When we study the subject Family, through a Spiritist point of view, we can start by acknowledging the important mission of the family, and consider families as being small scale workshops, that God has placed us in so that we can learn the skills we need to live in the bigger family called society. So in our families we can find many different characters, traits and behaviours we will face latter on in social life. Since childhood we learn how to live with our parents, with our brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins. In all of these individuals we register, take in and interact with types, characters and we create references that we will use when we start to deal with society. So the family unit is very important in this introduction process.
Kardec asked the superior spirits regarding the importance of family ties and they answered:
So we can see that when we live in a family we learn to break down our selfishness. One needs to learn how to take care of the other. Something that belonged to one person when single is no longer theirs, it now belongs to a couple and when the children come along it belongs to 3 and then 4 and the 5 and so on…Thus we have to learn how to minimize our selfishness by sharing our belongings, our time; the feeling of being very possessive and looking after our personal interest and our attention turns to a familiar interest and more collective growth. We are united in a family with this goal. At the same time we have many issues to work out collectively, each one of us have our own individual tasks and trials we bring from our past lives.
Is interesting to note that although Spiritism emphasizes the importance of marriage, there is not a specific ceremony in it that symbolize Marriage like we find in other religious institutions.
God wishes all beings to unite themselves not only through the ties of the flesh, but manly through those of the soul, so that the mutual affection of the spouses be transmitted to the offspring and that it should be two, and not just one, who love them, look after them and help them progress.
In the Chapter XX of TGAS, “Do not separate what God has joined”, we see that real marriage, goes beyond a ceremony and a contractual civil agreement. It belongs to the divine law.
However, neither civil laws nor the obligations which these laws determine can replace the law of love. If love doesn’t exist in the union those who were united often separate. For that reason we have unhappy marriages that sometimes end up becoming criminal, which is a double tragedy that could have been avoided if the main condition for that marriage was the law of love. When Jesus said: “And they then shall be one flesh,” and when Jesus said: “What God has joined together let no man put apart,” these words should he understood as a reference to the union according to God’s immutable law and not according to the changeable laws of Man.
There is absolutely nothing which prevents it being a result of God’s law. All obstacles against the execution of the Divine Law of love comes from prejudices and not from the civil law.
These prejudices, even if they are still alive, have lost much of their predominance amongst the enlightened peoples of this world. They will come to disappear with moral progress, which in fact will open the eyes of mankind to the countless evils, to the failings and even crimes which result from unions which are contracted on the exclusive basis of material interest.
Is important to point out that, nowadays we find ourselves in a transitional period; Society is adapting itself to new realities and new family structures; We see in many countries the recognition of relationships between same sex, first by Civil Union and very soon by Marriage as well. To legalize is always a way to give something authenticity before society and by doing so moralize it. So if the moral union is made by the feeling of reciprocal love, why not legalize something that already exists. This way we can avoid painful consequences of discrimination, which can include violence towards the individuals and their children. Homosexuality is a very profound topic and it definitely deserves full attention on a different lecture, regardless of the type of relationship; a marriage, a civil union or a de-facto relationship, the law of love is fundamental and its natural consequence is moral commitment. Moral commitment is a duty when we consider sharing our lives with someone.
Marriages classifications from a Spiritist point of view*:
At accidental marriages people who, meet up one day, get to know each other, get close and from this casual relationship comes marriage, without any spiritual origin. […].These marriages can determine the beginning of future meetings in other reincarnations.
As for the trial marriages, where two souls are reunited in the process of readjustment necessary to their spiritual growth, these are the most frequent. Most marriages follow this category. So there are many homes where friction and disharmony reign, where suspicion reigns, where moral conflicts are transformed, often in painful tragedies. God has united them, through the laws of the world, so that, by daily coexistence they are able to perform the highest law of the fraternity in the common struggles.
Now to the sacrificial marriages.
These gather souls possessed of virtue to souls of opposite feelings whch represent their spiritual evolution.It is an enlightened soul who volunteers to help a soul who has delayed on their upward spiritual journey.As the word implies, it is a sacrifice to one spouse.And this can be a sacrifice for both man and woman.There is no rule for it. […].Sacrificial Marriage are therefore in short, those in which one spouse is characterized by spiritual elevation, and the other by a lower evolutionary condition. The highest always agrees to support and encourage the maladjusted. Thus, the woman or the man who chooses a less elevated company should ‘carry the cross to Calvary’, as commonly called, because undoubtedly committed him/herself in the Spirituality. To deny or to step down from the commitment would be an abandonment of duty.
Marriages of souls alike in the higher sense, are enlightened souls who meet and that love each other very much. They are spirits who, by marriage consolidate old ties of affection in the sweet haven of home.
Finally, there are the weddings we call transcendental marriages. They consist of magnified souls in fraternal love and reunite, on the physical plane, to the great achievements of general interest. The lives of these couples meet a higher purpose. The ideal of their mission to work towards good fills their hours and minutes. The longing of beauty filled their souls with sweet bliss, hovering above any earthly vulgarities, above the field of lower emotions, love pure and holy.We all have lived or will live, according to the case, throughout this sequence of marriages: accidental, trials and sacrificial, until we reach in the future, under the sun of a new day, the condition of building a home ground at the base of idealism transcendental or higher affinity.”
