Family is a basic social unity consisting of parents and their children, considered as group, whether dwelling together or not. The role of responsible parents in this group is to care their children by nurturing a healthy relationship with them. This relationship is strengthened by providing them with all physical, mental and spiritual needs.
1. DEEP MEDITATION AND PRAYING
Before writing about the effects of meditation on family members, let first of all define what meditation is.
Meditation: Is a state of thoughtless awareness. Also it can be defined as a state of profound, deep peace that occurs when the mind is calm and silent, yet completely alert.
This state is just a beginning of inner transformation that takes us to a high level of consciousness. It enables us to fulfill our human potential.
Meditation is not an act of doing; it is a state of awareness. A person can be in this state or he/she is not, regardless of what he/she is doing in life.
One method used to achieve meditative state is to slow down and eventually, completely stop the incessant activity of our minds. This can be done by mental concentration on something. Also meditative state can be achieved by imagining something that gives us peace or satisfaction.
Happiness in family comes from slowing down and cultivating a peaceful place inside together as a family.
Meditation has the following effects on the family members:
Meditation helps the people to relieve anxiety, stress,
It helps the people to settle positive energy within their body,
It helps to develop clarity and prevent anger and resentment,
Heightens the passion for life and relieve depression,
Strengthens confidence and lessen the speediness,
It increases empathy and decreases selfishness,
Much more…..
Here the role of parents is teaching their children how to maintain their mental health. Meditation enables the children to self-settle and self-soothe.
When the members of a family have a peaceful place inside themselves, they naturally become happier and more positive. This helps them to build a healthy relationship between them as members of a family and the neighbors. The family members become more productive in their daily business and generally and naturally harmony is established.
There are many ways to bring mini-meditation sessions into your family’s daily life by doing the following things:
i) Practicing two minutes of walking meditation while out for a stroll,
ii) Counting 10 deep breaths while snuggling together at bedtime,
iii) Having a moment of silence before beginning each meal,
The possibilities are endless.
Prayers as a relationship, where we humbly communicate, worship and sincerely seek God’s face helps the family members to become united. It is this union that leads to the happiness of all family members.
When praying, the family members must know that God hears them, loves them unconditionally, and will respond, though not always in the manner we may expect or desire. They have to understand that every situation is from God and therefore it is an occasion given to us to move forward.
Prayer can encompass confession, praise, adoration, supplication, intercession and more. Every member of a family must take part in this action of praying so that the collective consciousness of a family becomes highly elevated.
Our attitude in prayers is important. We have to be humble, not haughty, knowing that we depend on God in every aspect of our lives.
As the members of a family journey together in understanding the nature and purpose of their prayers, God blesses them and instills a joyful and fruitful prayer life in their family life.
The prayers can make a remarquable change in our life family. And it is up to offer our prayers humbly and regularly.
2. COMMUNICATION
Generally communication is when you express your thoughts, feelings, and opinion to someone else, while they listen and reciprocate.
In family, communication takes a much more personal level. When you communicate within your family, you can expect a listening ear that can gently soothe or an honest opinion to direct you on the right path. Therefore family members have to make sure that every member has sound communication skills. This can help family members to remain tightly knit while being open and honest with each other.
Sometimes the effective communication lacks in family. This lack of effective communication in families is primarily caused by a member or members of a family who don’t think of the other members ‘needs: emotional, physical, financial, .needs. Therefore every member of a family has to do his/her best in order to CARE others with the purpose of helping them to satisfy their needs.
In doing so you will see how the distance between thee family members become reduced and completely eliminated. This will lead to aha moment caused by family union.
3. FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feelings and attitude regarding an offense; let’s go negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased ability to wish the offender well.
Forgiveness may be considered simply in terms the person who forgives including forgiving himself/herself, in terms of the person forgiven, or in terms of the person forgiven. In most contexts, forgiveness is granted without any expectation of restorative justice and without any response on the part of the offender.
In the highest self-realized state, forgiveness becomes the essence of one’s personality, where the persecuted person remains unaffected, without agitation, without feeling like a victim, free from anger.
Because Jesus knew the importance of forgiveness for humankind, he repeatedly spoke of forgiveness, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”Math5:7(NIV).
Also he said that: “Don’t judge, and you will not be judged. Don’t condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”(Luke6, 37). Here Jesus showed us that forgiveness is not an option to Christian, rather one must forgive to be a Christian.
