Seven Thoughts on Spiritual Parenting

Being a parent is one of the greatest tasks and challenges in life.

For your enjoyment, here are seven thoughts on parenting from a Spiritual perspective:

1. Realize that your children are not really your children. They are God’s Sons and Daughters and you are only their caretaker this in lifetime until they grow up and learn to think for themselves.
2. Realize that your children are adult Souls incarnating into children’s bodies.
3. Realize that you chose your children and your children chose you to serve as their parent.
4. Affirm that your relationship to yourself and God comes first in your life, before your relationship to your child.
5. Realize that your job is to provide boundaries and parameters for your children while still allowing them to grow in their own unique Spiritual mission and purpose.
6. Always treat your child with firmness and love.
7. Only give attention to your child’s positive behavior and give as little as possible attention to its inappropriate behavior. Your kids want your attention. The less attention you give to inappropriate behaviour, the less they will do it. The more attention they get for appropriate behaviour, the more they will do that!

The Integrated Enlightened Master raises their kids in a way where they can become Integrated Enlightened Masters in their own right. They teach them everything they know and practice. They realize that they are the mentor and Spiritual teacher of their kids and do not give them free reign to do whatever they want.

The Integrated Enlightened Master realizes that the philosophy that many parents have when it comes to parenting, that kids should be allowed to do whatever they want because they are individuals in their own right is a grave mistake. When a child is born, by definition, it is run by the subconscious mind. It has not yet learned to think for itself. This is why each child is put under the care of parents who have the job of teaching the child how to think properly. In the initial years especially but also until children learn to really think for themselves, parents function as the conscious mind for the children, which they themselves have not yet developed.

© 2012, Dr Joshua David Stone and Gloria Excelsias, www.IAMUniversity.org

How to Forgive Self and Others

As A Course in Miracles states, “Forgiveness is the key to happiness!” No one in this world will ever find happiness and inner peace until they learn to forgive.

The first secret to forgiveness is to realize that mistakes are positive, not negative. Mistakes are teaching devices, so the idea is to learn from them, and as Jesus said, “You are forgiven but sin no more.” So the idea is to learn from our mistakes, forgive ourselves, and try better next time. Mistakes only become “negative” when we don’t learn from them.

The second secret to forgiveness is to realize that when we forgive other people, we are not really doing it for them; we are doing it for ourselves. What requires forgiveness is our misinterpretation of the situation by not looking at it as a teaching device, and by forgetting that there is a difference between a person and a person’s behavior. A person’s behavior, including our own, may be out of line, however, regardless of what we or others do, we and them are still totally loveable because our misbehavior or mistakes have not changed the truth of our identity.

So here is what you should do: Make a list of everyone, including yourself, that needs your forgiveness. Then choose to look at the situation differently. Choose to look at mistakes as something positive, not negative. Choose to understand that forgiving others, in truth, has nothing to do with them. It has to do with correcting faulty thinking within yourself. Why? Because all lessons, in truth, are learned within yourself! So choose to forgive by changing your attitude and interpretation of whatever happened. If you have a situation or person that needs forgiving, it helps to come to these attitudinal conclusions by writing in your journal. Journaling is a great way to clear the mind.

The same applies to self-forgiveness. All your mistakes are forgiven in this very moment. You are not your thoughts, your feelings, your words, or your actions. You are a Child of God, and your mistakes and misbehavior are not held against you. Earth is a school and we learn our lessons by making mistakes and then self-correcting along the way.

The Integrated Ascended Master has total forgiveness and self-forgiveness in his heart. He realizes that in truth everyone is doing the best they can at any given moment in their life. Nobody makes mistakes on purpose.

© 2012, Dr Joshua David Stone and Gloria Excelsias, www.IAMUniversity.org