Hello People of the Earth! My name Johnny. I am an angel and I’m working with Sophia and other angel companions on this book in order to share our collective wisdom on the subject of Families. Such a joyous subject! Just so you know, there are seven angels collaborating on this topic in a truly family way.
Let’s begin by defining family in a very basic way. Family is a group of beings that share love and significant life with each other. (You’ll notice I didn’t say share life time or life space because there are many forms of families across the universe. Some Children of Creation are not bound to space-time. These species have fascinating family structures and activity!)
Family is frequently created around the birth and raising of offspring, but there are also forms of family that arise from romantic partnerships, shared vocation, shared affinity, and shared action. Let’s look at some examples of each…
Family created around the birth and raising of offspring might consist of a mother, a father, a step-father, three biological children and one adopted niece.
Family created around a romantic partnership might consist of a polyamorous group of three women and two men that share the same household.
Family created around shared vocation might consist of fourteen people that support a singer in sharing her voice with the world.
Family created around shared affinity might consist of six people that belong to an astronomy club and love to watch and learn about the night sky and the stars.
Family created around shared action might consist of twenty-two people that came together during a catastrophic earthquake in service to the lost, injured and dead.
As you can see, there are many ways to experience family!
Angels are a very diverse bunch so we support the diverse ways family can happen. We believe the time is right for human beings to start envisioning family in new and broader ways. At the core of each family, no matter how conventional or atypical in appearance, is love. And there can never be too much love in the world. Let’s take a deeper look at this very special social structure…
There are some things almost all families share in common. These characteristics of family consist of a sense of unity, a sense of shared identity, a shared axis of meaning, and a consistent spiritual connection. When one or more of these defining characteristics of family is not present, or is present but weak, the family structure is weak in turn. This means the support the family members might get from the family structure might be inconsistent or even absent in some ways. This is a sad thing! By being intentional about our family relationships and working together to maximize the strength and integrity of our families, we can all benefit. We live in an interconnected Universe! Families are to people as solar systems are to planets.
The sense of unity experienced by families can be supported in a number of ways. Sometimes unity is reinforced through the sharing of names, customs, a shared living place, a shared common appearance or other superficial similarities. But there are less tangible ways family members experience unity with one another. Let’s consider those as well.
Families experience a sense of unity when they share intimate touch and touch time. Intimate touch encompasses a range of behaviors from love making and washing, to shared eating and hand holding, among other things. Think of all the ways a mother or father cares for a small infant or child in a day’s time, feeding, changing diapers, cleaning the body, offering comfort, transporting and playing. The list could go on! Spending time being intentional about loving, safe touching is one of the best ways to expand a sense of unity among family members.
Family members also experience a strengthened sense of unity when they share spiritual practices. These need not be affiliated with a religious tradition, although many religious traditions have provided beautiful and deeply affirming spiritual practices to families for generations. If your family members love the practices of a shared religious tradition, by all means emphasize them. If, however, you have one or more family members that have stepped out of your family’s religious tradition, we angels would encourage your family to create new spiritual practices that better meet the needs and beliefs of everyone in your family. You may have already guessed we are fond of spiritual practices utilizing silence. We also like the lighting of candles; the use of song, dance or music; shared time in nature, particularly time in a place considered special by all the family members; shared creation of food or art; and of course, the joining of hands.
Yet another way family members experience a shared sense of unity is through deep conversation. Talking among family members about values and beliefs, and finding points of shared feeling on these matters builds unity. These are not easy conversations to have, but if you belong to a family with children, it is possible to make these conversations part of your regular activities together. Maybe the children can be invited to bring questions of significant depth to the table after sharing a meal. Then you can all dig into the question together, examining the question from multiple perspectives and sharing your feeling reactions to the question itself and the ways other people have answered the question. Good questions for deep conversation include the following: What does it mean to be human? Given our human history, how do we know when an action is in the best interests of our people? What is real? What is true? What is beauty? How do we know what we know? And there are many more.
Sharing a sense of identity differs somewhat from sharing a sense of unity. You might not share a sense of unity with one of your sisters because you and she differ in many ways. Maybe you don’t see her often, or touch her lovingly, or share spiritual practices or deep conversation with her. You might still share a sense of identity with your sister however if you have experienced significant time together, or you both adopted the family’s cultural traditions, or you look alike.
There are other ways to support a sharing of identity. These include adopting the same or similar way of speaking, using the same family name to identify yourselves, sharing a sense of family history, sharing family traditions, becoming family in new ways with the addition of a new generation of children, and simply agreeing to stay family. Some of the deeper ways to share identity include regular communication, gifting, sharing the care of dependent family members, traveling together, and preserving family history or genealogy.
