1.5 Typical lessons for the family

      Remember that our SA is not empty when we come to this world. Instead, it is filled with erroneous views that we bring with us from our previous life. Normally, we do not change our views while we are in the Subtle World because it provides us with only limited opportunities for purifying our soul. For this purpose, we come to this world. However, we bring our wrong viewpoints with us to this world and Life is aware of it.
      To improve the growth of our soul, Life in advance plans particular situations of our arrival to this world - the situations that will help us to destroy our erroneous notions. One of the common situations when this occurs is our family life. Let us take a look at the family relations between a husband and wife. As you observe it yourself, many families lack mutual understanding to some extent or another, which often results in offense, arguments, scandals, and finally divorce. Why does it happen?
      The answer is that Life pairs people in such a way that each spouse destroys the values to which the other spouse pays excessive attention. It means that the excessively important values of one spouse are destroyed because the other one denies them. This explains most of the conflicts between spouses and the lack of understanding in many people's family life.
      Of course, not all of us have idealizations that can be destroyed in the context of family life. As a result, some families have happy lives without many arguments or much mutual discontent. Yet, these families represent the minority.
      Most people idealize such family values as fidelity, good housekeeping, order and tidiness, life without stress, and so on. As you might guess, these qualities are most common in women because they are more apt to pay excessive attention to these values.
      When women idealize these values, men have nothing else to do except to destroy them. Men are forced to drink, go fishing, have affairs spending a great deal of money on mistresses, spend excessive time at work or with friends, and so on. To fulfill their educational family mission, men have to do things that public opinion deems immoral. However, as we already noted, there are sometimes discrepancies between moral norms and the necessities of spiritual learning.
      Women are not the only ones who idealize family values. Most men idealize these values, too. A man's family idealizations are often manifested in jealousy, in trying to control the behavior of the wife and children, and in attempts to plan the family budget on his own. These values must be destroyed and women are the instruments to fulfill this task. As a result, women look for love affairs, spend too much money on shopping, neglect their house chores, etc. This way the spouses give each other all kinds of spiritual lessons. When one side does not understand these lessons, the other side takes offense and they may get divorced.
      Let us see how Life is able to pair people who will destroy each other's values. We are reasonable creatures, therefore before getting married we can see that our future partner has different views on life and we have a choice not to marry him/her. Yet, in reality, things rarely turn out this way.

Love

      To pair people with opposing values, Life invents a method for depriving us of what seems to make sense to us. It is called love. Love may be considered a way of diminishing our intelligence for enough time for us to marry our spiritual "teacher."
      To make us feel better, love is supposed to be very pleasant, and we can fall in love more than once in our lifetime. That is why marriages based on passion are usually marriages between people who need to destroy each other's excessive values, i.e., between people who idealize different values in life (e.g., a wife who adores tidiness and material wealth and a husband who loves soccer and his own independence). Ardent infatuation usually lasts from six months to two years. Then the magic disappears and the husband starts to notice that his wife does not behave the way that she should according to his point of view. As a result, they are both discontent, take offense, become hostile, and argue with the intention of making each other better, but in reality, hurting each other. This is when the mechanism of spiritual education starts to work.
      Life is very good at coupling people, so by knowing one of the spouses, it is easy to predict the character traits of his partner.

1. If a husband is very prudent and logical, he is most likely going to choose an emotional and hot-tempered wife.

2. If a wife loves money and believes that her husband should have a high salary, her husband will most likely be broke or pay no attention to money at all.

3. If a husband values sex a great deal, his wife will not care much about it.

4. If a wife is very well-mannered and is critical of rude people, she is very likely to fall in love with one.

5. If a husband has strict ideas about raising a child, his wife will have the opposite ideas.

6. If a wife likes one type of food, her husband will prefer a different

7. If a husband enjoys one kind of entertainment, his wife will like another sort cuisine.

8. If one partner really loves his/her relatives, the other one will not care much about keeping good relationship with them.

      People have noticed this pattern and invented the proverb, "Opposites attract." However, no one explains why relationships have to happen this way. We stubbornly insist that our ideals are the only ones, and as a result, we experience endless arguments, grievances, misunderstanding, and resentment. Yet, in this process we destroy each other's idealizations and, in a way, help develop each other.
      A wife does not realize that her husband is her "spiritual educator" who stops her from idealizing earthly values, and vice versa. To make this "treatment" last longer, a child is born into this family. Children usually connect people and do not allow them to divorce too early. They also participate in "spiritual education" and often destroy the values of one or both of their parents.

