Soulful Parenting. Susan Gale
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with Spirit is not something one should do lightly or out of curiosity. It is important to remember that, according to the Cayce readings, all our actions, including linking with Spirit, need to be grounded in a deeply revered spiritual ideal. The readings included in this book were answers to questions posed to the “sleeping” Mr. Cayce by parents, teachers, and others who were interested in spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional ideals helpful to the positive development of a child. The information is as relevant today as it was when it was offered.
This book was written as an answer to all those who called and emailed, asking, “How can I help my child to keep intuitive abilities?” Parents are concerned about the things their children see when in the dark, about the voices their children hear, as well as how to handle family and friends who do not understand. All children come into this world able to link with Spirit to some degree. It is not something that needs to be taught to them. Through this book, we hope to help parents understand how to help their children remain enlightened, rather than unintentionally teach them how to forget. While each child (and each parent) is different, this book offers a general overview of the pattern and possibilities for helping children to remember their abilities.
What does need to be taught to children is the understanding of how the physical world works. Children are not born with the necessary skills to get along in the culture into which they were born or subsequently transplanted. This, too, is the job of the parent: To teach the child the skills and knowledge required to get along. Whether that skill is to hunt or to balance a checkbook, childhood is the time to gain the knowledge required to survive within a culture.
In this book, we have offered practical suggestions on topics such as diet (from the pregnant mother to the seemingly endlessly hungry adolescent), education (both of linear thinking and intuitive insight), and discipline (including sibling spats), through which a parent can help the child hold on to those intuitive abilities with which, again, everyone is born, to some degree. Each child requires an individual touch, but we believe that what is written here provides a good understanding of the nature of intuition as well as what will encourage or inhibit its presence. This book is based, in part, on the Western views of child development, although linking with Spirit is universal across all traditions.
We begin at the very beginning, conception, which the Cayce readings tell us is a crucial time in determining which soul will choose us as parents. We then follow the child through the developmental stages from birth to adolescence. We desperately wish there were a genderless pronoun with which to refer to a child, but the English language is lacking. As a compromise, we have referred to the child in some chapters as a she and in others as a he. We hope this will work with the reader and that the reader will understand that we mean each individual child, regardless of gender.
Besides the developmental stages of growth, we also address four key components that need to be considered throughout the raising of the child, the first being the universal laws, which are the spiritual laws that govern the outcomes of our choices. Education, from both the perspective of academics and spirituality, is the second consideration. Third, discipline is essential for any of us to mature into emotionally healthy adults, and the reader will find not only tips on parent/child interaction but also child/child interaction that encourages nonviolent resolutions. Finally, spiritual protection is particularly essential for those who are extremely sensitive to the spirit world. Each of these topics is approached with the inclusion of the spiritual development of the child.
It is important to remember that even though a child may be highly intuitive, that child does not have the wisdom that is attained only through life experiences. The brain still has much to sort out as it gathers information from both the physical and spirit worlds to weave a meaningful pattern of life. The parent stands as the helper and guide in this process, or not, along with providing the child with the tools that enable success within a culture.
All parents make mistakes as they raise their children. The mistakes are not intentional, for the most part, but nonetheless, they do happen. People in even the most loving relationships inadvertently hurt one another’s feelings; what is important is that we trust each other that the hurt is not intentional. There are two extremely important aspects of parenting (and all relationships): First and foremost, that the children trust that they are loved. Second, that they trust the parent to stand firmly in their way when they try to do something that is not helpful to their spiritual, emotional, or physical growth. All the rest is the wondrous exploration into the human experience of remembering our spiritual roots.
1
The Beginning
Grasping the totality of a newborn infant is a remarkable event when seen through the lens of the Edgar Cayce readings. When we first look into her eyes, we are seeing not only someone who has chosen us out of all the possible parents of that time but also someone who has knowledge of how family life will unfold over the time shared with us.
You are looking at the temple of a soul that has chosen a clear purpose for reincarnating and has determined that you are her best guide, for whatever the reason.1
As you hold her, her mind is desperately talking to you to make things known that she feels are important for you to remember. Eons of experience are available to her mind. How frustrating it is for her to hear that she is a helpless infant. How frustrating it is for her to be held captive in this clumsy thing that many people say is her! This thing people call a body is utterly useless except for making noises and randomly moving about. What has happened to all that lovely freedom of moving with just the slightest of thoughts? What, she may be wondering, was I thinking when I agreed to this!
Her brain is another issue entirely. It is undeveloped in many ways, with a potential to pull together the threads of her experiences in many patterns. We know a lot about the stages during which it can pull together these different kinds of threads. However, we are not so clear on how the threads are woven into that tapestry we call life.
We know that the brain has about one hundred billion neurons when a child is born, far more than an adult has. Even at age three, the child still has double the number of neurons as the adult. The child’s brain also uses more than twice as much energy.2 Clearly, both the potential and the actual activity of the brain are enormous in the very young child.
We further know that the brain has stages during which there are sensitive periods for specific kinds of learning. Language, for example, can be most easily learned up until puberty. From birth to age three, the brain is sensitive to all kinds of learning, making this the most important time in a child’s life to have appropriate experiences and to develop verbal language. These experiences need to be hands-on experiences, rather than academic in nature, so that the brain can integrate events with language.3 So, when a fourteen-month-old sits banging the spoon on the family’s pots and pans, she is learning about the different ways to make sounds as well as different tones. All the while, the brain’s synapses are firing, causing neuropathways to be routed for future reference. This idea will be explored further in chapter four.
What we have seldom considered in Western society is how to keep this infant child in touch with her Creator or even her mind, much less her heart. In fact, most of what those of us in Western society are traditionally taught causes us to lose touch with the Creator and become enmeshed in the denser vibrations of the physical experience, rather than transcending it to embody a spiritual experience.
Connections with the Creator are gestalt in nature. In a way, it is like the skilled reader who does not read each word singly but rather whole phrases or sentences at a time, grasping the meaning and visualizing the content without conscious thinking. It is also like the sports player who sees the opening, takes it, and plans the pass without conscious thinking. The entire sequence is grasped in less than a second but would take minutes to explain in words. Such is the connection with the Creator.
Drawing upon the Cayce readings, research on child development, and stories of parents and their children,