Motherhood, part 1, choosing his or her parents
Becoming a mother
Today, Elea seems to be upset:
– You look worried and tired, Theophile the Elder says as she comes.
– That’s true, she says. I sometimes feel dejected. Since my baby was born, I can’t meditate any more. My nights are much shorter, and during the day I can’t find a moment to sit and practice. I have to try and answer the needs of the whole family, maintain my home, not to mention my work, which I have resumed recently. On the rare occasions when I find a moment to meditate, I am overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do and all that is daily needed. As for cleaning, in the evening, I feel so tired that I just collapse, feeling guilty and frustrated….
Theophile looks at her tenderly and kindly replies:
– Welcoming a new soul is your good luck. So, don’t worry. Our Masters perfectly know what being a mother means. It is an exhausting work of love that demands your attention twenty–four hours a day. I would call that period ‘a soft slavery’. Being the mother of a young child is the best way to practise forgetting oneself, improving and transcending oneself.
– Yes, that’s what it is; I feel I am pushing back my limits, including my physical limitations since I can hardly sleep. Hence I draw from my resources in patience, love and dedication, and my ego sometimes finds it difficult to accept such upheavals.
– The only thing you have to do now is to be connected as much as possible to the heart of your child and to radiate the vibration of love towards it and all around you. Aim at the infinite in the heart and tell me about it.
This is a wonderful optimistic practice that is worth the daily practices of meditation and cleaning–rejuvenation.
To be a perfect mother, you must at first focus on the heart of your child. Then you will be able to meet all his needs. Remember the soul of your son chose you before incarnating. It knows you perfectly well. So, contact his soul and then, in your turn, you will know him and you will really be in harmony with him. At the very beginning of the baby’s life, there is no other means to communicate with it. You have observed the baby’s eyes at the moment of his birth: there was something galactic in his look. It gave the feeling that he was at once down here and up there. That is the reason why, during a year, you have to carry your baby in your arms as often as you can so that it may complete its incarnation. It needs to be reassured, to feel your love, your vibration; it needs to recognize your smell and your voice. It has known you intimately during nine months, and now it still needs your physical contact.
– It is what I felt intuitively, but I am often told I should not keep it in my arms, for that’s a way to make it capricious, so I should leave it alone in its bedroom.
– When a baby is set apart in another room; it panics: it cannot stand being separated, just as we cannot stand being separated from the Divine. So, just keep it near you until the moment when some distance will no longer mean a separation for the baby, the feeling of being torn away, and for its mother as well. When you have to leave it in the care of somebody else or leave it at the childcare facility in order to go to work, you should maintain a mental bond from heart to heart with him, as the Divine does with us. Then he won’t fear that separation any more because he will permanently receive your love, wherever you are. If you feel guilty, he will feel it and be unhappy. That is all the benefit of constant remembrance: it prevents you from projecting all your useless concerns towards the other person.
– But what about my practice, my spiritual work? I do have the feeling that I am not doing what I should do and that I just let myself be overwhelmed by my emotions, my exhaustion, and that I am not up to standard, Elea says impatiently.
– You know, I admire that fantastic patience mothers show towards their children, Theophile says to comfort her. We say that patience is the apprenticeship to faith. So, you are not wasting your time. You are strengthening your faith and your character. Giving birth and accompanying a child is a true initiatory route. It is carried out under the protection and the guidance of the Divine Mother, who can be considered as the female aspect of the Divine.
When you feel that you can’t make it anymore, take a few seconds to reconnect to your heart. And if you can’t do that either, then send a silent distress signal to the Master through your heart. Don’t use your head which, in such a case, will only tell you: “I have lost all contact with my Master, I don’t deserve … I’m not a good mother…” and other such nonsense.
Elea begins to relax and goes on listening to the Ancient’s soft voice.
– For me, a Master is a ‘super mother’ whose love is unconditional and infinite, the old man says, with half–closed eyes.
A peaceful silence takes place.
– Plunge into your heart, my dear child, he says, looking at her, and stop thinking, all the more as you don’t have the time for it. Let yourself be carried by your intuition, love being your priority.
The heart is your homeland, your true Master, and if such is your will, we are all part of it.
Make the most of the blessed time you spend with that young soul. Our children grow up so fast! As a grandfather I can tell you.
Feeling reassured, Elea gets absorbed into the quietness of that instant.
Motherhood, part 1, choosing his or her parents
When Elea came back to see Theophile the Elder, she looked cheerful and relaxed.
– Hello Theophile. I’ve pondered over what you told me last time and now, deep in my heart, I do feel like having another child. Not right now, of course, but I’d like to see my child grow up in the joyful company of a brother or a sister; then we would form a nice happy family.
