to ask yourself.
http://eilataviram.com/when-its-irritating-because-it-reflects-you/
Mary, for example, has chosen to come to earth to explore the concept of ‘need’ as one of her areas of specialisation. Before coming to earth as Mary, she would have chosen the caretakers that deprived her of what she needed and later children who would be needy and irritating for her. Those choices would give her the required experiences;
from the perspective of a child,
experiencing adults from the perspective of a child,
as an adult herself still having needs,
as an adult facing a needy child,
seeing other adults handle their needs and children’s needs… etc
All in all a serious exploration of the concept ‘need’.
So glad you raised this – and so very true! thank you for reminding me again
It’s my honour and my pleasure