This article is taken directly from Lesson 10 of LET MY SPIRIT GO!, our course on developing spiritual consciousness. Since this is near the end of the course, you’ll see references to foundational concepts taught in earlier lessons. If what you read here resonates with you, we invite you to start from the beginning—each lesson builds on the previous ones, creating a complete path to spiritual development. Simply click the Enroll Now button at the bottom of the page.
LET MY SPIRIT GO!
THE TRAINING OF THE SPIRIT IN DAILY LIFE
Lesson # 10: The Ten Commandments for Spiritual Consciousness in Parenthood
Being in a Committed Relationship and being parents are two experiences that can greatly contribute to spiritual development because they serve as very close mirrors to our inner world. That is, they reveal where we truly stand in the interplay between intellect, emotions, and spirit.
We explained this already in the course introduction: “The people closest to us don’t hinder our spiritual development; they are part of it and even assist it!”
Therefore, children serve as wonderful teachers who have come to teach us lessons about our ego and how to simply listen to the intuition.
Jesus already conveyed this teaching to his disciples in one sentence: “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)
Yet, while people must take a course to obtain a driver’s license, there are no courses or spiritual preparation for marriage and parenting, and thus we see much suffering, particularly within the family.
While Lesson Nine provided spiritual preparation for committed relationships, today’s lesson focuses on spiritual preparation for parenthood.
To begin, we must first free ourselves from the misconception that parenting comes “naturally.” That is because only the biological aspect is, indeed, natural, but becoming a parent who can truly serve as a guide to his child’s path in life requires a spiritual consciousness and a lot of practice.
This consciousness can prevent critical mistakes in raising young children, while also providing tools to correct past mistakes that we might have made with our now grown children because we lacked spiritual consciousness at that earlier time in their lives.
Furthermore, a spiritual consciousness helps us to correct the mistakes our parents made, and thereby not only heal ourselves and realign our lives, but also break the chain of wrong patterns passed from generation to generation.
The First Commandment: Our Children Are Not Ours
The Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran wrote in his poem “On Children”:
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls…”
Therefore, bringing a child into the world means providing an opportunity for an independent soul to grow and develop through us, but it will never belong to us.
In practical terms, this commandment requires us to free ourselves from the old, traditional concept of parenthood, which focuses on ownership and control, as it fails to respect the child as an independent person with his own destiny.
We must remember that our child is not a “miniature version,” a “mini-me,” of ourselves! Our intellect and emotions cannot take pride in him as if he was an integral part of our ego.
The sages taught that “one can only learn from what his heart desires” (Avodah Zarah 19a)
and advised to “educate the youth according to his way,”
(Mishlei 22:6)
yet much of today’s education – both at home and at school – does not address what the child’s heart desires or his unique path, but rather what the egos of the parent and teacher desire.
That is, many parents aspire for their children to succeed where they failed, or to excel in areas where they themselves were only mediocre.
Therefore, we must look courageously at our own deficiencies and understand that without a spiritual consciousness, we may exploit our children to fill these voids.
In practical terms, this commandment directs us as parents to purify our ego and first educate our own selves to become who we came to be.
The Second Commandment: We Were Not Born to Our Parents by Chance
This commandment teaches us that we were not born by chance to our parents, and that our children didn’t find their way to us by coincidence.
There are no chances in the incarnation of souls, which occurs according to two Laws that exist in Creation:
- The Law of Attraction between Similar Species
- The Law of Reciprocal Action (also known as the Law of Cause and Effect or the Law of Karma).
In other words, the reason we were born into a specific family can be either because we share similar traits (positive or negative), or because we have a shared past from previous lives that needs to be resolved or developed.
Therefore, what’s important is to stop blaming our parents and feeling like victims of circumstance, and instead discover the lessons we came to learn through them.
If you want to begin discovering why you chose your “family laboratory,” you are invited to do the following exercise:
Take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. In the first column, list your own character traits, both positive and negative. In the second column, do the same for your mother, and in the third for your father. (If you have grown children, you can add a column for each of them, listing their positive and negative traits.)
After completing these lists, compare them to discover patterns that reveal what mistakes you came to correct, as well as the talents you came to develop.
