by Robert Wilkinson
In Part 1 we explored some ideas about Soul groups, and whether an abusive family member could be a part of that group. Today we'll continue to probe the subject of just how much choice we have regarding who we are with, what we do and do not have to accept, and how to break the link between pain and suffering.
Even if you've already read part one, if you have the time you may want to re-read it before continuing with this one, since these two were composed as one piece. I realized together they were too long for a single post, and that's the only reason I split them in two. As a whole body of work, there is much to contemplate that may open many doors of perception.
By looking at the magnetics in our life relationships, we can see when we broke through our “Ring Pass Not” and turned inertia into evolutionary action on our own behalf. As we grow in our awareness, we naturally see bad habits and bad relationships drop like leaves in September, and in the void we can contemplate our journey out of unconscious relationships into joyous dances with our Spiritual Brothers and Sisters.
Our Eternal Existence in the Here and NOW
Our journey to ever-greater Self-realization is eternal. We will be exploring, learning, and applying our realizations in our field of existence for many years and lives to come. Our nature is Love-Wisdom, and when we’re doing our Being, we’re demonstrating Intelligence in Action.
We find our existence in many frequencies of energy, some more material than others. Life on Earth introduces our eternal Self to the world of dense experience. Dense things, dense feelings, and dense thoughts. And through it all, our Higher Self knows we have been through many existences in many fields and frequencies of life and matter.
As our consciousness moves through all kinds of experiences in the dense frequencies, we come to realize this material creation is entirely impermanent, and completely dualistic. We are here as Spirits in the material world learning about life in this dense impermanent reality, and refining our actions, feelings, and thoughts to come out of our attachments, superstitions, illusions, and confusions.
Any time pure Higher Consciousness moves into dealing with forms in a dual reality, we have to make choices. Our lower minds (and therefore our dense feelings) are wired to do a compare and contrast, sequence and selection mode. That’s how we experience everything we perceive.
As we move through experience, we find ourselves forced to choose what we will do, feel, and think about those experiences. Each step of the way, through each challenge and each triumph, we make choices that lead us either to a) higher awareness and contact with our Higher Self or b) loss of the Eternal through getting attached to impermanent forms stimulating lower desires, feelings, and thoughts. Sometimes both!
That’s why learning detachment from our preconceptions is also vital to our spiritual growth. We need to be able to reflect on what has and hasn’t worked in the past, and extrapolate that understanding into a useful coping skill for future experiences in that same area of life. All this while regarding past and future as impermanent, knowing only the here and NOW.
All we experience is a function of time (the 4th dimension) as we move through our contacts with the outer world and all the relationships we encounter along the way (3rd dimension). We learn from the length, width, and depth of our human experience, all while using time as the medium with which to measure our movement within those life experiences.
Are We Getting Closer or More Distant?
Our consciousness grows through all experience, and as long as we’re in a human body, we’re going to learn how to be perfect through being perfectly Human. The goal is for our Eternal Love-Wisdom to be expressed through a perfectly integrated personality expressing our Higher Self.
This has important implications in our process of growth from the baby born within a family sociocultural unit with its belief systems into a fully autonomous Spiritual Being. And while we don’t have choice about who we chose for a family, by our choices here on Earth we become closer or more distant from each of them and the entire family “ghost” with its superstitions, taboos, and rigid assumptions.
We are Radiant Magnetic Eternal Beings. Our choices when we're here, what and who we say “yes” to and who we say “no” to, determine who we're going to be close to in the future, and who we move away from. As we change, our magnetics change as well. We fulfill certain potentials in our personality as indicated by our planets, and then repotentialize to learn greater lessons along those same lines.
As we make changes and are willing to grow into new experiences and interactions, we naturally drop certain people and habits, moving into a new personality expression. This is definitely influenced by the choices others make as they interact with us and others. As we move through life we learn to drop those people and habits which are abusive, and embrace better people and behaviors. Throughout this life we’re all finding those who share our heart in some way, or are on the same Ray Path as we are.
