Our Children are Spirits

1. Our Children are Spirits

2. Our Children are Spirits • We are all children from one single Father; before we consider ourselves children from one another; • Question 205 from The Spirits' Book: The doctrine of reincarnation extendsfamily ties; in your neighbour, or in your servant, may be incarnated some spirit who has formerly been united to you by the closest ties of consanguinity or of affection. • “For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and mother”.

3. Our Children are Spirits • They bring their long history with them full of experiences, mistakes, accomplishments and virtus. As a consequence, there is also a program they will need to fulfull in this life they came close to us. • These are adult, intelligent and experienced spirits who are imprisioned in a small physical body. This doesn’t give them the chance to express their full potential. We have the priviledge and responsability to help these individuals.

4. Our Children are Spirits • 132. What is the aim of the incarnation of spirits.? • "It is a necessity imposed on them by God, as the means of attaining perfection. For some of them it is an expiation; for others, a mission. In order to attain perfection, it is necessary for them to undergo all the vicissitudes of corporeal existence. It is the experience acquired by expiation that constitutes its usefulness. Incarnation has also another aim-viz., that of fitting the spirit to perform his share in the work of creation.

5. Our Children are Spirits • Why was I born in this family? What is my role here? • To be happy and work as much as I can in the favour of this family group. We are not born where we deserve, but where we have the need to progress. This might not be the ideal family for us, but we could be ideal for this family.

6. Our Children are Spirits • Through our links with other beings... To try to adapt to one another, to overcome mistakes we did against each other in the past, to give something from yourself to someone or to Humanity, or even stablish a new relationship with individuals • To be born again has a component of uncertainty, melancholy, inquietude or even annoyance.

7. Our Children are Spirits •  Why is it so difficult for parents to understand their children? Because it was also hard for their parents.... Because the adult who hasn’t progressed emotionally things everything is against him. Since each generation has a different way of conduct, he things everything is either a challenge or a rebellion. There are some teens who also think everything is against them, but this shows insecurity.

8. Our Children are Spirits • The teen needs to be patient with his parents, as they are quite worried with their education; plus parents also have their own problems to deal with... • Sometimes they are not good parents due to ignorance, lack of knowledge but not for lack of good will. Many parents believe the best way of education is the one they received from their parents. • The child who feels is not being understood, doesn’t love his parents. He will see them as his suppliers. To understand your child doesn’t mean you need to give him everything or do everything he wants.

9. Our Children are Spirits • How to deal with a collision of different opinions? • By talking and talking and talking... Dialogue is the wisest art in Humanity. The child tells what he/she want to do; parents will establish the rules, limits and elucidate. Both parents must disagree without fighting. Dialogue is an act of love.

10. Our Children are Spirits • How are families formed? • Question 204 from The Spirits' Book: As we have had many existences, do our relationships extend beyond our present existence? • "It cannot be otherwise. The succession of their corporeal existences establishes among spirits a variety of relationships which date back from their former existences; and these relationships are often the cause of the sympathies or antipathies which you sometimes feel towards persons whom you seem to meet for the first time."

11. Our Children are Spirits • Families are formed by groupings of Spirits who are induced to gather together because of their affinities of tastes, moral progress and affections. During their terrestrial migrations, these same Spirits seek each other out in order to group themselves as they do in space, so giving origin to united and homogeneous families. • God permits that less advanced Spirits incarnate amongst them in order that these may receive good advice and examples which will help them. Sometimes these Spirits cause perturbation in the midst of the others, which constitutes a trial and a task to be fulfilled. Therefore, receive these perturbed Spirits as your brothers and sisters; help them, and afterwards, when once again they are in the spiritual world, the family will be able to congratulate itself for having saved an outcast, who in their turn may save others.

12. Our Children are Spirits • 209. How is it that good and virtuous parents often give birth to children of perverse and evil nature? In other words, how is it that the good qualities of tile parents do not always attract to them, through sympathy, a good spirit to animate their child? • "A wicked spirit may ask to be allowed to have virtuous parents, in the hope that their counsels may help him to amend his ways; and God often confides such an one to the care of virtuous persons, in order that he may be benefited by their affection and care.“ • 260. "It is necessary for him to be sent into the conditions which will furnish the elements of the trial he has demanded. • 258. "He chooses for himself the kind of trials which he will undergo, and it is in this freedom of choice that his freewill consists."

13. Our Children are Spirits • Types of families: 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.” • 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. From this it follows that two people born of different parents may be more like brothers or sisters than if they were of the same blood. They can attract each other, search for each other and so feel happy together. • There are two kinds of families: Families through spiritual ties and families through bodily ties. In the first case these ties are durable and strengthen with purification, perpetuating in the spiritual worlds by means of the various migrations of the soul. In the second case, the ties are the physical body itself, extinguishing with them and in many instances dissolving morally even in the actual existence.