Once the lesson about why we reincarnated to our family is learned, we are free to continue on our path. Then we will also understand that our childhood – which psychology so loves to analyze and blame for all our problems – is only a small part of our spirit’s past.
This past – which is the result of incarnation upon incarnation – we can only discover and correct through the development of a spiritual consciousness.
This commandment is also very important for couples who want and plan to bring a child into the world.
According to the Laws of Creation, you can inherit only the genetic traits of the physical body from your parents. However, the spirit, cloaked in its soul-body before entering the physical body, remains entirely independent.
A couple vibrating at the high frequency of true love, spiritual connection, and harmony can attract a higher soul. However, lack of awareness about the deeper meaning of the sexual act – as discussed in lesson nine – can lead to the opposite: attracting a troubled soul – a “black sheep” – to the family.
The Third Commandment: Connection Creates Correction
Before sexual maturity – the age when the soul breaks through its covering and begins its independent journey – children absolutely need boundaries. (As we already explained in lesson three.)
You cannot tell a young child: “Eat whatever you want, whenever you want” (and then the child will eat sweets and junk food all day) or “Go to sleep whenever you feel like it” (and the child will stay glued to screens all night, finally falling asleep on the living room sofa).
Children also need guidance and correction when they misbehave. However, many parents make a mistake when setting boundaries and offering guidance: the parents’ Drama Queens get stressed and immediately try to fix their child’s mistake.
In doing so, they disconnect from the child’s soul, imposing angry commands that essentially convey: “If you want our love back, you must obey us right now.”
In other words, the message that is conveyed to the child is: “Correct your ways and only then will you regain your connection to us.”
This usually happens subconsciously, but for a young child – who needs parental love like oxygen – this leads to an experience of abandonment with damaging effects that last a lifetime.
Such children often become either people-pleasers, seeking love even when inwardly they are unconvinced that they’re doing the right thing, or they become aggressive types who use hostility or withdrawal to avoid feeling the pain of abandonment again.
Maintaining an inner connection with our children – even during their worst behavior and most challenging moments – becomes especially crucial during adolescence.
At this age, the soul has already begun its independent journey, and therefore it’s very likely that if parents use manipulation to correct their teenagers’ behavior by disconnecting from them, the teenagers won’t respond with submission – like young children – but rather with rebellion and escalation of their wrong actions.
Therefore, we must always remember that a connection is what ultimately enables correction, while demanding correction as a condition for a connection will not achieve any blessed outcomes.
The Fourth Commandment: Until Sexual Maturity, Parents’ Primary Role Is to Protect Their Child’s Physical Health and Inner World
The First Commandment taught us that we must never see our child as a vessel for fulfilling our own aspirations.
A child is not a toy, a possession, or a trophy to be displayed or shown off for his appearance or achievements.
This destructive misconception leads many parents to pressure their young children into intellectual achievements (or, failing that, to push them toward athletic or artistic excellence). Yet the Laws of Creation ask just one thing of parents: to safeguard their child’s physical health and inner peace, providing a fertile ground for the child’s independent spirit, which emerges from its protective covering at sexual maturity.
A fertile ground means a home with:
- Harmony between parents and other family members (battles between Drama Queens and Army Generals deeply frighten children, as we saw in the course introduction)
- Healthy food
- Physical activity
- Physical affection
- Time spent in nature
- Connection with animals
- Artistic activity
Remember that the Laws of Creation are also the Laws of Nature, and “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Just as it’s wrong to pick and eat a fruit before it ripens, we must not rush our children’s natural development process.
The Fifth Commandment: Just as We Want to See Our Children Happy, Our Children Want to See Us Happy
Being happy means far more than merely surviving and functioning as a human being. Therefore, just as we suffer when we see our children merely surviving and functioning rather than finding joy in fulfilling their purpose, they, too, suffer when they see us only surviving and functioning, without finding joy in fulfilling our own purpose.
Parents who believe that sacrificing their lives for their children makes them good parents are mistaken. Living according to this false conception actually transforms them into bitter people who feel like victims.
Their child may then feel guilty about disrupting his parents’ lives and blame himself for his parents’ unhappiness. This perception – which automatically transfers to the child – will either turn the child into a parent who sees his own children as a burden, or lead him to forgo parenthood altogether in his pursuit of happiness.
