| Answer
from Jesus:
A very important question
with some profound implications. The simple answer to your question
is that a child is more than a physical body. The child has a soul,
and that soul does not suddenly appear out of nowhere at the conception
or at the birth of the body. As I explain elsewhere,
the soul has indeed existed for a very long time because reincarnation
is a reality—regardless of the fact that orthodox Christianity
denounces it.
When you do accept the reality of reincarnation, you realize that the
soul of your child is potentially very old. That soul could have had
many lifetimes to build up a very complex psychology and a very complex
web of karma and misqualified energy. You therefore see that the soul
of your child might have come into this lifetime with a very heavy baggage
of unresolved problems from past lives. In some cases, a soul can be
so burdened and wounded from its past experiences that no amount of
love, care and guidance by the parents or the community can fully heal
the child.
There are many people who come into embodiment so wounded that they
have little chance of becoming perfectly healed in one lifetime. However,
they do have the opportunity to make progress, and the best you can
do to help such a soul is to continue to show it love, to seek to help
the soul heal its psychological wounds and help it expand its understanding
of life. It will be especially helpful if the soul can come to understand
the fact that human beings are ultimately responsible for their own
situation because they create their own reality. However, it can be
difficult to make a wounded soul accept this fact, as described in an
important
discourse.
It is important to be realistic and realize that some souls are so wounded
that they can make only limited progress or none at all. In fact, some
souls simply reinforce a downward spiral that has been going on for
lifetimes, and they will not pull out of it until they hit some kind
of bottom. I fully understand that it is very disheartening and disappointing
to parents to have a child who rejects all of the offering of help and
healing that is extended to the soul. I feel the pain of millions of
parents who brought children into the world with the greatest hopes
and expectations and who have done their very best to love and heal
their children. I am aware that many parents experience that their children
shatter their expectations and continually choose the lowest possible
road in every situation.
I understand that this is very painful and disappointing for parents.
However, I have to say that it is extremely important for parents to
move beyond this kind of disappointment in their children and the sense
of being rejected by the children. To fully move beyond this, two realizations
are necessary.
The first realization is that most current cultures are based on a very
limited understanding of the reality of God. If you have grown up in
a culture that does not recognize the reality of reincarnation, it is
almost inevitable that you will have been brought up to have a set of
very unrealistic expectations and attitudes concerning having and raising
children. In the Western world it is commonly accepted that a parent
has to love a child no matter how that child behaves.
In an overall sense this is true, but it is only true when you realize
that true love means the unconditional love of God. That love is not
the possessive and self-centered love that most people are capable of
feeling and expressing. When you feel only self-centered loved, it is
inevitable that parents develop a sense of ownership concerning their
children. This then leads to a set of expectations that the child should
live its life according to the standards of the parents and their society.
This leads to unnecessary attempts by parents to control their children,
and it leads to much conflict between parents and children because the
children rebel against their parents’ attempts to control them.
This then leads to much heartbreak and disappointment on the part of
the parents and much anger on the part of the children. This is a dysfunctional
culture that spiritual people need to make an attempt to break away
from and transcend.
This leads to the second realization. The way to transcend the current
dysfunctional culture concerning children is to realize and accept that
your child is not your child. You have not created that child
out of yourself or out of nothing. You do not have any ownership over
the soul of your child. Your child is a completely separate individual,
and as such your child has an absolute God-given right to exercise its
free will according to its own understanding and to reap the consequences
of its choices.
When you have a possessive attitude toward your child, you will seek
to control the soul’s choices, and you might seek to prevent it
from experiencing the consequences of its choices. When you overcome
the possessive love and embrace the unconditional love of God, you will
not seek to control the child but you will seek to educate and direct
the child. However, you will have an uncompromising respect for the
free will of the child, and if the child will not follow your advice,
you will allow the child to experience the consequences of its choices.
I am not hereby saying that you should allow your child to do something
that is threatening to its life or safety. I am, however, saying that
as the child grows up, you will give it greater and greater freedom
and you will eventually come to a point where you simply set the child
free to live life as it sees fit. This is especially important for a
wounded soul.
This then brings us to the concept that as a parent you are not obligated
to let your entire life revolve around the child. A parent is not obligated
to take care of a child for its entire lifetime. To fully understand
this, you need to realize that there are two basic reasons why a particular
parent will choose to bring in a particular soul as a child.
Before your soul came into its present embodiment, you met in a higher
realm with your spiritual counselors, and you planned your coming
lifetime. This includes planning which souls you want to give an opportunity
for life by having them as your children.
Obviously most parents want to think that their children are the perfect
children. However, in reality many parents choose, before they come
into embodiment, to give birth to one or more children that are severely
wounded. There can be two basic reasons why a parent chooses to have
a child with a wounded soul:
- One reason is that the
parent has karma with the child from past lives. The parent chooses
to have the child as a way to pay back its debt to that soul.
- Another reason is that
the parent has a very old positive connection with the child. Therefore,
the parent chooses to give birth to the wounded soul out of love for
that soul and a desire to help the soul.
In the first case you might
say that the relationship between the parent and the child can be viewed
as a business relationship. The parent owes a karmic debt to the child,
almost like owing money to the bank. When the debt is paid back, the
parent has fulfilled its obligation to the child.
