Earthlight Magazine / Books / Home
Copyright © 1996 by Anne Irwin
All rights reserved. Inquiries should be addressed to
Twelve Star Publishing, P.O. Box 123, Jefferson, MD 21755
Earthlight Magazine / Books
/ Home
Copyright © 1996 by Anne Irwin
All rights reserved. Inquiries should be addressed to
Twelve Star Publishing, P.O. Box 123, Jefferson, MD 21755
There is a saying that you choose your friends, but that
you don't choose your family. The implication is that friends
are better because you choose the best and can discard the ones
you get tired of, or who simply don't work out, and that family
is where you get 'stuck' for a lifetime with a bunch of folks
you ended up with by chance and happenstance.
That simply isn't true. The family is the holy communion of spiritual
energy, the intertwining of souls for the purpose of expressing
Spirit. The family is the highest form of cooperative effort.
You chose your parents, your extended family, your history and
social position. You chose it all for very specific purposes.
You chose a family from a lower economic group to experiment with
scarcity. You chose a family with money to learn stewardship.
You choose your disabilities, your strengths, your weaknesses,
your talents and your bad habits. You choose whatever and whomever
you choose for the lessons you wish to learn from them and they
to learn from you.
On the earth plane you forget how it all works. You forget that
all is love, all is God, all is experience learned and cataloged.
On the earth plane, when someone treats you badly you forget that
they are fulfilling a request you made of them. Yes, you met with
your obnoxious older brother in spirit, before entering the world
as a new being, and asked him to please remember that you two
are working on the lessons of forgiveness together and it is only
going to work if he teases you unmercifully as a young boy. You
in turn agree to get really angry and blame him for all your problems.
If everyone has done their job right, you now have a perfect scenario
to practice life long forgiveness. Your brother has loved you
enough to put aside his experience of harmony and grace to join
with you in a learning experience. In spirit you know that the
illusion of separation only serves to make the spiritual reunion
that much sweeter. When you return to spirit at this life's end
you will thank your brother for such a fine job of tormenting
you, just as you asked him to.
Does this seem ridiculous to you? Take a moment and think about
your most difficult relationships. Now imagine yourself as spirit,
as you were planning this lifetime before you were born. You were
excited, filled with enthusiasm. You went to each of your favorite
souls and requested that they play with you in this game of life.
Together you set up mutual experiences, roles that you would play
in one another's lives. Now imagine yourself approaching your
best loved souls, those dearest and closest to you in every way.
These beloved ones you asked to fulfill the most difficult roles,
for you knew that even as your human eyes perceived unpleasantness,
your soul would know you were well blessed in the hands of those
who's love you most shared.
Think of one family member with whom you have the greatest difficulty.
What role did you ask them to play for you? Why? What lesson are
you learning from their lovingly carrying out your request? Imagine
yourself meeting with them before your birth. What are you asking
them to do for you? What request do they have for you? What is
your mutual goal? Think about this carefully. It will always be
a mutual goal of the highest and greatest good. Ultimately it
will be the experience of love and oneness, but in what way will
this show up for you?
Now that you know that that seemingly difficult person -- be they
parent, child or spouse -- is a thorn in your side for one reason
only, because you requested it of them, can you now begin to forgive?
Can you begin to envision them as their spiritual self, their
higher self? Can you envision thanking them for a job well done?
See if you can discover what lesson you have set for yourself.
Once this lesson is discovered, you can begin to move swiftly
to a place of shared understanding and joyous learning, rather
than learning through pain and unhappiness.
Remember, you always have the choice to learn your lessons through
joy and grace. Learning through pain will garner you no extra
"points" on the path to enlightenment. Poverty, humility
and deprivation are in no way spiritually preferable to abundance,
self confidence and joyful indulgence. Those ideas are merely
ego trying to work things out. Unfortunately, ego does not have
access to the big picture. Ego is trapped at the level of physical
experience. Ego prefers the fear it can see and touch and smell,
to the radiant bliss that comes beyond the physical senses. Ego
holds on tight, because it knows that to transcend fear you must
release the ego all together. In the letting go you are transformed
and ego ceases to be.
So it is that in the release of forgiveness the experience of
pain is transformed and ceases, while the experience of love grows,
expands, and matures into an experience of personal divinity and
universal oneness.
Forgiveness is not excusing unpleasant behavior, but remembering
that you requested this particular unpleasantness for a purpose
and can now accept responsibility for your request. By acknowledging
the inherent lesson and committing yourself to it's assimilation
within your heart, you release the other person from their commitment
to you. In discovering what you have to offer them, you take the
final step and release yourself from your commitment to them as
well. Forgiveness is transcending what is apparent on the earth
plane and remembering that every soul with who you interact is,
on the spiritual plane, your dearest friend, your most beloved
companion. Forgiveness unlocks the secret key within your heart
that will allow you to love that person unconditionally here on
the earth plane as you do in your spiritual home.
Through release and forgiveness you do not give yourself away.
You lose no part of yourself. No one takes anything from you.
Rather through release, through forgiveness, you discover the
hidden spiritual depths within yourself which were invisible to
you. You gain parts of yourself you never knew existed. And you
discover that the world is peopled with your soul mates in disguise.
Anne Irwin of Napa, CA is a teacher, mother, graphic artist
and author of the exciting new book, Enlightened Parenting,
forthcoming from Twelve Star Publishing (301) 473-9035
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