Marriage problems

      Now let us talk more about love, particularly about the cases when people fall in love but do not get married. This situation arises when a woman or a man is not able to find his or her "better half" to create a family. Women in this situation are believed to suffer from what is called a "celibacy crown," and some healers try to help them to get rid of this "infirmity". What does this "crown" mean from the point of view of the Sensible Life method?
      It is easy to understand that this problem is caused by excessively idealizing family life. A woman can idealize family life so much that Life cannot find for her a husband that would match her ideal, but on the other hand, could teach her the proper "lessons." Actually, it is not so difficult to find a proper man who could become an "instrument of her torture"; there are plenty of them around. The reason is that it is difficult for Life to make the girl so foolish that she could fall in love with such a guy and marry him. The prospective partner is so different from her ideal of a husband that her emotions cannot win over her common sense and make her do such a "crazy" thing.
      Some women have too much common sense and do not listen to their emotions. In these situations, Life is unable to deliver her the right partner. However, she does not deserve a better one because he would be unable to give her the proper lessons. That is why she has to wait till the next incarnation to fall in love and have a family.
      As you can see, Life cannot always use love as a "treatment." If we excel at logical thinking, imagining exactly what we want from life and from our partner, then it is difficult for our Guardian to make us unreasonable enough to fall in love with the wrong person. Usually it happens with more mature people. People normally get married at a young age, when they are not wise enough and are mostly driven by their emotions.
      If Life wanted, it could make us fall in love with a person who will cause the most destruction to our life. The more idealizations that we have about love, the worse the person we will marry. Life is life. Many books tell us stories about these kinds of marriages.

Reasonable choice of a spouse

      Now let us consider cases when we do not marry a person who we love or we divorce our "spiritual teacher" after the spell of love disappears, and as a result, we do not learn the lessons that Life intended to give us through that person. These events indicate that our idealizations have not been destroyed and our SA still remains full.
      In these cases, we usually look for a new partner using our common sense. As a result, it is difficult for our Guardian to find us a partner with a value system opposite to our own (what we spiritually need) and we choose a person with interests common to ours and whose character traits are compatible with ours. Does this mean that we will not receive more lessons from life? On the contrary, we will.
      If we bring our erroneous beliefs into our adult life and find a partner who idealizes the same values, then Life will teach both of us. However, in this case Life has fewer choices of educational measures. Here are the possible ways to destroy the idealizations of both spouses:

1. a child who ignores the values cherished by both parents

2. loss of property (e.g., family bankruptcy)

3. illnesses that require great effort from both spouses

      For example, the common idealization of material well-being may be destroyed by removing money and other material values from your life in the form of money loss, minor car accidents, property theft, etc. If these lessons do not teach you anything, the situation will become more serious. Your house may get robbed, the car may be seriously damaged, the house may be ruined by fire and insurance companies may be indisposed to compensate the loss, etc. These events exemplify the most simple and common lessons. Actually, the Guardians of the couple might work together and do something much worse to the spouses to destroy their idealizations.
      Life is life - let us repeat it once again. We have to observe its rules.

Scandals are good for you

      Let us talk about scandals that often accompany some people's family life. In-laws, the husband, or the wife are the most frequent participants in conflict. What are the reasons for conflicts and how should we behave when someone makes us angry?

Scandal is a way of exchanging energy

      There are several aspects to this issue. From a spiritual point of view, each scandal helps transfer energy from one person (the energy donor) to another (the energy vampire).
      In most cases, scandals take place when one person lacks the energy usually received from food, air, and the environment. As a result of some inner disorder or ailment, this person's body lacks energy, but he or she does not want to be sick or die. Therefore, this person's body starts looking for another way of gaining energy. It is possible to acquire it from other human beings, especially from very emotional ones. It does not matter if this energy is negative or positive. That is why some people (mostly the elderly) provoke others to anger. They use any means necessary (admonition, insults, criticism, tactless statements, etc.). Everything works to make you angry, thus making you lose you energy to feed the "vampire".
      After screaming and exchanging insults, both parts would have to come down to a quiet state. The "donor" feels as he has no more energy to continue with the argument. The "vampire" is content because he collected some energy that he can run on for a certain period of time. Try to remember some scandals in your family and ask yourself if this scenario sounds familiar to you.
      This notion explains how a scandal manifests itself at the energy level and also how it is explained by clairvoyants and healers who use energy for their work.
      We need to realize the reason why the "vampires" lack long-standing energy. For now, we will try to set aside such reasons as illnesses, lack of sleep, or fatigue which are only an outcome of those reasons. Most likely, the real reason is the effect of the "lessons" taught to us for having the wrong attitude towards life.
      Older people, especially the ones who did not achieve much in life, often criticize others (the young, the wealthy, or the healthy); they get upset with life and impose their ethics and standards on others. Their Guardians have to teach them "lessons." As a result, those people do not receive sufficient energy and they look for alternative energy source such as pulling it from other people.

