A basic tenet of most religious and spiritual teachings reminds us to honor of our mothers and fathers.

We are living in an era when many of us are devoting a lot of time and energy to the issues of our distant past, the early years of our lives. By doing this, we are defining who we are today as adults, in context of our dysfunctional childhood, families and parents. We believe them to be the source and reason for all our problems. Blame is assigned to them for our upbringing and we embellish their short comings. They are the excuse for who we are, so we have come to believe. And on a psychological level this may be true. But, the affects of this kind of thinking have far deeper roots, impacting our spiritual journey in more ways than we can imagine. In fact, for many of us, our parents and childhood are the single most important stumbling block to be overcome on our path to higher consciousness.

Who are our parents, but people just like us? In so many ways their life path is our life path. They are in our lives as role models and to show us the way. If we stop to think about it, we start to see how many of the same soul issues and life lessons they share with us. However, our problem rests with the very subtle terms of our expectation that they are Gods or at least God-like. We fail to see then as human and journeying a path, just as we are. Our expectation for them is to be stronger and better than us, when in fact they may be at best just a few steps ahead. Our parents are just another example of how to do it and are mirrors for our soul and karma, no different than we.

There are so many gifts in seeing our parent’s issues as being our issues. (Our tendency is to dislike in others what we need to workout within ourselves.) And most of us are far more like our parents than many of us would care to admit. If we can step back and resist being negative and critical, we can start to see their value and begin to forgive. This opens the door for us to being able to spend time on our journey, free from the energy consuming restraint or resentment focused toward our parents that draws away energy from our searching for the Divine. In place, we can create a new list of reasons to honor our parents and finally grow apart, moving on with our lives. This can never be done when we are locked in emotional and mental battles with them.

The unconditional love we search for in life and expect from our parents only exists on the cosmic planes. We search for it because it is an imprint on our soul that we carry from one lifetime to the next. The delicate, pure energy we call love transcends anything of the earthly life and physical plane. This is such an important object lesson for each of us in learning how energy differs from the cosmic to the earth plane. The fine, pure creative energy of the universe must travel through so many buffers and layers, only to be received and interpreted in the limitation of our experience and consciousness. Perhaps, if we start by understanding how the divine is operating through our parents, we can begin to appreciate why it takes us so many lifetimes to gain enlightenment.

Our parents also help us to finally realize the love, caring and compassion we so deeply seek is of the Divine. It is not here on the earth plane and certainly not embodied in our parents. We reincarnate with our parents because they carry much the same karma as we do. We attach the soul based need to our parents for a first hand experience with the masculine and feminine principles of the cosmic energy. We assign all that is impersonal and cosmic to the two imperfect earthlings, our mother and father. A good way of thinking about this is to remember the first line of the Christian prayer, our father, who art in heaven. The next line should read something like “and who is not the man on earth I call father”.

So who are our parents? People just like you and me, who are working through their stuff and hopefully gaining some enlightenment along the way.

Here’s an exercise for this month. Journal and meditate on these points.

Think of some of the issues with or about your parents you feel angry and critical about.

Reframe these issues within the context of your own life.

Try and see how they are the things you needed, but could not see them because of the form they took.

Stephen Thomson

For more information please visit: www.stephenthomson.net

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