– Nowadays, for children to be wanted, expected and cherished is a very good thing. Unfortunately, they often are planned for material reasons rather than out of love. I hear many women say that they want to enjoy life first, go to a party, etc. , and when they decide it’s time to have a child, they feel miserable because either
they have no husband, or they suddenly face fertility problems.
– But please, Theophile, you must know that birth control represented a leap forward for women as it gave them more freedom, Elea protests.
– It was a progress, of course, and it prevented many hardships and ruined lives. It is also a right, the right to choose one’s destiny. Yet, it remains true that the arrival of a new soul within a family is always so mysterious! I have already explained how the future being chooses his or her parents and environment.
– Precisely, could you tell me more about destiny and the role of conception, Elea continues inquisitively.
– It is rather simple, he says. Before coming to the earth, the soul chooses the sort of incarnation it wants depending on the spiritual evolution it needs and in relation to the karmic laws (the law of cause and effect relating to its past history). For that purpose, it creates an adequate personality, the stages and ordeals it will have to go through, to achieve the objectives pursued. That is the destiny it has to fulfill.
– Then what about free will?
– In my opinion, it is the will to fulfill or not the real destiny of one’s soul.
– How can we know the destiny our soul has chosen? the young woman asks.
– By constantly listening to our heart, by following the directives it gives us, its instructions. We only have to ask ourselves regularly: “Am I in harmony with myself?”.
– I’m afraid we do just about anything with our free will, she says.
– People indeed often answer their desires, their ambitions, and that is how they get lost.
– Are they really unhappy? Most ot the time, they don’t even ask themselves.
– You tell me, Elea. Look around you. Are people really happy?
She thinks for a while.
– But let us go back to the second part of your question: assuming that you have chosen your sister soul and you want to offer it a baby, the fruit of your love. That is the most beautiful creative act possible. It is just like God giving birth to the Creation.
– What is the best moment for it?
– The one your two united hearts suggest. It is a sacred act, when you are going to be entrusted with a soul linked to your souls. As a mother, you already know what sacrifice and difficulties it entails.
– But how beautiful! What an enchantment for the mother to hold her child in her arms! I could not imagine living without him, even though I often have to go beyond myself and my limits out of my love for him. My husband and I cherish him more than anything else.
But let us come back to the notion of conception. I quite understand now the spiritual aspect of a soul coming to parents and to an environment it as chosen because it was the best for its evolution. But you apparently avoid the carnal aspect, the pleasure, the sexuality that are part of that creative act, Elea remarks.
– That touches on your most intimate area, but we can evoke it if you want. Sexuality is something absolutely natural. the notion of sin has been invented by religions. Pleasure reflects the bliss of the soul when it is in union with God and orgasm is the reflect of the ecstasy, the samadhi, but what is remarkable there is the feeling of peace, of calmness that follows the act of love. It is just like after a deep meditation, when we have been in Union with the Self. We wish we could stay there. Then we slowly come back to reality, and everything is at its right place, is in harmony, is balanced, in the joy and bliss of the present moment.
– Are you talking about sexuality or about meditation?
The Elder keeps silent.
Elea smiles and prompts discussion again.
– Tell me about conception now.
– Conception takes place at several different levels, the Elder explains. For people spiritually conscious, there is at first a heartfelt plea and a loving encounter with the soul of their future child. Fertilization operates on three levels: the mind, the heart or soul, and the bodies, but what we forget is that before a physical fertilization occurs, the essences and the souls of the parents must unite. Procreation can only be achieved through it. The three souls are in harmony. The soul of the future baby knows its whereabouts, and as for the parents’ souls, well, … they are going to discover it, aren’t they?
Motherhood, part 2, pregnancy and environment
– There is a poem by Khalil Gibran that I like very much. It’s about children, Elea says, handing the text over to the Elder.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
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 yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thought.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Khalil Gibran
Excerpt of the book The prophet
Theophile reads it aloud and approves:
– It is exactly like that. Nobody owns anyone. Love is what counts and unites us.
Do you know that your baby’s heart starts beating from the twenty-eighth day after conception? asks Theophile.
– Do you mean that the soul is present and active?
– Yes. You have seen the prenatal ultrasound of your baby, haven’t you? The baby depends entirely on you, but it is already itself and will continue to be. Your husband and yourself are going to accompany the baby, to feed and protect it, and more importantly, to give it love until he or she becomes autonomous and is able to take off.
– One day you told me that love is food for the soul. Loving one’s baby is so easy! What a beautiful responsibility!