Sharing an axis of meaning is yet another way family is defined, and it is a very important one. One of the reasons family is such a diverse social structure is due to this critical element. Imagine how a shared axis of meaning could serve to create family among people brought together to serve others after a catastrophic earthquake. The feelings they share while under the incredible stresses of searching for survivors or helping the wounded and dying are not readily understandable to other people. There are experiences unique to those happenings that bond and often change the participants forever.
Unfortunately, too often a shared axis of meaning is absent in many biologically founded families, but this need not be the case! There are ways to create a shared axis of meaning in every kind of family. Storytelling is the key. When we share stories with one another, or even retell a favorite story, we all join in a very similar experience of reality-making. Through our imaginations, we create images to match the words of the storyteller, and in so doing, we travel in consciousness side by side, if you will. Stories of all kinds work to create a shared axis of meaning among family members, but perhaps the most powerful are the stories we tell about ourselves and our fellow family members. We angels would encourage you to create stories for and about your family members. See one another as heroes and create great epics, comedies and even tragedies around the events of your lives. Then share these stories, preserve them and pass them on.
The final characteristic of family is a shared spiritual connection. In truth, this sometimes comes about almost accidentally. One person falls in love with another and before you know it, their souls are bonded. This certainly happens through marriage, but it also happens between souls in love whether or not the two people are intentional about it. Angels recognize spiritual contracts or agreements between souls because there are “visible” signs or spiritual indicators of these connections. Returning to the example of our family created through the shared experience of service after a catastrophic earthquake, people who share this kind of traumatic or deeply moving experience often form very immediate and strong spiritual bonds. Angels can actually see this. Sadly, the same is true of soldiers in wartime, although no one wants for family to be created in war. There are far too many life affirming ways to create family.
Besides sharing intense loving relationships or sharing intensely traumatic emotional experiences, there are other ways of building spiritual connection among family members. We already mentioned sharing spiritual practices. This will help build a sense of unity and spiritual connection.
Other ways to build spiritual connection include intentional spiritual contracting; creating significant rituals or ceremonies to mark special events or accomplishments; joining in shared healing around family structures; immigration of the family; sharing the experience of the birth or death of a family member; being initiated into a family; and combining one or more of these bonding opportunities.
Let’s make these ways of building spiritual connection more concrete to ensure everyone understands them.
Intentional spiritual contracting is most commonly experienced through the many traditions of marriage or the bonding of people in a sacred spiritual and sexual union. There are many ways of contracting with one another spiritually however. Siblings might create a spiritual contract around the care for their aging parents. Divorced parents might create a spiritual contract around the care of their children. These agreements differ from legal contracts in that they must be based on consensus. In other words, both people have to agree completely, and usually without significant reservation, for the contract to be valid. It is also wise to create a spiritual contract with the best interests of all persons involved as a priority.
Significant rituals or ceremonies to mark special events or accomplishments are commonly experienced in your world through baptisms/dedications, birthdays, graduations, and other such occasions. There are many other special events or accomplishments that might be marked as well. These include coming of age, completion of healing work, naming or name changes, accomplishment of a long sought-after goal at any time of life, letting go/release of the old, and recognition of the creation of a new family.
Joining in shared healing around family structures is still rather rare on your planet, but there is much need for this work and it is a powerful way to create strong spiritual connection among family members. Let’s take the example of a family that has been plagued by alcoholism. Upon the death of the matriarch who was one of a long line of drinkers, family members gather to forgive her for her weakness for alcohol and affirm their own commitment to sobriety. In another case, a family might renounce violence together or pledge themselves to passivism. Yet another family might seek to create healing around welcoming the stranger after they have experienced flight from their home country as refugees. Doing this kind of healing work is not an easy task because family members are often at different places with regard to the original trauma from which they all need healing. It is completely acceptable and even advisable to seek support from a wise, trusted person outside of the family to help guide and facilitate the healing work. There are ways to make the healing work respectful and accessible to all family members.
When a family immigrates, or when people share the birth or death of family member, a similar opportunity for bonding exists as when people experience deep love or a shared traumatic experience. Oftentimes the boundaries between individual souls are eroded through these shared experiences and a new connection is created.
Finally, we would encourage you to open your eyes and hearts to the many ways family manifests in your world. Step into celebration and recognition of the creation of a new family, and celebrate the initiation of new members into existing families. There is incredible joy to be found in these places!
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