by Dagny Roth

Created on: February 20, 2009   Last Updated: February 26, 2009

Overcoming the Patterns of our Past. How can we do this while still learning from the experience? My article speaks of a spiritual perspective on parenting. An example of past experiences can be explored in relation to such horrors as child abuse. How often do abusers follow a perpetual pattern of upbringing vs. how often the pattern is broken. Do we as parents mirror the mistakes our parents made? How can we break free of this mold? We seek perpetual understanding in our lives. Is it a matter of displaced failings wherein we blame our past, our parents, our experiences for the downtrodden aspects of our lives? Can we truly say we are shaped somehow by the fortunes and misfortunes of before? If so, how far back is it traceable? From the beginning? The mere essence of our spirits trapped within the womb of a stranger who's either capable or incapable of positively addressing the growth of her belly; the imbalance of her personality, the utter lack of freedom from movement from life? Shall we start there? When in a release of unwelcome cold and light our infantile minds are shaped and molded as clay into a permit able form until we are considered normal and worthy of love. Can we say it starts at birth then? How we respond to the world is based on this beginning and thereafter? That we are no more than a product of our environment. Some religions believe in preexistence where we as souls exist in form, in personality so to speak in some unknown realm of heavens. That it was here, before an earthly existence where we choose the tribulations we would face. The belief is the stronger the spirit the more difficult hardships one would bear. And then there is this idea of past lives and the karmic return and paying of debts. Are we then paying the debts of our parents and they there's? Are we paying the debts of choices we have made in a pattern which is changed only when the end has been sought.

What made me think of it? I was having dinner in a local restaurant one evening. I was sitting casually across from my fiancee, anticipating lasagna and the warming swallow of red wine. Large booths lined the sides of the restaurant and the atmosphere was meant to be cozy and warm. In the booth, directly in front of my view sat a family. There was a man and beside him a freckled face, pug nosed boy. The father looked respectable. He wore a cashmere pullover sweater in blue donned over a white collared shirt. His salt and peppered hair was neatly combed, nicely cut. I couldn't

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