In contrast, if parents operate from the understanding that “a good parent is one who is spiritually developed,” their child will grow up experiencing happy parents and, in time, become one himself.
Erich Fromm, in his book “The Art of Loving,” beautifully illustrates this through his distinction between most mothers who can provide their children with milk – symbolizing basic needs – and those mothers who can also offer honey – symbolizing the sweetness of life.
Yet, honey can flow only from mothers who have found their own happiness, and thus their influence on their children’s happiness reaches far beyond childhood, accompanying them throughout their entire lives!
For a good mother is a happy mother!
Therefore, if we are not happy in our own lives, we will leave our children heavy “debts” that they must either “pay” throughout their lives in the form of much personal suffering, or “settle” through intensive spiritual work.
However, if we take responsibility for our spiritual development, which rewards us with unconditional happiness – we leave our children “inheritances” that naturally guide them toward a path of a joyful life.
At this point, though, it’s important to pause and ask: What is happiness? And specifically: How do parents define happiness for their children?
All parents worldwide would say they only want their children to be happy, but what they actually mean is that they want their children to be successful!
And since most people are hardwired to link success with happiness, all parents essentially want their children to be successful – but according to the parents’ own criteria!
For one parent, success leading to happiness means creating a family blessed with children; for another, success means accumulating material wealth, earning a university degree, or even belonging to a specific religious group.
However, in every case, the parents’ statement of “I just want you to be happy” – when linked to their concept of success – creates tremendous pressure on the child and actually distances the child from the possibility of being happy.
In fact, happiness is an inner experience intimately connected to authenticity.
In other words, happiness comes from our ability to express our unique “spirit imprint” in the world without inhibitions or masks (just as each person has their unique fingerprint).
Therefore, if we want happy children, we must respect each child’s unique journey.
Furthermore, we must stop trying to raise our children in a “bubble of happiness,” shielding them from every difficulty. If we’re honest with ourselves, life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies, but also brings challenges and struggles. It is precisely through overcoming these challenges and learning from them that we gain true happiness– the fruit of spiritual maturity.
The traditional approach to parenting– much like conventional medicine – seeks to suppress pain and silence it with medication. However, in spiritually conscious parenting, we understand that facing pain and challenges helps our children become who they are truly meant to be.
Our role as parents is simply to walk alongside them on their path, supporting their growth and development through life’s various lessons.
The Sixth Commandment: Our Children Unconsciously Take On Difficulties to Awaken Us to Correct Ourselves
As stated in the Second Commandment, we learned that the incarnation of a soul is not random, and from this we can deduce that there is a covenant between our children and us.
What is a covenant and how does it differ from a contractual relationship?
Unlike a contract, which can be broken or terminated, resulting with either one of the parties leaving when he is dissatisfied, a covenant is fundamentally different.
For where a covenant exists, if one party is unhappy, by virtue of the covenant the other party cannot be happy either, nor can he simply break away from this bond and leave the other behind.
In the covenant between child and parents, the child’s unconscious message is: “Mother/Father, I cannot progress in my life if you are not standing aright, so I will hold up a mirror to awaken you, even if it is at the cost of my own suffering.”
And so it happens that children subconsciously take on illnesses, or learning or social difficulties, as mirrors reflecting the corrections their parents need to make!
The vast majority of parents are unaware of this and therefore try to solve their child’s problems as if these were unrelated to their own condition.
In fact, parents readily and willingly invest fortunes into their children’s education and health, yet they fail to see that they cannot separate what is happening to their children from their own situation.
They also miss their children’s call for the parents’ spiritual development, which would consequently also make them better parents.
To help illuminate this, here is an exercise called the Mirror Exercise that parents can do privately when their children face health, social, or academic issues.
This exercise requires intuition (but having reached this point in the course, our spiritual consciousness should be developed enough to begin listening to our intuition).
Here are the exercise steps:
- Focus on one child who is experiencing a specific difficulty (if other children in the family have difficulties, perform this exercise for them separately at another time).
