Hey,
Inside Timer.
Welcome back to Sessions of Itself.
And in this edition,
I want to talk about something extremely important,
Not only to our experience as human beings going through physical reality,
But also vital to our spiritual path.
And that is family,
And our relationship with our family.
A few weeks ago,
I had went and visited my dad,
And it had been quite a while since I seen him.
So I took a trip one weekend,
And it was incredible.
It was one of those days that stick to your heart,
And that you'll always remember forever.
We just sat for hours hanging out,
Talking,
Laughing.
He shared stories about growing up in Italy and moving to the US when he was 13.
We went through old photos of his entire family,
Some of which that dated back to the 1800s.
The experience was incredible.
It was like being in a museum of my own family history.
It was the definition of what it means to spend quality time with someone.
And I remember driving home feeling incredibly grateful to have learned all this about my dad and about his family.
And in the days that followed,
I woke up every morning with this undeniable love for my family.
There was like this lingering compassion and gentleness for each of them that just followed me around.
It was really profound.
It was a unique sense of happiness for being who I was and where I came from.
Each morning,
I felt a resolve,
A strength in my heart to keep everyone in my family in this space.
Love,
Acceptance,
And understanding replaced all the past conflicts and ideas on right and wrong.
I set the intention to be present with the people I care about,
To listen,
To care what they have to say,
And most importantly,
To be gentle.
But it also left me wondering,
Why did I experience such an outpouring of emotion?
And this is the reason why I bring this up today.
As I think back to my late teenage years,
To my early adult years,
I acknowledge I spent much of my energy seeking independence and becoming my own person.
Spiritually,
That meant breaking free from my family,
Specifically the limited behaviors and beliefs they modeled.
For a long time,
My focus was to quote unquote,
Become someone new,
Not because I didn't accept myself,
But because I wanted to break free from all the things that held me back from enjoying my life.
Obviously this involved doing a lot of the inner work of diving into my childhood,
Examining my family relationships.
In doing so,
It became easy to fixate on my family's mistakes and negative qualities.
However,
This experience with my dad reminded me,
Sometimes we focus so much on evolving and transforming into better versions of ourselves that it's easy to lose sight of where we came from.
That while 90% of our baggage comes from our family,
Our relationships with them can also be our greatest teacher.
So here are some insights I want to share with you on how family can be a teacher on our spiritual path.
First,
Family teaches us compassion.
They remind us that they are flawed human beings just like us,
And they have fought a hard battle throughout their lives and still are most likely.
So the next time you feel anger or resentment towards a family member,
Imagine what they must have gone through as a child.
Consider their upbringing and the hardships they encounter.
Sometimes we get so fixated on our own childhood and what we experience,
But our family,
Our parents,
They went through a lot too.
Secondly,
Family gives us an insight into our souls in a unique way.
So what I mean by this is the trials and tribulations we experience are an extension of our parents and their parents and their parents and so on.
These trials and tribulations are the quote unquote theme song of your spiritual path.
It's deeply connected to your family.
However,
It's just a small piece of a larger spiritual journey that your family lineage has been going through.
You're just experiencing a small fragment of that.
But the fact that you're walking a similar spiritual path to the people who came before you,
That's a form of deep connection.
So any recurring issues that you have in your life,
You most likely have in common with your family,
With your parents.
And these issues,
These recurring patterns are a window into your soul.
They are reminders of what you need to learn while you're here on earth.
And if you think about it,
There's a reason,
There's a deeper reason why this same issue,
This same pattern has been a theme throughout your family.
And if we do some investigating on this,
There's tremendous wisdom to be gained.
And lastly,
Family reflects our incredible qualities too.
Just as our parents modeled behaviors and qualities that maybe held us back,
They also modeled beautiful gifts and attributes to us.
Acknowledging this teaches us gratitude because many of the qualities we admire most about ourselves more than likely came from them.
More than likely were inspired by them.
For example,
My dad wasn't the greatest communicator with me as a child,
But he was an incredible provider and a hard worker.
The while it's been necessary for me to work through his lack of communication and how it impacted me,
I also learned that my qualities of dedication,
Resilience,
Discipline are gifts from him.
So I try to also keep that in mind when I consider my relationship with him and my childhood.
So my overall message as we move further into our lives,
Further into adulthood,
It becomes easy to take our relationships with our parents,
With our caretakers,
With our family members for granted.
It's very easy to have a one-sided biased attitude when we consider those relationships.
However,
The older we get,
The more consciousness we need to shine on these relationships.
We need to have a deeper understanding of them.
So while we spend a good part of our lives trying to quote unquote break free from our families on various different levels,
But no matter how far you stray in life,
There's nothing quite like coming home and remembering your roots.
Thanks for spending this time with me.
Until next time,
The light in me honors the light in you.
