Is Abandonment Punishment or Freedom?

By William Rubenstein D.D.


When discussing the Three Selves work, it is important to understand that our High Self is the Conductor, the Playwright, the Dramatist—the Producer of the show (our life plan). To state it more accurately, it is the Producer of our Consciousness in which certain aspects have to be orchestrated.

Our entire lives are filled with drama from the moment we are conceived and pushed out into the world from our mother’s womb, and it is incumbent upon each of us to try to understand what this drama is all about.

Very often, it is filled with pain and suffering, and it is difficult to understand why it is so essential that we go through this “crucifixion.” When a Playwright creates a scenario, he or she has a definite purpose in mind, and when we are able to tap into that purpose, we begin to realize that not only are we dealing with a mystery but also that there is wisdom behind it.

It is here that we now address ourselves to this theme called “Abandonment.” There is hardly anyone that has not experienced this phenomenon in some form or another, including Jesus on the cross.

When we are abandoned, we experience being forsaken, deserted, feeling all alone without any support. It has been stated that from a metaphysical point of view, one of the reasons we may come into life and be abandoned is because we have abandoned others in other lifetimes. That may be true, but it seems that this symbolic action goes far beyond the concept of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” If you look at the history of all great spiritual leaders, you will soon see that many went through a similar initiation of being abandoned.

When one is abandoned, one is forced to cut loose one’s ties, to be on one’s own, to forge ahead, and to find a new path, without any roots to help us. Symbolically speaking, we are like a plant with no roots that is continually working, pushing, digging to develop a root system.

The implications of being abandoned allow us to start a new beginning, so that the old karma, the old ties will not hold us back in our spiritual development.

What is important to understand is that the breaking of the old ties produces in us this new beginning. If this is not understood, we often misinterpret the real meaning of being abandoned and feel we are being punished, not freed to begin again.

The Creator, God, does not punish! With infinite mercy, the Source of All Creation always seeks to salvage us. We may feel that to be abandoned is to go through crucifixion, but we must always remember, opposites go together. When there is Crucifixion, there is also Resurrection.


Comments from Dr. Bella Karish, Co-Founder of the Fellowship,
regarding “Abandonment”

I wish to add a thought that definitely helps me to understand what happens when the infant feels abandoned after the birthing process.

During pregnancy, the child is coddled, fed loved, and secured within the womb and the child expects this to continue.

However, the very act of birth is a traumatic abandonment experience. The infant, content inside the womb, is suddenly pushed and pulled from the womb and its own breath is forced to be activated when the umbilical cord is cut and then the child experiences a “spanking” to make it breathe on its own. So the baby experiences abandonment from its previous home — the mother’s womb — it is pushed out forcibly, spanked to breathe, and weeps in a strange outside world, and it is no wonder many infants have fears and tears and the feeling: “Mother, mother, why have you abandoned me?”

Because at first, the child has no way of communicating to explain these feelings, there is no solution available to it other than screaming or tantrums or developing ailments that can and do help the child to either get attention or to escape life to try again some other time.

Therefore the habit pattern of escape — running away — and fear and anxiety at being abandoned becomes more and more instilled mentally, emotionally, and definitely physically.

There IS a solution, but it must be carefully handled. Love, Love, Love is that solution!

Love plus understanding that the infant must be pushed out of the womb to breathe on  its own to learn to activate a purpose that accepts new life and breath as a challenge of an incarnation—re-embodiment for a new life purpose.