Unresolved issues

QUESTION: Masters, as a child my relationship with my dad was very good, until things changed (I think I was around at the age of 8). I started to have unexplained hatred towards him and feeling that I should protect my mom from him. He is a good dad and husband and I have been trying to think this over and over again and could not come up with a reason why I felt the way I did, and so strongly. Where did those feelings of hatred and need for protection come from? Is it from a different life and/or do I have some unresolved issues with him? Why do I feel so protective towards my mom? I love him and I wish I wouldn’t have this conflict with him. ~Ani, Israel

ANSWER: You have experienced several lifetimes in which you lived in a family where the father was abusive to the mother and to you. While there is not a direct connection between your father in this lifetime and the father in those past lives, the need to be able to do something to correct the old circumstances before anyone can be hurt is pushing your emotions.

It did not get “triggered” to appear in your consciousness until around the age of eight, when you were exposed to the domestic abuse condition of an acquaintance. The child in the family was so fearful the mother would be injured that you popped back into a former life where you had not been able to assist your own mother because of your young age.

When a very physically emotional set of facts occurs in a lifetime and you blame yourself for not doing anything about it, it frequently stays in your “memory” and, when triggered, becomes “real” in the current life. It was a lesson you set up to learn how to deal with – or at least to understand – all the implications, and you did not.

To start to understand these feelings, whenever they appear, go into the energy that they produce and ask yourself why you feel the way you do. This should allow you, with some persistence, to find yourself back in the other life. Step back from the events and see that you were unable to do anything because of your age and your father’s overwhelming size.

Let go of the blame for what your mother suffered; it was not your fault. Understand also that this was a lesson for the two of them in abuse, and for you in knowing you had no ability to intervene. Release all the emotional ties to that lifetime and see the three of you as souls having a human experience. Feel the three of you in your essence of unconditional love

When you think of your father, envision him as a spiritual traveler who chose some very difficult lessons. Respect and love him for his hard choices.