Our journey toward transcendent humanity is as much an expression of love as it is an avoidance of crisis. Our embrace of the single truth and the relational universe transforms our understanding of being and meaning, not our desire to bond with others. Human connection with a partner or child is one of life’s most fulfilling experiences, one that helps the individual conceptualize universal wholeness in ways previously unimaginable. Presently we inhabit moments where concepts of partnership and parenting vary greatly across regions and meaning philosophies. Rules and laws governing our relationships with each other are enforced by the unholy alliance of state and spiritual systems rooted in a time experience long past. The single truth provides new frameworks for individual exploration, evaluation, and engagement in partnering and parenting with another.
Salvation religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have attempted to guide and dictate what partnership and parenting should be. Written during a time experience of high child mortality and comparably low knowledge, they provide frameworks for relationships that are inadequate to meet the needs of dynamic humanity in the immediate present. The salvation religions project hierarchy into romantic and parental relationships through the subjugation of women and children to the will and whim of the father. To this day, these texts are used to deny individuals access to education and resources based on biological sex. In some instances, this oppression occurs through direct bans enforced by violence; in others it is a pervasive propaganda preserved through closed information ecosystems and government partnerships. The placement of one below another in a romantic relationship is antithetical to the value systems we embrace to align ourselves with the single truth. Our understanding of the relational universe translates to a rejection of all spiritual, legal, and philosophical reasoning that prioritizes one individual over another in the bonding of partnership.
Coupling in the form of a lifetime bond with another has taken many forms throughout human history. During the human time experience of nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, we inhabited a more egalitarian approach to community and relationships. Sexual relations were not restricted to a single partner, and children were thought to be everyone’s. This polyamorous structure of society helped strengthen group cohesion, which was extremely important given the dangerous and uncertain world. It also prevented the decimation of the child whose father was killed in a hunt or skirmish. Through the advent of agriculture and surplus arose a more concrete method of understanding paternity. Thus, the idea of marriage as a legal and political technology to transfer wealth was created. What ancient and modern marriages have in common is the focus on male lineage and property. Daughters were thought to be the property of fathers, who paid dowries to the husbands who would marry them and assume ownership. To this day, many practitioners of salvation religions still embrace the idea that when a woman enters into marriage she leaves behind her personal vision and desire in order to serve her husband. That a woman is something to be owned and traded sits in direct contrast to the values and practice of individual actualization. Partnership in alignment with the single truth absolutely rejects the objectifying of individuals.
Parenting suffers from similar burdens as a partnership. The child is considered property of the parent, owned and to be guided as the parent sees fit, without respect or regard for their individual humanity. We struggle with how much divinity to bestow upon the child, recognizing that they are both sacred in their time experience but unable to direct their flow with the same degree of control as their adult counterparts. For nearly all of human history, we have lacked the infrastructure necessary to recognize the child as a sacred individual. Parental dominion of the direction of their lives is both expected and prioritized, with few if any alternatives available for escaping harmful circumstances. Beyond parental influence, birth lottery and individual time experience have ensured that each child becomes an adult forced to assume the shape society required. The total potential of their prophetic powers was determined well before they entered the world. Now we enter an era of alternatives, yet the child remains bound to a universe that doesn’t consider them fully human and deserving until an arbitrary age they have no say in choosing.
We find ourselves inhabiting a time experience where the philosophies governing the relationship between parent and child have produced generations of traumatized individuals. Meaning and value systems prioritizing obedience and dogma lack focus on the love, security, and guidance necessary to lay the foundation for individual actualization. Today the compounding of this trauma is evident. Youth depression has been consistently growing since 2005.54,55 Many parents are ill-equipped to navigate the changing nature of time in their personal lives, let alone develop frameworks of success for their children. Public institutions no longer provide the pathways to security they once did, further binding the child to the circumstances of their birth lottery.
When we consider the relationship between parent and child through the lens of the single truth and the relational universe, we do so without the intent of claiming a “best” method of parenting. Our objective is not to homogenize the development of individuals. At the same time, we recognize that children deserve so much more than the crisis they are inheriting. We begin by recognizing the child for what they are: an individual possessing the internal infinity that inspires divinity within the moment. Their physical, emotional, and intellectual immaturity is not an excuse to diminish their rights and personhood. Each child is a sacred individual and therefore possesses the same absolute rights to agency and access within the world. We reject the popular dogmas prioritizing parental preference over the child's well-being. It is an uncomfortable conversation because parents often believe themselves to be right and just in the direction of their children’s lives, even if that means perpetuating dogmas that serve to distance them from individual actualization.
We recognize that we cannot claim to value their individuality while leaving them bound to circumstance.
