1 min read

Did you know your Mum before you were born?

Did you know your Mum before you were born?
Art by Amanda Clarke

...and your Dad, Grandparents and Great Grandparents?

Unborn-ness


One of Rudolf Steiner's insights that has made its way into the public imagination (well, the spiritual-public imagination at least) is that we have something to do with our family before our birth.

This is the concept of "unborn-ness" or "life before birth" as opposed to "life after death".

Of course, some people would rather not think that they "chose" their parents. But, just for a moment, try to put aside any personal feelings about this idea...and just see if it makes sense or not (not easy, I know).



Steiner says that it is actually the love of the incarnating soul (the child to be) that brings the parents together. He goes further and says that before birth we are, for many years, closely following the souls of previous generations as well.



In a sense, you could say that we knew our grandparents, great grandparents etc. before we we born. What a thought!



As always, with any of these spiritual statements, it's best not to make a dogma out of them and to try and keep the question open. Otherwise our disagreement or even our agreement with the statement will just be a judgement based on personal opinion... and not on whether it's plausible or not.



This withholding of judgment is actually a very important spiritual exercise.



We can aim to treat these ideas as substance for our contemplation or meditation, rather than beliefs to cling to or reject.


This can be extremely helpful in other areas of life too. Politics for example. So much strife between people (and countries) comes about due to very strongly held opinions, often based on scant information from headlines or newsbites.

Theme for meditation, contemplation or discussion:
My love for my parents brought them together so that I could be born

Thank you for reading.

PS. If you’d like to join the discussion about this and other spiritual themes please join us (it’s free to join) over at the Spiritual Scientist Online Community...

... click here to check it out.