Spiritual Parenting
By John Ashbrook
At no time in history has there been more emphasis on the importance of being an effective parent. The critical aspects of helping children grow up and become productive, responsible, mature adults with the skills to deal with everyday life trials on earth are of prime importance to more and more parents in society. Parenting today is much more than providing love, security, and material things for children. It is about teaching children to recognize and deal with their fears, insecurities, and personal problems. Every parent wants their child to grow up and have the most fulfilling life possible. The parents want their children better health, greater prosperity, and deeper, more satisfying personal relationships. Still, at the same time, they wonder how they can help their children to make these things possible.
It is essential to realize and fully grasp this truth: your children pick you as their parents. They do this for some excellent reasons. Earth is a school, and for a soul preparing to incarnate here, it is critical to their education to choose the right teachers. Every child born is here to learn very specific spiritual lessons, which, if mastered, will aid them in the purification of their soul. These lessons vary from child to child, so it is critically important for each child to end up in the right situation with the right parents (teachers) to further their spiritual development.
Before birth, an effort is made in the spirit world to help each soul being incarnated to choose parents with a similar psychological disposition to their own. The idea is that the parents have the same fears and spiritual problems as the child being born to them, and since they have experience with these problems, they are at least somewhat capable of teaching the child how to deal with these negative traits. Understand that the parents and the child also have similar positive characteristics, and the parents can also aid the child in manifesting these aspects as well. The process of choosing one’s parents is much more complex than is being illustrated here, but the goal of the right child for the right parents is always achieved even if it may not look that way to the casual earthly observer. The child’s plan of life results from numerous factors, including karma, The Law of Attraction, and the accumulated effects of past incarnations.
Armed with the information mentioned above, achieving a higher, more profound spiritual parenting level is possible. From the time your child is born, they watch you, observe what you do, and deal with life. After all, you are their chosen teacher. Remember, they are psychologically similar to you, so it is highly likely that where you have problems with life, so do they, and at the same time, where you have talents, they also have similar skills. If you are perfectionistic, they may also be perfectionistic. If you are impatient, they may also be impatient. If you have creative talent and express that to the world, they probably also have creative talent and will learn to express their beauty by observing how you do it. If you spill milk in the kitchen and get angry and stressed over it, and your little child is sitting on the kitchen floor watching you, then you can bet that they will react similarly when they spill the milk! The point is, the child is reflective of your immaturity. Your spiritual maturity and your child’s spiritual maturity are equal. You are responsible for setting a mature example for your children, and to do that, you must recognize, face, and dissolve your problems in full view of them. The simplicity and beauty of spiritual parenting is a win/win situation. You deal with your shortcomings in front of a child, and you automatically teach and help them deal with theirs. Your observed behavior either verifies or begins to re-program your child’s unconscious psychological tendencies so that when they, at some point in their life, are faced with similar situations, they will deal with them according to what they saw you do. Remember, it is not what you tell them; what they see you do makes the difference. The more responsible you are in dealing with your life, the more responsible they will be with theirs. It is also important to realize that your children will be observing your behavior until you leave the planet, so it is never too late for you to help them change and have a more fulfilling life. Of course, the earlier in life you make changes, the earlier in life you make changes your children benefit from what they observe you doing, from your spiritual growth.
This is the time in human history where humankind can begin to progress by leaps and bounds. Spiritual parenting is a critical element in the creation of a more enlightened, highly evolved, and spiritual population. This level of parenting’s grand goal is that each generation will learn its lessons and progress spiritually at an earlier age until we reach the point where spiritually mature parents will be capable of affecting real change in the spiritual development of their offspring when they are still young children! When this happens, we will have the best of both worlds – a population with the maturity, wisdom, confidence, and security that comes with age and, at the same time, the adventurous, creative, joyful, free-flowing exuberance of eternal youth.