What I am saying here is that in such a relationship there might not
be any love between the soul of the child and the soul of the parent.
In fact, there might be a lot of negative feelings carried over from
a past life. The highest potential for that situation is that both the
child and the parent will overcome all negative feelings for each other,
work through their wounded psychology, balance the karma with each other
and build a positive and loving relationship.
Unfortunately, this rarely happens when the child is a wounded soul.
The main reason for this is the lack of spiritual understanding in Western
culture. Because they don’t see life as an opportunity for spiritual
growth, the child and the parent often reinforce their negative feelings.
This is unfortunate because it can prevent them from balancing their
karma with each other.
The best thing you can do as a spiritually aware parent in that situation
is to change your attitude toward the child and make a determined effort
to heal your negative feelings and emotional wounds related to the child.
You will then do everything you can to help the child so that you can
balance your karma with the child. This might include spiritual exercises,
such as using the Violet
Flame or Mother
Mary's rosaries to transmute that karma.
If you do overcome your own negative feelings and balance all karma
with your child, you have literally fulfilled your spiritual obligation
to that child. If the child still does not respond in a positive manner
toward you, it can be legitimate to simply cut off the relationship
with the child.
Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am quite aware that
there are many parents who run away from their responsibility toward
their children. Please do not misconstrue my remarks and interpret them
to mean that I condone such behavior. I do not condone anyone running
away from their responsibility in life. What I am talking about here
is that you can actually come to a point where you have fulfilled your
responsibility toward a child, and it is better for both that you move
on.
If the child has not shown any willingness to leave behind its negative
feelings toward you, to learn from you or take advantage of anything
you have to offer, then it can be legitimate for you to say, “You
are on your own! I have to move on with my life and if you are not willing
to move on, I am going to leave you behind.” This is indeed part
of the meaning behind several of the things I said 2,000 years ago,
when I made some very direct statements that have been misunderstood
by so many:
For I am come to
set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against
her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law (Matthew
10:35).
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me:
and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
(Matthew 10:37).
The meaning behind these
statements is that the purpose for your life is to move on with your
spiritual path and manifest your Christhood. If you have fulfilled the
karmic debt and if the child becomes a dead weight that holds you back
on your spiritual path, then it can be legitimate for you to leave that
child behind and move on with your path.
I realize that many people will find this to be a very provocative statement,
yet it is the truth. What I am saying here is that a spiritually aware
person will not simply run away from a child. However, you might move
on when you have fulfilled the responsibility to the child, because
you now realize that you also have a responsibility toward your own
soul. If the child is not willing to move forward, then what is the
point in halting your own spiritual progress out of a false sense of
obligation to the child. Why hold back your progress if you do not help
the child? Two wrongs do not make a right.
To fully understand this, you need to once again look at the fact that
a child is a completely separate soul with its own free will. When you
bring the child into the world, you have a certain responsibility to
give that child the best possible start in life. Yet there comes a point
when the child must fly away from the nest and take responsibility for
its own life. When the child is old enough to make its own decisions,
or when it reaches a point of complete rebellion or rejection of you
as a parent, you are no longer responsible for the child's choices.
For that matter, you are never responsible for your child’s choices,
although while the child is younger you do have a responsibility to
help it make the best possible choices.
What I am telling you here is that it is absolutely essential for any
spiritual seeker to come to a point where you realize and fully accept
that you are not responsible for the choices made by other people. You
are responsible for your own life and for your own choices. You are
not responsible for the choices of other people. You can seek to help
them make the best possible choices, but you should never fall into
the trap of attempting to make those choices for them.
If all people would realize the profound truth in this statement, about
80 percent of the conflicts and problems you currently see on this planet
could be resolved very quickly because they truly spring from this false
sense that you are responsible for the choices other people.
Before I get carried away, let me return to the situation where you
choose to give birth to a wounded soul out of love for that soul. In
that case, you already have a strong love for that soul and it is important
that you nourish that love, even if your child is so wounded that it
cannot fully reciprocate your love. In such a relationship it is extremely
important that you do not let your love for the child become turned
into the false sense of responsibility that I have just described. Instead,
you should feel compassion and realize that the child's wounds might
set some limitations for the relationship.
As I explained earlier, your child might be so deeply wounded that it
has no chance of being completely healed in one lifetime. Therefore,
the child might not be able to be a model citizen according to the standards
of your culture and society. If you can avoid feeling a false sense
of responsibility, you can let the child do the best it can in life
without demanding or expecting it to do what is impossible given the
soul’s wounds.
You can then avoid feeling rejected or disappointed and instead consider
the child as a wounded soul that you can seek to help and love as it
is able to receive it. In other words, you do not seek to force your
love or your help upon the child but give only according to the child's
limited ability to receive.
If you can maintain this attitude, you can build a constructive relationship
to the child that will last for the rest of its life. In that case you
might be able to gradually help the child heal its wounds and make major
progress in that lifetime. This would indeed be a very positive outcome,
even if the life of the child is far from ideal according to a worldly
or spiritual standard. You see, people don’t have to live perfect
lives in order to make spiritual progress. God does not judge as human
beings judge.
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Copyright
© 2004 by Kim Michaels |