(Martins Peralva, studying mediumship, 6. ed., p. 101-105)* Please note that these are observations from a spiritist study of the book “In the Domains of Mediumship”, by the spirit of Andre Luis. It does not represent a strict rule set in stone nor a Spiritist principle.
Most difficulties found in marriages come from a very basic question. We don’t really know ourselves and the second person doesn’t know themselves either. So when 2 people get married, they don’t know themselves and they don’t really know their partner. So the wife doesn’t know what kind of bringing up the husband had, and vice versa, we only start to fully know that person when we start to live together as a couple. This acquisition of knowledge starts when people start going out, but this time is very short and very superficial so is very difficult to fully see what the other person is about. In many occasions we’ll have to put our tolerance, patience and resignation to test, and we will be the trigger that will test our partners too. Many people nowadays get married thinking like that: “if it doesn’t work out, we’ll just get divorced.” As if you just bought a pair of shoes that were too small and you want a refund. No wonder we see the number of divorces raise everywhere in the world.
So it’s important that those who are thinking about getting married or having a life as a couple, as well as getting to know themselves, also try to get to know the spouse or partner to be. I say try because humans are very closed off, even those who think they are out going and extroverts and say: “My life is an open book” hold feelings and thoughts that are unknown even to themselves.
These conflicts when they are not dealt with can have a series of consequences:
Jealousy. Infidelity. The lower spiritual influence in married life.
To find the cure for such symptoms we need to go back to the begging of the lecture: Love.
The evangelical understanding, goodwill, tolerance and humility are virtues that work the same way shock absorbers do. Spiritism has been an efficient way to many homes built on the basis of trial, readjust and consolidate them, thus giving the first steps toward the Inner reform.
Love is also the main ingredient to the last part of the lecture. So after Marriage the next question is: “When are you having Children?” It seems that they are the logical consequence of married life, especially to the older relatives:
Children
Children are spirits. Just like every single one of us, they are beings sent into new exiztences by God.They are spirits who have lived before and bring with them a spiritual, emotional and psychological baggage from their past experiences. In order that these spirits may not be rejected, God gives us all the external appearances of innocence; even in the case of a child of the worst possible nature, the misdeeds are covered by the unconsciousness of the quality of its acts. Thisis not only for the children’s sake that God gives them this appearance of innocence; It is given for the parents sake also, whose love is so necessary to them i their weakness. Believing their children to be good and gentle, parents give them all their affwction, and surround them with the mst precious and delicate care. But when children no longer needs theis protection, thisi assistance, which has been given them during fifiteen or twenty years, their real characthr and individuality reappeard in all its nudity.
He who is really good remains good; but even then, his character reveals many traits and shades that were hidden duirin earlier years.
The spirit of teh child who is born among us may have come form a world in which has acquired habits totally different from ours; how would it be possible for this new being, coming among us with passions, inclinations, tastes, entirely opposed to ours, to accomodate himself to our world. It is through this sifting process of infancy that all the thoughts, all the characteristics, all the inclinations are eventually mingled. So be on the lookout for thesmallest sign which will reveal the existence of such vices, an then combat them before they take deep root. Do as the god gardner does: cut off all defective shoots as soon as they appear on the tree.
THE ROLE OF PARENTS IN THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
Parents exercise a great influence upon their children. As we have already told you, spirits are made to conduce to one another’s progress. To the spirits of the parents is confided the mission of developing those of their children by the training they give to them; it is a task which is appointed to them, and which they cannot without guilt fail to fulfill. At this age, there is not a total integration between the spirit and organic matter. Their memories of the spiritual plane are so vivid, making it more susceptible to renew the character and establish a new way in consolidating the principles of responsibility if they find it in their parents.
This is why families are so important for building up the human beings, and why the mission of parents before the divine laws is so deep.
Remember that God will ask every mother and father: “What have you done with the child who was entrusted to you?” If through any fault of yours it has remained backward, then as a consequence you will have to watch your child amongst the suffering Spirits, when it depended upon you to help it towards happiness. Thus you yourselves, assailed by remorse, will ask that it be permitted for you to remedy your errors. You will request for yourself and your child another incarnation in which you will surround that Spirit with better care, and in which, being full of gratitude, the Spirit will then reciprocate by loving you.
Those incarnated in the same family, especially as close relations, are as often as not congenial Spirits linked by past relationships, which express themselves during their earthly lives by their reciprocated affections. But it can also happen that these people are complete strangers to each other, or they may be distant from each other due to past aversions which while on Earth are translated into mutual antagonisms which serve as probations. The real family ties are not those of blood then, but those of mutual sympathy and the communion of ideas which hold spirits together, before, during and after their incarnations.
This was what Jesus was trying to make comprehensible when He said to His disciples: “Here is my mother and my brothers by spiritual ties, because all those who do the bidding of My Father, who is in Heaven, are my brothers, my sisters and my mother.”
If we can compare the family unit as a workshop, a school, The Gospel at home is a practice that can help every single one in the family reflect about the lessons left by Jesus and make an effort to put them in practice at home. It takes 30 minutes that are extremely valuable to the family and to the spiritual entities (friendly or not) that are around the home.
