Parents, Kids, and Karma
Recently, we looked at how outer circumstances and other people reflect the weather and climate of our inner landscapes. This month we’re turning the light on family relationships, many of the most important connections we have during our time on Earth.
More understanding of the journey of each person in a relationship, and then where they intersect, goes a long way toward increasing our, I seem to want to say quality of life. But perhaps I mean quality of experience, opening the door to allowing our relationships be the teachers for us they are and removing the need for the lessons they bring us to be as difficult as they can be.
Looking at others, including family members, as reflective of what’s up on our inner landscape, in other words, can show us how to bring some ease and grace into those relationships and our lives by fulfilling the agreements we have with those people. If we can accept responsibility for all that we at the soul level have created, are inviting and living through, we can learn to have respect for and cherish those we’re entangled with as family; things can shift. Details & rough spots in those relationships still need to be dealt with, but knowing what each party is really trying to accomplish in life and why his or her soul has opted for it can smooth things out tremendously.
Each Person’s Journey
Each of us is on a path. On our way somewhere. We choose different routes and means of learning what it is to be incarnated in a place like this at a time like this, in bodies like these. There are a variety of themes souls can choose from (each of which fits within one of the twelve astrological archetypes), and we create all manner of experiences in our lives to explore those themes.
Other People
We’re teachers for others and they’re teachers for us. A person shows up in someone else’s life to show that person something, to reflect something. If you’re familiar with the concept of synchronicity, you know that people show up to guide or teach you at the right time and for the right amount of time – you’re asking to be shown something or guided somewhere and other people can magically appear to do just what you’re asking for. This can show up as an important three minutes as a stranger at the deli counter, or as a life-long friend or partner, or anything in between.
Some of us ask consciously to be shown things and guided, others don’t. Asking speeds up the process, yet either way we’re all getting the reflective thing going in our lives all the time. And whatever we draw to us, whatever experiences and relationships come our way, is to teach us about experiencing the themes we’ve signed up for. Working with a tool like astrology can help shed light on why things happen the way they do, yet I find myself all the time telling clients asking about relationships that other people are in one way imaginary. Everything they think the other person is doing is not the responsibility or cause of the other person but reflective of what’s happening inside the client, and the other has simply showed up to help him or her see it. It’s not the other person’s fault, it’s the joint responsibility of each person involved.
While on one level others are imaginary, on another level we’ve invited them in to help see and work through our life issues. And they’ve done the same. I say they’re imaginary to bring your attention to you, so you can discern why you’re creating the scenario. The relationships themselves then do need attention, nurturing and so on, but understanding why things are happening the way they are is critical to progressing with and through them.
The Context Of Family
All that said, family relationships are particular (particularly important) because of the context they offer us. The people group our soul chooses to be human-born into provide us examples of how to live. Our families, whether of origin or those we grow up in into which we were not born, provide a context for our own karma (sets of beliefs regarding and investments in emotional memories from past lives – say that three times fast) to be played out. Said another way, choosing the families into which we’re born recreates conditions and circumstances of our past lives.
This is huge – just think about it for a minute. We’re recreating the scenarios and circumstances of our past lives in the families into which we choose to be born. We’re in that way reliving our past lives. And why do we do it? Because we need people to train us about what it’s like to live on Earth in these human bodies. We need others to train us to be good members of society. We need teachers.
Whether a person jives with or feels hideously infected and repelled by his or her family is irrelevant on this count. We each need examples, and every single family provides them.
Family Relationships
We’ve all known our family members in other lives, though the relationships and contexts vary. Sometimes we’re in a parent-child dynamic with the same souls again and again, sometimes business partners in one life become siblings or children in other lives, a child becomes a spouse or vice versa, and so on. And those not in our family to whom we feel immediately bonded and irrevocably connected are often family member from other lives.
What I do in my work is to help you understand why you experience the pitfalls and potholes you do in your family (which understanding creates space for peace), but also to reveal the agendas underlying the relationships. Other than giving you an example of how to live, what contracts do you have with your parents? Your siblings or kids? Your mate? What have you signed up to teach each other?