– It is essential. Love is the key to everything. You feed your child physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It must all be precisely balanced.
– Like the baby’s bottle? Elea suggests, jokingly.
– In a way, yes. but it is easier for you to breast-feed your baby upon request. So it is with mother’s milk and love. They are in perfect line with your child and answer its essential needs.
–Breast-feeding is very tiresome, Elea sighs.
– I guess it is, and you must also take care of yourself, while you are pregnant and after it. Then you are like a temple that holds a sacred life. Pregnant women should not work; they should live in a protected environment, in the best possible conditions.
– Are you going to have us locked up?
– Of course not. The idea is to create within you a harmonious, divine environment for you and your baby. The baby is in your bosom, it feeds on you, on your feelings, on your thoughts. It perceives all your vibrations, and also the vibrations of your environment thanks to the amniotic fluid. It can recognize your voice, its father’s voice or the voices around you.
– When I was preparing for delivery, I practiced haptonomy. Together with my husband, we learnt the way to bond with our baby. The baby would move whenever my husband called him by means of a light touch on my belly. I even managed to make it move just by addressing him mentally. Those are some of the most beautiful moments of my pregnancy.
– Before, people would recognize the baby only after it was born. Much progress has been made since then, but a lot remains to be done, particularly on the vibratory level. The baby captures all the vibrations around. That is the reason why we need to watch our environment and the company we keep, why we need to watch our words and even our thoughts. The baby builds up its subtle bodies from its mother’s subtle bodies, just as it absorbs the food she takes in. The baby uses a part of the etheric maternal matter in order to develop its own layers. At the moment of birth, it takes all that matter with it around its physical body and the mother can then feel a vacuum, an etheric “hole”, hence the famous “baby blues” mothers often live after delivery.
– When I was pregnant, I was extremely sensitive to anything. I would take in every single thing. If it was positive, I was thrilled; but the opposite could also be true: I could burst into tears in those moments when things were getting difficult or when I felt upset, in disharmony with the moment or the place.
– The baby’s soul creates a natural antenna with the subtle world. It magnifies all that its mother feels. Becoming a mother is really an initiation. It can change a woman thoroughly. During that gestation period and the first years following the birth, the woman experiences a direct connection with some other dimensions of the human being.
– What do we do with that? Elea asks.
– It all depends on each of you. Here we are back to free will, to choice. It is what makes the greatness of humanity or its drama.
– For my second child, I’d like to do as best as I can. How could I prepare myself?
– By taking care of having a pure heart, as always, and mainly by getting into touch with the soul of your child to come, telling him he is welcome, and in making yourself a receptacle for love.
– But I don’t even know that soul!, she claims.
– Maybe you don’t, but your soul and your husband’s soul know it. Knowing means loving, accepting totally the being that will incarnate through you.
– Is that all? It sounds so simple!
– As simple as God. It’s us who are complex. So we try to return to simplicity. The baby’s state of innocence is a manifestation of that simplicity.
– At what moment does the child lose that innocence, that simplicity of the heart?
– As his/her personality is building up and he/she starts becoming aware of his/her self, then the ego begins to work.
– What a pity!
– Why? The ego gives you the possibility to act; it develops your will. As the child is growing up, his/her consciousness expands. It is something beautiful. Every stage in the child’s life is important. During our evolution, every thing plays its role, every thing is good, the old man concludes.
Motherhood, part 3, choosing one’s destiny
Today, Elea is determined to go deeper regarding a matter dear to her heart.
– During our previous exchange of views, you told me that my child’s soul had already chosen all that concerned its life, prior to coming to this earth. That is fascinating. I’d like to know a little more about it.
– You too have chosen your destiny, the Elder says, smiling. If you really want to understand, let us have a short journey back in time to have you experiment that moment prior to birth.
– How could we? That’s impossible!
So, the old man helps Elea be in a modified state of consciousness in which she is both totally alert and absorbed within a new “time–space” continuum.
– How do you feel now? he asks softly.
– Fantastically well, light, bright, deprived of any sensation of being within my body any more, Elea wonders.
– Your body is having a rest, as if it were asleep. You have left it for a while to travel within another dimension of your being, as you actually do every night. Can you tell me where you are now?
– I am in a peaceful space, a space that is very vast, but keeps hum an dimensions. I am bathing within peace and harmony.
– You are in the anteroom of your soul’s birth, just before it incarnated into the baby your mother was going to bear. I will stay beside you mentally. Tell me all that is going on, Theophile the Elder asks her.
