How Did I Attract My Parents?
Assuming the Law of Attraction is true, and we attract into our lives what we are putting out into the Universe, I started wondering how I…
Assuming the Law of Attraction is true, and we attract into our lives what we are putting out into the Universe, I started wondering how I (or anyone) attract parents? After pondering this, I came up with a theory.
It now seems clear to me (and has been validated through convincing scientific process under hypnosis — e.g. the fascinating book Many Masters, Many Lives, by Brian Weiss M.D.) that we come into this realm on a continuum for the sake of completing some kind of learning process. Which means, when I arrived in this body and this family, I was not a “blank slate” as I was indoctrinated to believe. As a young parent, it surely seemed evident to me that the little ones I was entrusted with were definitely not blank slates. They came in with rich personalities and deep wisdom oozing out of their little eyes and souls.
So the big question: how did I possibly attract a physically and verbally abusive father along with an emotionally abandoning mother? I mean, this frightful combo has haunted my adult life and especially partner relationships for decades as I try to work through all the implications of a “broken axis” as Richard Rohr calls it, along with my complex attachment issues. Nobody in the world, it seems, would intentionally attract such a long-lived handicap when making an appearance on the stage of life as a vulnerable child soul. Which is why I am trying to make sense of it from the LoA standpoint in some logical fashion.
Maybe, I reasoned, we have our perceptions backwards. Throughout my life, I have demonstrated the best and the worst traits of both of my parents, assuming that I inherited these qualities from them. Good and bad, I am like my dad (it took me a long time to admit this to myself). And, good and bad, I am like my mom. They are both etched inside me in an inextricable dance. But, what if…I’m the one who dragged those qualities into this lifetime in order to heal them within myself? Perhaps I attracted parents who would mirror my own untransformed shadows back at me so that I could learn through experience why those things are hurtful, undesirable, and unacceptable? Perhaps I wasn’t a “victim” as much as I was here to heal by experiencing the untransformed “dad” within me who hurts others with anger, and the abandoning “mom” within me that does not fully know how to be vulnerable or to love with fearless abandon. And maybe if we don’t heal these wounds in any given lifetime, we keep taking them with us until we are ready for a higher consciousness.
“When we heal ourselves, we heal our ancestors from wounds that run deep in our family. When we heal our ancestors, we heal the world from wounds that run deep in humanity.” — Miriam Rose
Being on the receiving end of hurtful behaviors that we have also done to others is a great way to bring about true repentance — the kind that changes one’s heart from the inside. Perhaps this is how we heal across time, as many believe we can heal our lineage when we heal ourselves. We find, perhaps, that it was only our own selves all along that needed the healing. In the Jewish Kabbalah, there is a similar teaching known as “tikkun olam,” or the various forms of action we take in our lifetime to repair the world, which starts with repairing ourselves.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this question, how do we attract our parents? I’m always looking for ways to understand our struggles in this lifetime that don’t implicate God as uninvolved, unloving, or unfair. My root belief is still that it is a benevolent universe with deepest intent for our greatest good. If life seems unfair, heartless, or punitive, I feel that we just haven’t spent enough time with our wounds (and the healing agents) to obtain a higher consciousness about them. May we have patience and grace until our minds are opened and transformed, and all of our wounds have found healing.