Scandals help us stand for our principles

      If you do not have any idealizations, it is virtually impossible to engage you in a scandal. Nothing will bother you because you are emotionally well balanced. If your opponent finds a way to make you lose your temper, you should be grateful to him. He helps you find a value to which you attached excessive importance. He helps you to reveal your erroneous beliefs so that you could get rid of them. These beliefs can include your point of view about your children's education, politics, your appearance or intellect, or any other value. Each of us has our own set of principles that a "vampire" will use trying to push all available buttons to make us angry; in fact, he is our "doctor" because he shows us what we excessively value. On this account, scandals are useful for our own good because they become an excellent diagnostic tool to see all our idealizations and to offer us the right treatment. The "vampire" destroys our idealizations by his behavior, convictions, or actions against us, so let us be grateful to the person who drags us into a scandal.
      Keeping this in mind, we can decide our own role in the approaching conflict. There are several options. We may try to avoid the conflict, i.e., remain silent, leave, or try to bring some levity by a joke. In this case, the "vampire" will not receive the necessary vital energy and will continue grating on our nerves or if it fails, he will switch to a different person (a sensitive child, a nervous neighbor, an irritated housewife or alike).
      We can yield to the " vampire" and allow him to pull us into a conflict. If we are able to control our anger, it will not hurt us much, and it will totally satisfy him. However, a couple of days later we will find ourselves in the same or similar situation again.
      Besides actively participating in the conflict, we can use other tactics. For example, we may show compassion to the person who provokes us: mentally wishing him respect, appreciation, higher self-esteem, etc. By doing so, we will still feed him part of our energy, a different kind though - instead of the anger energy he expects, we will give him the energy of love and forgiveness. Hopefully, the "vampire" will be able to absorb it, in which case his reaction might be quite surprising to us. He may apologize or even cry from remorses. If this energy is still not enough for him, he will attempt to further provoke our anger.
      Actually, some "vampires" prefer this energy of compassion and mercy. To receive it, they often provoke you for a peptalk.
      There are other solutions to the problem. If we want to really stop conflicts, it is necessary to restore the energy of the sick person (the "vampire"). It is only possible if he will change his attitude toward the world and will be able to comply with Life's important requirements in order to stop judging the world and start accepting it as is.

Family idealization

      Now let us study our family life in the light of the aforementioned explanations. Try to evoke what particularly annoys you about your spouse, what he or she does wrong according to you. It may concern the aspects of housekeeping, sex, money spending, specific character traits, or alike. You have to realize that you idealize those exact qualities, i.e., you attach excessive importance to them. You are taught lessons for these idealizations because they cause your Stress Accumulator to fill up. The more you are discontent with some qualities of your partner, the faster your SA becomes full.
      Now try to remember which of your own traits or habits annoy your spouse the most. He or she obviously idealizes the opposite personality features or values. The more your partner is unhappy with you, the more admonitions you receive from him, the more stress liquid pours into his SA. You already know the consequences.
      After you understand what kind of lessons you got from Life, you should make a decision. You may leave everything as it is, in which case your SA will continue filling. Or you may change your attitude to life, i.e., stop idealizing things that are extremely precious to you on the subconscious level. At the same time, consciously you are able to logically see that they do not have such a big importance to you. This approach can seem difficult, unless you stop idealizing.

Stop idealizing

      It is quite easy to do if we remember the way of forgiveness. Forgive your spouse for what he or she does wrong, no matter how difficult it may be for you. You must realize that they only do things that you believe are mistaken to make you better, to teach you a lesson. Of course, they do it subconsciously because Life gave them this uneasy task. As soon as you forgive your partner and accept him as he is, he will immediately change. He will have no need to teach you lessons anymore and will stop doing the things that bother you so much. Although he may still be doing something wrong, it will not bother you anymore because you have already forgiven him.
      At the same time, if your partner understands that you have a task to make him a better person and he will forgive your spending too much time with friends, shopping, neglecting chores, drinking beer or fishing, then you will no longer be obsessed with this kind of activities. You will still do it on occasion, yet without harming or offending your family.
      However, forgiveness alone is not enough, it is merely the first stage of correcting your destiny. We may forgive a person, but a day later we become offended or angry with him again for the same reason. After you have comprehended what you value excessively, you should first forgive Life itself, your relatives, yourself, your bad luck etc., and then change yourself so that you no longer idealize much of earthly values.
      We will examine this kind of attitude in the 3rd Chapter. If this problem is your priority now, we urge you to proceed to the 3rd Chapter right away.