For the family members to be happy and have the peace of mind for, mitual forgiveness is must among them. “Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace.”said by Benedict xvi
In the case of marriage forgiveness, is an important aspect. When two individual are able to forgive each other, this results to a long happy marriage. Forgiveness can help prevent problems from accruing in the married couples’future. Forgiveness in marriage relationship leads to a happy and healthy relationship.
4. LOVE
When you are asked to define love using a single world, what will be your answer? Stop reading and think about the answer for this question.
According to Wikipedia.com “love “differs from heart to heart, love can be good and bad. To love and be loved is the perfect ingredient to happiness but to love and not be loved will be darkness in your soul. Being in love is like a drop of water after years of draught, it easies your soul’s agonies of life. Being in love is a feeling not all humans will experience. So if you have it cherish…just love it.”
True love has a foundation of integrity, respect, faith and trust. Love is the force that brings UNITY and HARMONY in family.” Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order I may love”. Stated by St Bernard, French theologian and reformer.
Love is comforting someone in need of love and having them know that somebody cares.
Love is looking past imperfection in your partner and seeing the beautiful person inside. True love seeks the happiness and well being of your partner.
Love must be experienced, its meaning is infinite and can never be totally defined. There is no fear in love; the perfect love casts out the fear.
Love has never been defined since man began, so we have to use our own hearts and minds to decide. Here is a story about how four year old boy loved his neighbor. The old man living next to this little boy’s house recently lost his wife, upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went in the old man’s yard, climbed on his lap and just sat there. When his mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,” Nothing mom, I just helped him cry”.
Love is itself universal experience. Yet every individual occurrence-while bound by a common thread, love seems absolutely unique. Love is what love is! To everyone it expresses itself differently.
A loving person doesn’t do nothing but GIVING.
5. GOAL ORIENTED FAMILY
Family goals are difficult to define because in our day, many family members are not united due to the facts that they don’t the willing heart to solve the family conflicts. This leads to illusions of living as if they are apart from each other. This illusion of disunity makes difficult to set family goals.
When setting family goals, the family members need to look at their current situation regarding their family to allow them to identify WHAT they WANT to achieve and then HOW to set goals to achieve it.
Considering the family tree, the family members have to start jotting down what you think is going well with their family relationships, and what they think needs a little or lot of work. The key is to identify what they want to work on so that they start they start setting some family goals.
Family members who are organized as a team with the same goals to achieve are characterized by happiness due to the fact these family members manifest the feeling of togetherness. Here the happy family members support and encourage each other in order to achieve the goal set. They are able to show the affection between them.
Each family is made up of different individuals with different needs, and sometimes with different values and beliefs. Happy families show the acceptance of these individual differences and deal with them when striving to achieve their family goals.
6. HUMILITY
Humility is a quality which enables the family member to consider the interests of other family members. This leads to the reduction of the distance between family members. Hence they become close to one another and every family member feels valued.
The Bibles encourages being humble:
“In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others”. Philippians 2:4, NIV
“Those who exercise humility take up their cross daily by laying down the desire of the flesh for the good of another”. Said by Darlene Schacht
Humility is found in many forms such as modesty, meekness, humbleness, lowliness of mind, and submission. These are all things that go against our natural desire to excel and be seen in this world. We are driven by a need to be right, to be in charge and to come first, and time and again, our flesh deceives us into thinking that settling for anything less is a sign of weakness.
Take a look at the why the Jews refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah:
The Jews rejected Jesus because he failed, in their eyes, to do what they expected their Messiah to do destroy evil and all their enemies and establish an eternal kingdom with Israel as the preeminent nation in the world. The prophecies in Isaiah and Psalm 22 described a suffering Messiah who would be persecuted and killed, but they chose to focus instead on those prophecies that discussed His glorious victories, not His crucifixion.
They wanted a king, who would be triumphant over their enemies, but instead they saw a man who was oppressed and afflicted and brought as a lamb to the slaughter. They wanted strength, but what they found was a weak and broken man who refused to strike back.
It’s amazing what people miss out on when they refuse to open their eyes. What they failed to see, is the same thing that many people fail to see today which the incomparable power of humility is.
Humility can only occur when the soul is triumphant over the flesh, when our desire to come first is put aside for the good of others. Or in the case of Jesus, His desire was put aside for the good of mankind.
Our flesh wants nothing more than to be in control, to win every argument, and to put ourselves first. Those who exercise humility take up their cross daily by laying down the desire of the flesh for the good of another.
