Daily Meditation: Monday, November 25, 1996

The physical family is one thing, the spiritual family is …

11/25/1996

The physical family is one thing, the spiritual family is quite another. You can belong to a family whose members are not of the same spiritual family as you are, and despite the blood ties, they are not really your relations. You are not responsible for their actions and they are not responsible for yours. The Old Testament says that when people have sinned, not only are they punished, but their children and their grand-children to the fourth generation will be punished. But what have these children done to deserve this suffering? It is their father or their grand-father who sinned, not they, so is this punishment not unjust? No, because those who pay for their parents' mistakes by inheriting the same vices or the same diseases are truly of the same family as them. If they belonged to a different spiritual family then they would not suffer. There have been criminals who have given birth to saints, so this means children are not always touched by the crimes their parents commit. If they are it is because, in the past, they have followed the same path and have thus been attracted to reincarnate amidst those whom they resemble. They have therefore been constrained by law to enter this family so that they experience the same trials previously incurred by their parents.