This is why becoming aware of our habits in action, feeling, and thought are so important. As habits are formed, for good or ill, we set up patterns of future activity. We move through these self-generated patterns until we change them. This must be done consciously so that we can develop the power of our free will. Here practicing a consistent intention can focus the mind to achieve excellent results.
By their habits human beings either move into their Higher Self, or get lost in unfortunate behaviors that will inevitably lead to regret once the curtain of ignorance is torn down. Knowing and mastering the desire mind is the key to understanding how to choose wisely. Desiring what is in our highest interest and turning away from being attached to lesser desires and others’ desires are all elements of the task.
Forgiving the Sources of Abuse
When people in a family abuse each other by whatever means, or when we are abused by one who we thought was our friend, it was the choice of the abuser to externalize that behavior. We did not “create” that reality. We found ourselves in the presence of someone else’s choosing to involve us in their desire to abuse someone. Those are times when we learn how to move on (however we can) and let go of the need to stay involved with the abuser.
Moving on always involves a degree of forgiveness and compassion, for our abuser but more importantly, for ourselves, for having been caught in an abusive experience. Hopefully it wakes us up and we’ll never have to do that again! We’ll learn what we needed to learn about that type of behavior pattern related to that type of personality, so that we can prevent being abused again.
So while I feel that we must come to true peace and forgiveness toward those who have abused us, it does not make it right that it happened to begin with, nor does it mean we should believe it taught us much of anything. We do not have to go to jail to know we don't need to be there. That’s why we don’t have to tolerate abuse in the name of anything.
As Soul-Spirits, we are here to learn what is venerable, what is worthy, what evokes our highest ideas and feelings and actions. We are here to BE Love, and learn to share Love with others. Abuse does not further these. While we may be learning to come to a measure of peace and forgiveness in our lives, we can learn these best through kind, loving, and beneficial interactions.
Stopping The Patterns of Accepting Abuse
Family Karma is where we were shaped by forces beyond our control, because we were born into them. That shapes our personality patterns as children, but eventually we learn as we mature that some of those things must be questioned and rejected if it’s not in line with our Soul’s intention. The struggle for full and effective individualization will push us beyond our fears and assumptions if we embrace the journey out of the known into the grand adventure of learning how to be autonomous.
I offer an in-depth examination of why our family and cultural matrix is useful until it’s not in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend. We are Soul-Spirits born into a field where we can grow until we find that field too narrow, too restrictive, too rule bound for our eternally free Spirit. Then we break through our self-imposed “Ring Pass Not” and find ourselves freed from abusive people with their assumptions about us and what they may do and say to us.
We are eternally free to move in a better direction when we understand we no longer have to accept the assumptions which put us into a place where we would be abused. That’s why even if we are forced to go through abuse from family members when we’re children, our spiritual awareness knows we do not have to tolerate it even for a minute.
Even as children living under harsh rules, we learn to counter it however we can. We learn to avoid mean people, and when appropriate, break the “no talk” rule. We have to learn to “say no, run, and tell somebody.” All of this also applies to abusive situations when we’re adults.
An abusive family member or would-be “friend” is always choosing to abuse others. It was not dictated by karma that they should choose to abuse. Also, a major misunderstanding seems to involve the illusion that someone who is abused must have abused someone at another time or in another life. Nonsense!
Karma is not linear in the sense that an abused person must have abused others in previous times. Sometimes it’s just a situation where someone motivated by fear and strong desires has attracted another into their web of illusion. Even then, it’s not the “fault” of the potential victim unless they stay when they know they need to go.
Karma is created, perpetuated, or destroyed by our choices. An abuser is under no law to perpetuate abuse in any given moment. We are under no law to tolerate abuse in any way for any length of time.
Which brings us to the nexus of how forgiveness relates to stopping abuse. Forgiving our abuser has nothing to do with tolerating abuse. In my experience, I believe true forgiveness can only arise once the abusive behavior stops. As long as the abuse continues, then what is there to forgive? At that point the lesson is not to allow kindness and compassion to be taken for weakness.
Some believe we must have people to forgive in order to learn it. I believe we can cultivate peace and forgiveness through forgiving all our own shortcomings, as well as those times when we go through our own or another’s inadvertent well-meant misguided behavior, more than through going through things that were not necessary to begin with.