Did you notice the word used there? Exercise. Just like athletes who are training for a race we have to train ourselves to be patient, hold our tongue, give up our need to be right, and choose to be happy. The new version of ourselves we become,the more power we have over the flesh. Jesus showed an example to follow, let us be humble towards one another in order to experience the benefits resulting from developing this quality.
7. FAMILY SPIRITUAL HEALING
Healing is the process of restoration of health from an unbalanced, diseased or damaged organism. Healing is a process of making or becoming sound or healthy again. Spiritual healing is a healing from a spiritual perspective. It is grounded in the universal truth that your essential self, the foundation of your beingness, is spiritual in origin and nature.
In practical everyday terms, spiritual healing helps you to be clear about what is important to you, to be free, confident and empowered to live your life with authenticity, to know your true self-worth, to be compassionate toward self and others, to be positive force within your own life and for others and so much more.
Human beings are spiritual nature and can be helped best in the spiritual way. The first thing the family members need is to identify the problems and realize the need of inner healing. Below there is the examples of some examples of common symptoms to look for in somebody who has an emotional wound: Irritability, little or no tolerance, overly sensitive about event in your past, feeling the anger toward God, self-hate, escapism, retaliation urges, irresponsible behavior, perfectionism, feeling of helplessness, driveness, obsessive compulsive disorder, hostility (toward God, self, and others),etc
The first thing that the family members want to settle ,is any feelings of guilt and shame, especially any feelings that God is somehow disappointed .When dealing physical healing, what is the first thing to do? Cleanse it from germs so that it can properly heal. When dealing with spiritual or emotional wounds, carrying out baggage (guilt, shame, fear, etc) makes the healing process much more difficult. Getting yourself to the point where you know that God loves, forgives, and accepts you, is the one of the foundations to receive inner healing.
For the happy families the emphasis is on facilitating authentic family communication and greater intimacy by identifying misunderstandings and challenging issues, such as long-standing negative feelings, detachment, addictions, and childhood wounding.
8. FAMILY BEINGNESS COACHING
Beingness is the natural state of awareness.The basis of beingness, and of any individual ability to create change in the world, is in mastering these five areas of beingness and how he/she shows up in the world. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, each level of beingness builds on the following: Being present, being authentic, being clear, being accountable and being effective.
Members from happy families are coached to transform their ability to exude (spread out) these states of being and inspire each other. You see the family members from happy families coach each other to elevate their collective consciousness.
Each family is able to cultivate its own incredibly effective family style when built on this framework of Beingness. This will help parents to facilitate life skills, critical thinking, day to day life decisions, communication, listening,…to create children, teen and young adult who can in turn make positive decisions, create a meaningful life of contribution and compassion, set and achieve goals, understand their own natural talents and put them to use, learn how to create solutions for everyday life challenges, discern from their values and become self accountable and responsible.
9. CLARITY
Where there is clarity, there is no confusion. Here every family member from parents to children must know WHAT he/she wants in his/her life clearly and remains FOCUSED on it. Remember that clarity is the first step to mastery. A person who is not confused in this lifetime, that person knows consciously about his/her life mission. In other words he/she knows WHY he/she is HERE on the earth.
When a person is not confused has a clear definite life purpose. He/she knows why really is here and now. Due to the fact that clarity is a first step leading to mastery, a person with clarity is able to create a life of his/her dream. This is because he/she is able to manifest his/her realities unconsciously and consciously.
Mastery in different life domains enables the people to live a joyful living because these people become completely safe from life challenges such as poverty, diseases, etc
The members of a joyful family clearly KNOW WHAT THEY WANT in the lifetime and do the actions based on their passions to back home with God.
10. COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
More family consciousness is elevated; more family members become happy and united.
Collective consciousness is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as unifying force within society.
Collective consciousness is holistic level of society where all its component parts are integrated. Collective consciousness arises from the consciousness of all individuals in the society and reciprocally influences each individual’s consciousness and behavior. The basis of all levels of individual and collective consciousness is transcendental consciousness, which is direct experience of the unified field of nature’s intelligence and infinite organizing power.
Durkheim described collective consciousness as the mind of society, created when the consciousness of individuals, instead of remaining isolated, becomes grouped and combined.
Remember that the human beings bend their life realities using their collective consciousness therefore a family with elevated collective consciousness will bends its wanted life realities easily.