14. Our Children are Spirits • 207. Parents often transmit physical resemblance to their children; do they also transmit to them moral resemblance? • "No; because they have different souls or spirits. The body proceeds from the body, but the spirit does not proceed from any other spirit. Between the descendants of the same race there is no other relationship than that of consanguinity.“ • Spiritis of the same rank are drawn together by a sort of affinity, and form groups or families of spirits united by sympathy and a common aim-the good, by the desire to do what is good, and the bad, by the desire to do evil, by the shame of their wrong-doing, and by the wish to find themselves among those whom they resemble • Os Espíritos simpáticos entre si são atraídos pela afinidade de suas inclinações, disso decorrem as semelhanças morais que existem às vezes entre os pais e os filhos. • As crianças não herdam características psicológicas, como inteligência, dotes artísticos, temperamento, bom ou mal gosto, simpatia ou antipatia, doçura ou agressividade. Cada ser é único, em sua estrutura psicológica, preferências, inclinações e idiossincrasias. Somente características físicas são geneticamente transmissíveis.

15. Our Children are Spirits • 203. Do parents transmit to their children a part of their soul, or do they only give them the animal life to which another soul afterwards adds the moral life? • "The animal life only is given by the parents, for the soul is indivisible. A stupid father may have clever children, and vice versa.” • 210. Parents can improve the spirit of the child whom they have brought into the world, and is confided to them for that purpose. It is their duty to do this; but bad children are often sent as a trial for the improvement of the parents also. • 208. Are the spirits of the parents without influence upon the spirit of their child after its birth? • "They exercise, on the contrary, a very great influence upon it.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 fulfil."

16. Our Children are Spirits • What should be our conduct within our family? • The Gospel According to Spiritism Chapter XIV has the answer: HONOUR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER. • This commandment is an inference from the general laws of charity and love towards one's fellow beings ,seeing that those who do not love their mother and father cannot then love their fellow creatures. But with regard to parents ,here the word honour contains an extra obligation, which is filial devotion. • To honour your mother and father consists in not only showing respect, but also helping them in their needs, offering them rest in their old age and surrounding them with care; just as they themselves did for us during our infancy. Above all, it is necessary to demonstrate true filial devotion to destitute parents. • Alas for those who forget what they owe to those who sustained them in their hour of weakness, who, with the giving of a physical life, also gave them moral life, and many times imposed upon themselves great privations in order to guarantee the well-being of their children!

17. Our Children are Spirits • It is true that some parents neglect their duty and are not all they should be to their children. However, it is only God who has the competence to judge, and not the children. These are not competent to be able to judge because they have perhaps deserved their parent's behaviour. • Parents: So acquaint yourselves with your duty and then put all your love into bringing this soul nearer to God. This is the mission with which you have been entrusted and for which you will receive just recompense if you fulfill your trust faithfully. The care and education given by you to this child will help in its improvement and future well-being. Remember that God will ask every mother and father: "What have you done with the child which was entrusted to you?“ • 258a. Nothing comes to pass without the permission of God, for it is He who has established all the laws that rule the universe. In giving to a spirit the liberty of choice, He leaves to him the entire responsibility of his acts and of their consequences. There is nothing to bar his future; the right road is open to him as freely as the wrong road.

18. Our Children are Spirits • Now listen well to what I am about to tell you - the harshest trials are almost always the indication of the end to suffering and to a certain perfecting of the Spirit, as long as they are accepted with all thought focused on God. • These are in fact supreme moments in which, above all else, it behoves the Spirit not to cause failure due to constant complaining or the fruits of the trial will be lost, so making it necessary to begin again from the beginning. Instead of complaining, thank God for the opportunity to triumph which He has given you.

19. Our Children are Spirits • Ingratitude is one of the most direct results of selfishness and always causes revolt in honest hearts. But the ingratitude of children towards their parents shows an even more hateful trait of character. • The incessant contact with those it hates constitutes a terrible test, under which it not infrequently succumbs if its desire to win through is not sufficiently strong. In this manner, and according to whether or not the good resolutions predominate, the Spirit will be either a friend or enemy to those it was called to live amongst. This is the explanation for the hates and instinctive repulsions often noted between certain children, and which appear to be inexplicable. In actual fact there is nothing in the present life which could have caused such antipathy; in order to find the cause it would be necessary to look back into the past. • God never gives anyone a trial superior to the strength of the person who has asked for it. He only permits those tests which can be fulfilled. Therefore if this does not happen, it is not for lack of possibilities, but for lack of willpower.

20. Our Children are Spirits Sources • Our Children are Spirits; Herminio Miranda • The Spirits' Book; Allan Kardec • The Gospel According to Spiritism; Allan Kardec • Lecture prepared by Claudina Isele at CEEAK, Switzerland. • http://www.ceeak.ch/portugues/evangelizacao/palestras-educacao.htm