In my practice as a channel/medium I tap into the agreements people have made with each other at the soul level. Behold some random examples that follow common themes:
- I’ll trigger your need to learn more self-sufficiency, you’ll show me a great example of taking pride in work to serve my need to learn to express ambition.
- I’ll be a constant reminder for you of the importance of acknowledging emotional realities, and you’ll inspire me to want to spend more time at home and not work as much.
- I’ll show you the value of developing compassion, and you’ll show me the value of listening.
Whatever the details, the contracts always go both ways. Sounds great, right? We’re all teachers for each other and there are all these super things we’ve agreed to help each other learn. But these contracts are meant to challenge us to change and grow, and this can translate into everyday experience as tension and friction. Disagreements and arguments. Being locked in conflict as each party tries decide how much to change. Trying to navigate what change would mean, what ground change would require each to give up.
But you’ve invited them to teach you! So why not learn what the point is and take care of your business together? When you do, you’re more free to love them for being exactly who they are as they explore this human trip, and they’re free to do the same. You wouldn’t be born into a family where there isn’t a ton of love, by the way – it’s just that it can get covered and fogged over by the pain of our dynamics together and reactions to each other over time. We incarnate in these groups precisely because we love each other – we want to offer each other the lessons we need to learn from others – it’s all about doing for each other because of love.
Last month I did a workshop in called “Parents, Kids and Karma.” Parents of young kids came to get the skinny on karma and how this family business works at the soul level. I offered nutshell readings on their own individual journeys, those of their kids, and where they intersect astrologically. I also read some line items on the soul contracts they’ve drawn up with each other to help them understand in what ways they’re teachers for each other, and what unfinished karmic business can be completed here and now. It was a lot of fun, and it piqued the curiosity of those who attended but didn’t have the readings. Everyone after all has these relationships. Everyone’s got family or one kind or another, and everyone’s got karmic business to take care of with them.
This Juncture in Time-Space
I love doing this with parents and their young kids, but it’s also important work for any of us to do with any and all family relationships that are difficult. In August, an 83 year old man came to another workshop I gave and asked about resolving his relationship with his father, who’d passed away in the early 1970s. He wanted to resolve the tension they couldn’t resolve while they were both alive, and was open to hearing whatever it was they were supposed to be doing together. The juice in the difficulty between them was cemented when the man was a young boy, and I worked with him to help him (and that young boy inside him) understand his father’s journey, what his father was here to learn and how his son was a teacher for him.
If issues with your family have been on your mind, or you have young ones and want to understand more about what you’re doing together beyond serving as guardians and examples, pay attention to that impulse. At this juncture in space-time, we’re all being invited in one way or another to clear up emotional and energetic debris from the past (including past lives) as well as learn more about the ways we’re connected to each other at the soul level. If you’re ready to make peace with your life and relationships, your age is unimportant. As is whether the other people you want resolution with are living or have already passed over, recently or long ago. Creating peace in those relationships will create peace within you.
In other articles here, I’ve written about the change of age that’s slowly in process now (from Pisces to Aquarius), the end of the Mayan Calendar, and understanding ourselves through higher-dimensional lenses (not just in terms of our past history and experience). Processing family relationships is critical to life on Earth here and now: You asked to teach and be taught, and given how the energetic landscape on Earth is evolving, you’re now able to increase understanding and process emotions and other information at a much faster rate than you have in the past.
All this is not to say that there will be no conflicts once you get the scoop on what you’re doing together. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to understand the point of the relationship? Having a line on the journeys of each person makes it possible for new levels of dialogue to take place, those that take into account each person’s differing perspectives and goals. Relationships are the biggest drivers of growth in our lives, after all, so even when we understand the agendas and contracts behind them, we still have work to do – but the work gets a little less hard, and can actually be fun as we enjoy playing with the people we came here to play with.