Resolving family karma

The lightworker’s assignment in regard to their birth family is to become who they are. In doing so, they accomplish their mission. It is not their task to change their family; it is not your job to change anything outside of you. You are not here to make the world a better place. You are here to awaken yourself. And yes, when you do so the world will become a better place, because your light will shine upon it and bring joy and enlightenment to others as well. But do not focus on the world, whether it is your family or any other relationship you enter.

The real work is to let go of all those bits of ego based fear and illusion that you yourself absorbed so deeply as a child. Getting to know these energetic imprints which partly created your personality, and releasing the parts of it that do not belong to you is a challenging and intense process. It is about peeling away all the layers of the onion; it is about being born a second time.

By stressing the profundity of this inner process, this second birth, I do not mean to discourage you. On the other hand I would like you to have deep respect for yourselves. You are the bravest warriors I know. You are pioneers who, by kindling your own light in places of darkness and hostility, pave the way for a new consciousness on earth.

It is not your job to kindle the light in someone else’s heart. It is up to them if they do so. You may offer a spark, you may set an example, but in no way are you responsible for anyone else’s awakening. This is important to stress especially with regard to your birth family. You often feel instinctively as a child and more consciously as a grown-up that you have to save your parents from their fears and illusions. Moreover you often think that you have failed in this assignment. You feel that you have not truly been able to help your parents in the way you had envisioned.

This line of thought rests on a mistaken perception of what helping really means and what your assignment is with regard to your parents. In reality, the situation is this. From your birth onward, you begin to absorb your parents’ energies very strongly as if they were your own. You cannot easily distinguish any more where you begin and they end. Because you absorb their fears and illusions as well, you get intimately in touch with their emotional burdens. These burdens may have been passed over to them through several generations on either side of the family. There may be a karmic aspect to it, meaning that the same issue gets repeated over and over again until the “spell is broken.” This you may call family karma. There may be issues relating to an unbalanced male or female energy, energies resulting from old slavery traditions, issues pertaining to certain illnesses, etc. This kind of karmic burden is solved when the energy stuck inside of it gets released and thus is not passed along to the next generation. Family karma is resolved when at least one member of the family breaks the link by setting herself free from the emotional burden that she absorbed from childhood and that may even be in her genes.

The family member who “breaks the spell” does so first and foremost by helping herself. It is about being focused on your own inner growth and expansion. This growth and expansion has an effect on the “energy of the family.” It opens up the possibility for members of that family to find the way out as well. The lightworker who has freed himself of the emotional dead-end ally provides an energetic trail for others of his family. This he accomplishes by his inner work and what he radiates because of that, not by actually trying or even pushing others to change and move forward. What she offers her birth family energetically is the possibility of change. Her energy mirrors the possibility of change to them and that is all she needs to do.

Whether the family members pick up on the trail is entirely up to them. Never are you responsible for nor is your spiritual mission dependent upon someone else’s decision to change or not. You may have freed yourself of the karmic burden that your family saddled you with and be ridiculed or rejected for it by your family, and yet your mission will have been entirely successful. You will have crushed the hypnotic hold that karmic patterns can have over a family line and if you have children, the emotional burden will not be passed along to them. This is what your soul mission is about.

Imagine you are living in a valley which is quite barren and dry. All of your community tells you that you cannot get out of this valley – it is all there is. You seem to be the only one to remember that there are much more lush and fertile lands than this. So after a lot of consideration, you decide to try your luck and climb out of that valley. The climb up takes a tremendous amount of strength and energy. Not only is the road very steep, there are no road signs or marks to hold onto either. While you are climbing up you leave a track behind you. At some point, you come up out of that valley and the landscape that lies before you overwhelms you with joy and a sense of recognition. You knew there was something out there that felt much more like home than your birth ground. Enthusiastically you peer down and look for your family. You would like them to join you and marvel at this great vista. You would like to share your victory. But you can see no one down there and when you notice some folks far off, they do not seem interested in your journey at all.

This is what happens frequently to lightworker souls. I ask you not to mourn the loss of your family in this respect. You will have offered them a great service by walking out of the valley, by clearing the way and leaving a track. This track will stay there and it will be used one day by anyone who wants to climb out of that particular valley. The track is an energy space that you have made available to them.

It is the building of this track that was your purpose when you were born with these parents and in this family. It is not your purpose to make your family go up as well or to carry them out of the valley on your shoulders! That is not your task. Whenever you try to figuratively drag your parents or family up that steep hill, you are hindering your own growth and you will be disillusioned and disappointed. It is not the way of spiritual growth and alchemy. Those others that you love and want to share your light with may choose to live in the valley for another century or more. It is up to them. But one day in their own time, they will uncover a little track that goes up and they will think: “Hey, this is interesting, let’s go up and try this; I am not having a good time down here anymore.” And off they go. They will start their own journey of inner growth, their own climb into the light. And isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it absolutely precious, that they will find marks along the way, a track for them to hold onto? They will have to go through their own struggles, but they will have a beacon set out for them which lightens their journey. As a pioneer you will have cleared the way though a wild and unknown territory and the road paved by you will be used with gratitude and honor.

To be really free and to regain your mastership as an independent spiritual being, you have to let go of your birth family. You have to let go of them, not only as their child but also as their parent. Let me explain this double bind. The child in you needs to let go of the hope that your parents will offer you unconditional love and safety. It has to turn to you for this and you have to help it let go of the angry, sad and disappointed part of the child that feels betrayed by your parents. This is the child part. However you also need to let go of the part of you that wants to be your parents’ parent. It is typical of lightworker souls that at some point when they grow up, they start to feel like they are the parents of their parents. Because of their inborn desire to teach and heal and their developed spiritual awareness, they often see their parents’ fears and illusions clearly and they want to heal them. This may get you into a lot of struggle with your parents because your desire to help them is often intertwined with an unconscious need to be recognized for who you really are. In other words, the wounded child speaks through you when you try to help your parents, and it is a recipe for disaster when you try to help others through the wounded parts of you. You will end up more wounded and your parents will likely end up upset or confused.

To let go of your parents means to let go of any desire to change them. You have to understand that it is not your task to lead them anywhere. Your mission is to deal with your own path – that is all. After you have truly parted with your parents, letting go of the double bind, you will find that a new space opens up between you and them, much more free and open. If they are still alive, the relationship with your parents may become less strained, as the energies of reproach and guilt will have left the scene. On the other hand, you may feel you do not want to visit them so often anymore. There may simply be a lack of common interests. In any case you will feel more free in this relationship, setting your own course through life without the need for approval by them or the tendency to get angry and upset if they do not agree with you.

In your life, you may now get in touch with people who belong to your “spiritual family.” Your spiritual family has nothing to do with biology, genes or heredity. It is a family of kindred souls. Often you know them from past lives in which you bonded through friendship, love or a shared mission. It is very easy to get along with them, for you share an inner likeness; you belong to the same family. It is a kind of homecoming you experience. What made you feel different and lonely among other people first now becomes the foundation of your connection and mutual recognition. Bonding with your spiritual family is a true source of joy in earth life. The key to allowing it into your life is to find your own way “out of the valley” and to recognize the light within. When you are able to recognize your own light in an environment that does not mirror it back to you, you become independent and free. Unburdened by the karmic aspects of your history, the fears and illusions that held you down, you will attract relationships into your life which are based on love and respect and which reflect your awakened divinity.


© Pamela Kribbe 2005
www.jeshua.net