Living and Loving As An Evolutionary Family

Aired Monday, 6 April 2015, 7:00 PM ET

Timothy welcomes Cliff Ishigaki, Director of the Synthesis Center in Orange County, California. Cliff is a gifted Marriage and Family Counselor, Trauma Recovery Specialist, Ordained Minister, and Aikido Instructor. He has served as a Director of Counseling for a Juvenile Court School, a school counselor, history teacher, college instructor and a Marine Corps Captain. His current work is focused on individual family counseling where trauma is indicated.

As we endeavor to be more conscious parents, a more conscious partner for our beloved, we recognize the need to connect with, resolve, and release whatever traumas, fears, thoughts, memories, desires, cultural conditionings, and other stereotypes that keep us from being fully present for our children and beloved.

We make a commitment to discovering ourselves through our sacred family, a commitment to discover and live true selfless love. We form a family bond that is committed to openness, to communing and to exploring life together.

As an evolutionary family we seek out and acknowledge the gifts each family member brings to the love affair we are co-creating with one another each moment. We acknowledge and are aware of the evolutionary potential, the potential for much deeper love, perception and understanding, that comes through seeing each other as mirrors and reflectors by which we can learn more about ourselves—through which we can resolve and release past traumas and other energies blocking the full expression of our love. We stop blaming others and start seeing parts of ourselves in them.

Within an evolutionary family, common family situations transform what could be challenging times where someone or everyone gets wounded into win/win results for everyone. We use creative conflict and self-examination to enhance our growth and experiences of living in and as peace, love and bliss. We realize that intra-family work is more exciting and meaningful than anything else. We choose to heal the evolutionary path of past generations bringing an end to unconscious actions.

Paramahansa Yogananda said, “Parents and children should understand that their relationship is not fortuitous, but is due to a divine plan. Family life is the laboratory in which human love can be transformed into God’s perfect love.

Parents should look upon their child as the honored temple where their conjugal love can be purified and expanded into filial love. They should feel that they are serving God in that little temple. Children, in turn, should look upon their parents as visible representatives of God on earth.”

At the very core of an evolutionary family is prayer and meditation. Prayer and Meditation helps us see into our family life and provide us with the energy and illumination to solve our problems. A family meditation program leads us to deeper, richer friendships; freedom from anxiety; spontaneity and creativity in play; open, loving family relationships, and feelings of trust and safety.

Meditation assists in shifting “survivor” brain reactions that propel us into the limited reactions of being a “loner, pleaser or controller” into stabilizing responses that we will discuss during the program.

Meditation awakens dormant brain cells, giving us access to the 85 to 90% of the brain most people do not use. It stimulates the brain neurons, increasing their capacity to allow more awareness to enter our consciousness.

Meditation improves self-image. Children learn they can become a master of themselves by quieting their bodies, emotions and thoughts to experience the deeper reality of their spirit. They gain a sense of inner authority as questions are answered from within.

In the joy, sense of well-being and direct perception that opens up, children gain self-reliance and can do better in whatever interests them. The gradual development of deep concentration that goes with meditation becomes part of their character. Then the vibrant and often scattered energies of childhood become directed and used, by the children themselves, to achiever their own goals.

Whether you are a parent, grandparent, caretaker, educator, expectant parent, or simply someone who wants to live a blissfully conscious and productive life with rewarding relationships in each and every moment, join Cliff and Timothy as they explore Living and Loving As An Evolutionary Family.