We are here to learn how to forgive consciously those things we suffer as a result of karma. Many prior misdeeds and errors can be released through self-forgiveness. We were all ignorant before we became aware, and much can be forgiven because it seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s part of being human.
Lost in Darkness or Lost in Love?
All personalities must advance to craft a Higher Self so the Light, Love, and Intelligence of the Soul-Spirit can shine forth. Some beings choose to ignore the task, and stay lost in destructive behavior. Due to that divergence of spiritual “goal-fitness,” some beings that were a part of our Soul group early in life are no longer part of our Soul group once this time on Earth is done.
I don't believe a Soul has much work to do except love. That's eternal. It's not the Soul that "moves up." It's the personality. That work is entirely within our power, and the only game in town.
Those who willfully do not rise to the lessons of becoming better people than they were in the past are indulging in a destructive and toxic illusion. This is a form of "spiritual juvenile delinquency" in its worst form, since the being knows better, but refuses to grow.
So to say a being is not "at fault," for their bad behavior, or that they "can't help it," is also an illusion. (I realize there are exceptions for those with severe brain chemical imbalances, but that’s not what we are speaking of here.)
Except for some who are unable to function normally in our reality due to severe organic chemical or neural brain malfunctions, a being's choices are entirely up to them. Here the concept of “functional intention” is important. It's one thing when a being is ignorant, but willing to learn. Deliberately hurtful behavior is another things entirely.
When a being deliberately chooses to be hurtful instead of helpful, dishonest instead of honest, cowardly instead of courageous, irresolute instead of self-disciplined, and abusive rather than loving, they are on a path of self-loss in that which has no permanence. This is not necessary for anyone's Soul recognition, and contrary to their task of Soul-personality development.
If we are the recipient of abuse, it's not our fault they chose that behavior. But it is our task to recognize abuse and stop it whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. Abuse is not helpful to our development, and withers the Soul-personality connection. Some human behaviors must be stopped forever if the race is to evolve into its higher potential.
To reiterate an important point. While we can find love and forgiveness toward those who have abused us, that's not to excuse the abuse, or say it was necessary to begin with. Perhaps a Gandhi arises from an abusive situation once in a great while, but again, how many Gandhis could arise if given better circumstances in which to unveil that potential?
Lessons To Learn As We Remember Who We Want To Dance With
I believe we need to come to a dispassionate view of those who have abused us so we can find genuine compassion for the common abuses done to others. I also believe we need to come to a radical detachment from negative judgments, the suffering over memories of suffering, as well as reject the illusion that we have somehow invited those who have abused us to do so in order to learn some supposed "spiritual" lesson.
Perhaps the only lesson is that abuse is not helpful for anything in any useful sense. We do not need abuse to learn discrimination that helps us come to know what is real and what is unreal, what is darkness and what is light, what is death and what is immortality.
All that said, the last World Teacher suffered abuse, both when He walked as well as the abuse done in His name in the centuries since His passing. Perhaps this indicates that dealing with abuse and abusers may have been part of our global lesson for many generations.
However, while we can come to much compassion through breaking the link between pain and suffering, even that is not the ultimate ideal, and it doesn't mean it's a part of the future teaching. There are certainly more "spiritual" ways to be than the past and present abusive patterns humanity has demonstrated up to now.
It's always good to view others as Soul-Beings learning what they're learning. It's always good to stop abuse, as well as forgive the abuse done to us, whether deliberately or inadvertently. And it's always good to be with others who love us, venerate what is venerable, with whom we can find joy, celebration, connectedness, and community.
That's our true Soul group. And each volunteers for that, every day, every year, every lifetime.
Copyright © 2019 Robert Wilkinson
Id like to send each family member this masterpiece... first and foremost to frame it and also sit and remind myself of the many times I thought it must of been something i did. Knowing it was in fact they justified my being punished. I prayed and I'm grateful for you set aside the effort for all to read.
Posted by: Janet Lee Pondelli | June 16, 2019 at 02:53 PM