– I can see the lines of Time and the course of my life, its highlights, the choices offered to me, the decisions I’ll have to take, and the eventual possible achievements. It seems everything was carefully and clear–sightedly planned. The destiny I chose for this very life is lying in front of me. I feel I am ready and willing to go ahead. I hesitated for quite a long time before leaving my luminous home and launching again into another human journey. My previous life had not been an easy one and I’d had to thoroughly examine it under the guidance of Light Beings in order to draw and integrate the teachings it held. Now I am ready to start a new life and go ahead. I can feel I am being supported and wrapped in love. I know that guidance is there to stay and it comforts me. I can also see that four generations of Light Masters of a high calibre will successively incarnate. What a tremendous opportunity living in such a period is! Elea cries out.
– Quite right!, the Elder confirms. It is a real blessing indeed, and all human beings have there a fantastic opportunity to develop. The Masters come together with their disciples and aspirants. We are one of them. We come together with them in order to complete a spiritual cycle and start a new one. For human beings, this is a new way to access the Ultimate. That way is a fast one, tailored for the times and the souls now present on the Earth.
Gradually, Elea regains a more common state of consciousness and she keeps silent for a while. The memory of what she has just lived is still there and she seems to fear seeing it fade away.
At last, she decides to ask the Elder, who is quietly waiting with his eyes half–closed:
– What I have just been living is quite extraordinary. If that is what really happens before we are born, why shouldn’t we keep the memory of it? It would be such a great help to us, wouldn’t it?
– Knowing the outcome of our lifetimes would prevent us from perceiving the essence of them, and we would lose all our spontaneity. Most importantly, we could not draw any lesson from the experience life gives us.
– I am afraid I can’t understand.
– Our soul comes down on the earth to make the experience of human life. It has two major purposes: the first one is to realize God within one self, the second one is to acquire the human and spiritual values while heading for the evolution of the soul, through successive lives.
– It must take quite a long time then, mustn’t it?
– Thousands and thousands of years….
– Has our existence any other purpose?
– A human being is also a ‘co–creator’. That is why he is endowed with freewill. He can thus contribute to driving the Divine Creation forward into the world of manifestation.
These revelations leave Elea speechless; however fast she can think, experience taught her that first she must calm and balance her mind and feelings to access a subtler consciousness and her intuitive mind. Her heart and mind will give her true access to the Sphere of Truth.
Tracing Elea’s inner development, the Elder appreciates her great maturity. She is entering the non–mental dimension, which connects her directly to Universal Knowledge. Then the two of them can commune and establish a verbal and non–verbal telepathic communication. Thus the dialog continues simultaneously on the three levels of the being.
The non–verbal communication allows you to directly grasp the essence of every living thing, the Elder adds, and then consciousness unfolds on all the levels of existence. It guides your spirit towards knowledge, so that you become able to make the distinction between the primary truth and more relative truths.
– Are–you trying to tell me that I am in need neither of your answers nor of your teachings? the young woman wonders.
– Real answers always come from within. Observe and listen to your heart.
Elea’s luminous gaze becomes blurred, as if she was looking at the Infinite. She gets in touch with the dimensions of her being.
– Have you understood?
– You teach me how to find the answers deep within my heart.
– That’s it. Why should you depend on whatever when your inner Master is there and ready to guide you? Your heart has been awakened to that. You have a conscious access to universal consciousness.
You have made a decisive step forward. Realizing the Ultimate will be your next step.
– Will I need another thousands of years? she asks, both jokingly and seriously.
– Not necessarily. In our Way, the spiritual Master can take the aspirant within his mind–matrix. Just like a ‘mother’, he bears his disciple within himself. Then the disciple can access all that his ‘spiritual mother’ has acquired, i.e. the Ultimate, the Centre. This is the shortest way. It goes neither through the points nor through the regions souls usually have to cross.
– What is the secret to obtain such a grace?
– Love and surrender.
– Do we have to be sufficiently advanced for that? At what moment can the seeker have that possibility?
– At any moment along the path. When grace operates, logics and spiritual laws no longer exist.
– Then why going on meditation, cleaning and praying for?
– Meditation and prayer actively prepare us to cooperate with our Inner Master and merge with Him.
– I can better understand now. Through practice, we purify ourselves, we illuminate ourselves. Constant remembrance naturally guides us to a state of Love and to the Presence. That is the moment when grace can operate and when anything becomes spiritually possible, isn’t it?
Elea closes her eyes and remembers her condition before she was born. She lets herself slip down into the memory of the peace and of the Infinite love she enjoyed then.
Theophile the Elder
Excerpt from Dialogs with Theophile the Elder
Sharing views with Elea