- Is any part of this difficulty directly related to you? For example: your child is constantly angry, mirroring your own constant anger. Or is it indirectly related? For example: your child suffers rejection from school friends because you reject your spouse or even your own parents. (Remember that indirect interpretation always requires more intuition!)
- Do you see any part of this difficulty as directly related to your spouse? For example: both child and father struggle with weight issues. Or indirectly? For example: the child claims to having difficulty swallowing – despite doctors finding no medical issue – actually mirroring the mother who struggles to express what she’s going through.
- Is this difficulty directly or indirectly related to the space between you and your spouse? (Remember the contaminated space from lesson nine, which our children constantly “photograph”?)
- Begin working on and correcting what your child is showing you.
- In the morning when you wake up or at night before going to sleep, visualize your child, smile at him, and thank him for pushing you toward growth.
This exercise can bring about real miracles for your children! Even though your intellect and emotions may doubt it.
However, it’s important that parents don’t feel guilty about not being perfect and leading their children to act as mirrors of these imperfections.
Spiritual consciousness in parenthood is a never-ending process, and our children don’t ask for perfectly developed parents, but rather parents who are in the constant process of developing themselves.
The Seventh Commandment: Our Children Are Not the Most Important Thing in Our Lives
Ask most people who have raised families, “What is the most important thing in your life?” and they’ll answer without hesitation: “My children!”
However, as we saw in lesson seven, placing our children at the top of our priorities actually becomes idolatry, contradicting the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
Let’s recall the key principles we’ve already learned: “Other gods” doesn’t only mean idols and statues, but actually refers to anything to which a person assigns the most importance in his life and from which he draws his strength.
For one person this might be money; for another, social or professional status; for a third, external appearance; and for a fourth, his children.
We’ve already said that our children didn’t come to fulfill our dreams or fill our inner emptiness. Therefore, if we feed off them, and one day they simply want to go their own way, we might resort to manipulation to avoid being left alone, or alternatively, experience empty-nest-syndrome depression.
If our children are our highest priority and, heaven forbid, something happens to them, we might completely collapse and perhaps even be unable to help them, because we’ve made them our source of strength and nourishment instead of being nourished from the one Source, and receiving strength directly from God.
The Eighth Commandment: Our Children Have Both the Right and the Obligation to Examine Everything They Received from Us
The prevalent view of parenting advocates that children should continue the traditions practiced by their parents and pass them on to their own children, generation after generation.
However, as we’ve already explained, our children are not our possessions, and once they emerge from childhood, they have a free will and also bear the obligation to use it if they wish to become human beings in the fullest sense of the word.
Therefore, we must grant our children the right to examine objectively and independently everything they receive from us. For example: religious affiliation, military service obligation and national loyalty, attitudes toward science and various medical treatments, and more.
We must allow them to choose what is right through their own personal experience and not through blind obedience.
The Ninth Commandment: Once Our Children Reach Adulthood, We Owe Them Nothing
According to the Laws of Creation, once a person reaches maturity, he must stand on his own feet, and his parents no longer owe him anything.
Parents are not obligated to let their children live at home forever, continuing to clean their room, wash their clothes, and serve their meals.
They are not obligated to provide financial help or buy their children a house when they get married – nor should they feel guilty about not being good parents if they cannot do these things.
They are not obligated to babysit grandchildren whenever their children demand it.
And they are also not obligated to leave their children an inheritance after they pass away.
Everything parents give to their adult children is a gift.
This will cause children to feel gratitude for what they receive and help them become more creative and independent.
For parents, this allows them to continue their own journey of development, which shouldn’t end simply because they chose to become parents.
The Tenth Commandment: We Must Aspire and Pray for a Spiritual Connection with Our Children
The most wonderful thing that can happen to spiritually conscious parents is that, one day, their children will be connected to them not only through biological ties, but also through spiritual bonds.
This is a state where both parents and their children are engaged in a deep process of shared spiritual development, and their encounters and conversations touch the deepest layers of their existence.
In conclusion: Parents who live by the “Ten Commandments of Spiritual Consciousness in Parenthood” are parents who understand the immense importance of developing their own spiritual consciousness.
This enables them to become the “North Star” toward which their children lift their gazes as they set out on their paths, illuminating their courses even in the darkest nights.