Heavenly Families

Bruce Charlton wrote an interesting piece recently setting out the implications of the idea of God being our Father. See here. He says "we should see Heaven as a family (an ideal ideally-extended family, of many related families) - not an organisation".  I think he is right and would like to offer as support to this idea something from my own experience with the Masters. This is not an experience of heaven but I would maintain it is an experience with heavenly beings who behave in the way that is that of the heavenly world.

From the very beginning of my conversations with the Masters they would address me as 'my child', and that was how it always was right up to the end. In the same way, they spoke of Michael, their medium, as either 'our brother' or 'your brother'. They never called him Michael and they never called me William And I felt of them as though they were something akin to spiritual parents. It would seem strange to have many fathers so the parallel is not exact but they were part of a group which was an extended family and within that group there were souls at many levels of seniority. So it was like a family with older and younger members, bound together by love but also with a certain sense of authority. 

Based on this experience, and also my own personal feelings on the matter, I envisage beings in the spiritual world as made up of group souls which are part of other group souls which are part of others and so on, eventually extending to the whole of heaven. It is families that are ultimately all part of the one family under God. The Masters spoke of themselves as brothers and always gave the impression of a universal family not an organisation or occult bureaucracy as in the idea given by some esoteric societies who talk of functions and positions among the spiritual hierarchy as though it were a company with directors, accountants, secretaries and the like, all with official titles and roles in the organisation. No doubt roles are assigned and specialities represented but the essential truth is that heaven is made up of loving families which surely chimes in with our deepest feelings of what is right and proper. 

Families are joined together by blood except, of course, husband and wife who are joined by love. But, esoterically considered, husband and wife are two halves of one whole, sundered from unconscious oneness so that they might rejoin in conscious wholeness. What might be the spiritual equivalent of blood? That depends on how souls are created and to understand this we have to look into the idea of spirit and what it might be. I suppose the closest thing we can compare it to in our experience is light so could spiritual bloodlines be 'lightlines'? Esotericists talk of rays as streams of qualitative activity emanating from God. These might also be streams of life with souls created according to the nature of a particular stream. So a spiritual family would be a particular ray of God expressing itself through a myriad of beings.

Be all that as it may, there is no doubt in my mind that heaven is made up of spiritual families. We are all one in Christ but that is, as it were, the super family. Within that super family there are countless extended families of souls with members at all sorts of different spiritual ages. What a wonderful thought! Something that often doesn't work out as it should down here is based on a reality which is perfect.